
A trapber’s cabin. 
USKRAT trapping is one 
M branch of the business which 
may be followed by young and 
old, rich and poor, wherever there is 
a slough or stream on which the ani- 
mals live unprotected by the game 
laws. The muskrat has been quite 
properly called the king pin of the fur 
industry, and while most 
other furbearers are worth 
more, skin for skin, in the 
aggregate the animal we are 
speaking of tops any two, 
dollar for dollar. 
UT the muskrat has been 
trapped unmercifully 
hard the last few years. 
During the tag end of the 
1920 fur season, ’rat skins 
were biinging as high as 
five dollars flat for good 
assortments. What was the 
result? Trappers worked so 
hard on the poor little fel- 
lows they practically became 
extinct in places where they 
had been numerous for 
years. Today it is a mighty 
hard proposition to locate a good 
muskrat country. During the last six- 
teen months the writer has traveled a 
good many thousand miles over this 
western country and not nce did we 
run across anything that looked like 
even a moderately good muskrat pros- 
pect. Spot trapping is perhaps the 
only feasible way to make anything 
at that branch of the game. 
O make a success of muskrat trap- 
ping, under present conditions 
out west, it is absolutely necessary to 
travel either by boat or auto. In other 
words, if you are lucky enough to lo- 
cate a place where a boat can be 
588 
to and including our April number. 
the advent of the angling season, we were forced to 
drop the series because of lack of space; and then, 
too, we believed that Mr. Thompson’s articles would 
be more useful during the fur months. 
With this issue we resume publication of the 
series, starting with Part Nine. An instalment will 
appear each month and will deal with the peculiar 
problems connected with the capture of various 
valuable fur bearers. 
If you are interested in trapping, save your 
copies of FOREST AND STREAM and you will have 
a valuable guide-book on the trapper’s art. 
used extensively, traveling a navigable 
stream or a chain of small lakes, 
you are all right; if trapping under 
ordinary circumstances, along small 
streams where the use of a boat is 
impracticable and around ponds and 
sloughs, one must have a car in order 
to cover enough ground to make it 
Modern Trapping Methods, as readers will re- 
call, ran through the Autumn and Winter issues up 
Then, due to 

pay. Last fall, while prospecting for 
a trapping ground, my wife and I 
loaded up the duffle in the Six, piled 
the two girls on top where they 
couldn’t bounce out, and hit the trail 
for no man’s trapping grounds. 
E heard of a lake, a hundred 
miles away, that was supposed 
to be literally swarming with ’rats. 
You know how such places are bragged 
up, especially if the informant doesn’t 
savvy the trapping game. Why, if 
we’d believed half of what we heard 
we’d have taken a truck along to haul 
the skins back. 
Of course, we were disappointed— 
Modern 
Trapping 
Methods 
Concerning Muskrats— : 
Where They Are Found 
| 
And How They May Be 
Taken—Part Nine 
By RAYMOND THOMPSON 
such things are too good to be true. 
We reached the place after several 
hours of riding over rough roads. We 
wallowed through miles of sand and 
were thankful to have a dependable 
car. The lake had undoubtedly at one 
time been the home of hundreds of 
’rats, but I’d gamble the hole in a@® 
doughnut there weren’t more — 
than a dozen muskrats there 
when we visited the place. 
Lots of coyote tracks, all — 
over, a few ’coons in a near- 
by canyon and some mink 
along the Columbia River, © 
six miles distant. But no 
’rats. 

























ELL, there was six dol- 
lars shot for car ex- 
penses and another six to 
take us back from where we 
started. Then I located a 
small stream flowing through 
mile upon mile of scab 
lands, and trapped enough 
muskrats on it to sort of 
even things up. I’d take the 
car to a certain point, as 
near the creek as I could get, and run | 
a line of traps upstream and down 
for, say, a couple of miles. This 
process was repeated from several dif- 
ferent points, and no doubt I would 
have done pretty well most of the win- 
ter, especially as there were a lot of 
coyotes in the scab lands, but I de- 
cided to hit back toward the Canadian 
line, looking for marten in the tim- 
bered country. 
HAT I want to get at is this: a 
good trapper with a car and 
outfit can travel from place to place 
for several months during the trap- 
ping season, and if he’s onto his job 
