






HE mink is one of our best fur 
|h bearers. It has held its own in 
regard to price and popularity 
about the best of any fur I know of. 
It is regarded as a ladies’ fur, for it 
is seldom used for men’s coats except 
as a lining, and then only the poorer 
grades are used. One peculiarity about 
it with the fur buyers is, that it is only 
“prime” one day in the year and that 
is the first day of January. If caught 
before that, it is “not quite prime,” and 
if caught after it is “beginning to 
fade.” After they are dressed and 
made up, if a lady goes to buy a set 
of furs, they are “all prime.” 
I have often been amused at some 
naturalists claiming that mink climb 
trees with the agility of a squirrel or 
marten, for in all my experience I 
have never seen one more than six feet 
from the ground and that would be on 
an old log or rotten stump. Their 
short legs and small feet show that 
nature never intended them for climb- 
ing. 
J] WELL remember the first mink I 
/* ever saw. I was about seven years 
‘old at the time and was being sent one 
day to the hay field with a lunch bas- 
‘ket on my arm for the men. I was 
crossing a corduroy bridge across a 
dead water brook when a mink came 
up and met me. I had heard the men 
‘telling many bear stories, no doubt for 
my benefit, and I decided this was a 
bear. I dropped the basket and left 
for home in a hurry. The men got 
tired of waiting and one of them came 
looking for the lunch and found it 
there I dropped it. I found out after- 
‘wards that the mink had a nest of kit- 
‘tens under the bridge and she often 
jcame out and faced the men as they 
(passed, 
| 



In camp with Braithwaite in New Brunswick. 
I have seen many accounts where 
trappers claim it is very hard to catch 
mink, but I have always found them 
the most easily caught of any animal 
except the muskrat. In the spring dur- 
ing the rutting season they do a great 
deal of traveling and hardly ever take 
bait, but their curiosity gets them into 
many a scrape. 
HEY travel up and down the 
streams and if you have your traps 
set where there is any open water or 
springs, cut a little pole eight or ten 
feet long and leave a limb or two or 
some knots on the small end; then make 
a loop with the trap chain and slip 
over the end of the pole. Tie the bait 
on the pole two or three feet from the 
end and place the pole at an angle of 
forty-five degrees over the water. Set 
the trap in the water directly under 
the bait with just enough water to 
cover it. If the water is too deep, take 
a handful of boughs or anything else 
and put under the trap to raise it. The 
bait should be ten or twelve inches above 
the trap and directly over it, and every 
mink that comes along will go to smell 
it and get caught. 
REMEMBER one winter I had a 
man in partnership with me trap- 
ping. About the first of March, I said 
it was time to get out the traps, for 
the mink would soon begin traveling. 
My partner said he didn’t think it 
would be any use setting them, as he 
and his partner the winter before had 
set a number of traps and didn’t catch 
a mink, and they were very plentiful 
too. I said we would try it anyway 
and set quite a number along our lines. 
Five days later in going the rounds, 
we found nine and got fifty-two that 
Season, 
Henry 
Braithwaite’s 
Tales of 
The Forest 
The Mink, an Interesting 
- Fur Bearer 
eae men, writing about mink, say 
they are seldom caught by other 
animals, but I remember two occasions 
when they were. Once while snowshoe- 
ing across a hardwood ridge, I came 
upon a fresh mink track which I fol- 
lowed thinking I would find a good set. 
I had gone only a few hundred yards 
when I saw where a fox had waylaid 
him and all I got was the tail. An- 
other time I was following a mink track 
down a stream on the ice when sud- 
denly the tracks ended. Looking 
around I saw where a hawk or an owl 
had scooped him up, as I saw the marks 
of the bird’s wings in the snow. 
CONSIDER mink the greatest of 
all game hogs, for they will kill fish 
or anything else for sport. I have seen 
trout holes along streams where there 
would be dozens of trout lying among 
rocks, in holes and on the banks. If 
one gets into a hen house, it will kill 
every hen and chicken before it stops. 
I remember one night of coming to 
camp and telling my man if he would 
catch the fish for supper and break- 
fast, I would cut the wood and cook 
the supper. So he went out on the lake 
on a catamaran and commenced to fish. 
After I had got the wood, I went down 
to the lake to get a pail of water and 
met a mink coming up from the lake 
with a trout. I called my man’s atten- 
tion to it and he said, “I’ll bet he’s got 
all my trout.” I asked him how many 
he had and he said ten or twelve. He 
looked around and sure enough, they 
were all gone. In the meantime, the 
mink had hidden the one he had when 
T met him and was back waiting for 
more. My man caught another trout 
and threw it ashore without taking 
it off the hook. The mink grabbed 
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