It is this interest that leads them to 
the careful analysis of the habits of 
the creatures they wish to capture, and 
as one MUST have this knowledge in 
order to bring about the desired result 
it is readily understood that the degree 
of success depends largely on the 
amount of study expended. Trappers 
are first born and then made; they 
must have the natural love of wild life 
in order to sustain interest in the sub- 
ject, together with the will to go ahead 
and find out things for themselves. 
S UMMARIZING these qualifications 
we find that the most important 
personal requisites which go into the 
making of a _ successful wilderness 
trapper are—good health, fairness of 
disposition, steady nerves, humaness 
toward the helpless and a natural in- 
terest in wild life coupled with ambi- 
tion. Even with these pointers to guide 
him, the man who has never tackled 
wilderness trapping is not certain he is 
suited to such a life, but he is at least 
safe in making a trial of it. 
Nothing need be added to our list in 
considering the matter of the settlement 
trapper; in fact a man’s disposition is 
not a serious feature in this case and 
might even be detracted. When a fel- 
low is trapping in “civilized” communi- 
ties he doesn’t have to look at the same 
face day after day and may have a 
change of grub most any time the no- 
tion strikes him, hence he has no ex- 
cuse for surliness. And, if the life 
doesn’t agree with him, he has but 
“to pull up stakes” and try something 
else. Which brings us to the point of 
discussing the relative merits and de- 
merits of the two general forms of 
trapping. 
The writer, during the past fifteen 
years, has tried the different kinds of 
trapping as practised in this country, 
and I shall try and give explicit ad- 
vice in connection with what I have ex- 
perienced as well as setting down the 
facts I have learned from watching the 
other fellow work. No two trappers 
employ exactly the same methods and 
the man who cannot learn something 
from another, who is pig-headed enough 
to imagine HE knows it all, actually 
doesn’t know much of anything. Per- 
sonally I owe a great deal to the other 
man’s experience. Trappers from most 
every state of our own country, and 
from several Canadian provinces, 
write me for information and often 
their letters refer to something that 
proves valuable to me in turn. Just 
lately a southern trapper wrote, want- 
ing to know how to get a certain wolf 
that was bothering him. He set down 
his own methods, some of which were 
highly original as far as I know, and I 
wrote back and told him that if a fel- 
low with his ingenuity and trapping 
skill couldn’t fool the sly coyote, it 
wasn’t much use of me trying to do it 
on paper, not knowing the exact con- 
ditions, etc. What I want to get at is 
this—no man knows it all and it’s up 
‘to each individual to use the brains he 
is supposed to have. These points then, 
the writer has learned through wilder- 
ness trapping and a lot of them must 
be accepted as general information. 
The biggest advantage of wilderness 
trapping lies in the likelihood of ‘more 
fur to the square mile of trapping ter- 
ritory.” This cannot be denied for the 
natural haunts of wild creatures great 
and small, that go to providing furs for 
commercial use, are remoteness from 
settled districts. True, certain animals 
seem to thrive just as well in farmed 
regions as they did when land was in 
its primitive state, but this is the ex- 
ception. The very nature of the aver- 
age wilds makes it an ideal hiding place 
for various animals, and even with a 
number of trappers scattered promiscu- 
ously over a comparatively small ter- 
ritory, the furtive wild folk soon be- 
come trap-wise and manage to live 
there without serious danger of extinc- 
tion. Take the Adirondack country in 
New York state for instance; some real 
trappers ply the trade there and yet 
a surprisingly large amount of furs are 
taken annually from the “Dacks.” 
THS, then, is the great appeal of the 
wilds for men with trapping ideas; 
they naturally think that far bigger 
catches will result from an expedition 
into a country where they won’t run 
into their fellowmen every fifteen min- 
utes of the day or night. At this point 
we will say, for the benefit of those 
seeking north country traplines, that 
one is apt to find trappers most every 
direction he is inclined to travel, virgin 
territory being more and more the 
“elusive paradise.” 
Some men, like myself for instance, 
prefer lots of elbow room. Let us con- 
sider a man out in the woods, bent on 
exploration. He travels for some dis- 
tance and no sign of human habitation 
disturbs him, not an axe-mark to mar 
the virgin timber he travels through. 
And then, just as he is ready to con- 
gratulate himself on the fact that he 
has discovered a “wild country” sud- 
denly he comes face to face with an- 
other hunter or trapper, as the case 
may be. For him the day is utterly 
ruined. It is this indescribable sense 
of freedom the wilderness trapper 
seeks—he wishes to be master of all he 
surveys, hence the wilder and woolier 
places suit him best. 
Now let us consider some of the dis- 
advantages of wilderness trapping, for 
there is a thorn to every rose they say. 
The greatest drawback by far is this 
—the ever-increasing difficulty of locat- 
ing a real wilderness trapline. Several 
outdoor magazines have experts who 
answer questions prospective trappers 
put to them. 
FoR instance a man living in New 
York wants to know all about trap- 
ping in Washington state. What is the 
answer he gets? Well, the expert may 
give the man all the information at his 
disposal, to be sure, but mostly this 
information is general and it CAN’T 
very well be other than general. Most 
of the question and answer men are 
clever, men of large and varied experi- 
ence, but the query put to them is most 
difficult to answer precisely. And, sup- 
pose a man actually does know of a 
place where his questioning fellow might 
possibly make a small stake trapping, 
he is not always justified in parting with 
his knowledge. The chief objection to 
pointing out trapping locations is this: 
the danger of being blamed in case the 
man who takes the advice does not meet 
with success. You know it is human 
nature to blame the other fellow. 
How then may a man go about locat- 
ing a trapping ground in the wilds? 
The answer is—go and find it, no man 
will do the job for you unless he is 
well paid for his hard work. After 
all, the things we seek out for our- 
selves are really the only ones worth 
while. In this series I am to give the 
very best of general information in re- 
gard to trapline locating but YOU must 
do the work and put up with the worry, 
if any. So, the difficulty of locating is 
really the big drawback to trapping the 
wilds. 
HE work in connection with locat- 
ing in a wild district is incomparably 
harder than that of settlement trap- 
ping. The very fact that one is far re- 
moved from a store of any kind makes 
it necessary for one to first choose his 
outfit and grubstake with great care 
and then to carry it with him wherever 
he goes, his methods of travel depend- 
ing on the circumstances of course. 
A disadvantage that keeps most men 
from tackling the wilds presents itself 
in the form of expense. Buying grub 
and outfit for such an expedition runs 
into money at an alarming rate. 
Wilderness trapping is undoubtedly 
fraught with hazards that no settled 
district trapper. has to contend with. 
The very fact of one’s being so far from 
medical help is something to be consid- 
ered seriously. Then there is the dan- 
ger of frost-bite, of accidents with fire- 
arms, the menace of fire and in rare 
cases the loss of stores through theft. 
_ Anything that threatens to take away 
(Continued on page 568) 
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