Architect, 
Craftsman 
and 
Vigilante, 
the Beaver 
Is Not to 
Be Caught 
Easily 
Part Ten 

a. Cee Oe ra 
of he: se ane 
* 
* 

o ae 
A small beaver dam built in a low place to stop the flow of water from the main pond. 
Modern Trapping Methods 
months of each season are spent 
by the north country trapper 
in specializing on beaver. Even in dis- 
tricts which are supposed to have pro- 
hibitive laws, the trappers wage a 
great war on this noble member of the 
fur-bearing tribe. We do not sanction 
this, of course, but there is no use 
dodging facts. In the north it is im- 
practicable for any government to hire 
enough game wardens successfully to 
protect such animals; the scope of 
country trapped is too immense and 
trappers are generally too secretive in 
their work. At the present it is no 
great cause for alarm, Canada already 
having enough natural game preserves, 
heavily stocked with beavers, to assure 
of their safety from extermination. 
But we would warn any outsider to re- 
member this: one would have about as 
much chance of getting away with a 
beaver trapping campaign, by trying 
to wedge himself in among the local 
trappers, as a snowball at a Fourth of 
July celebration. We are given to un- 
derstand that» Alberta took off the lid 
on January Ist, 1925, and there is some 
fine beaver trapping in that province. 
In the old days the beaver trapper 
was of necessity a warrior in addition. 
Indians bitterly disputed every inch of 
territory, sending out their war par- 
ties with the idea of putting a stop to 
the white man’s encroachments on the 
last of their hunting grounds. Many 
intrepid trappers lost their scalps, and 
the fine catches of beaver pelts they 
A T least two, and sometimes three, 
By RAYMOND THOMPSON 
had gathered fell to the lot of the In- 
dians who killed the white men. As 
we remarked previously, in those days 
trapping was a game calling for nerve 
rather than skill. The beavers were 
so plentiful in the West, most any ex- 
cuse of a trapper made good, but when 
the white men attempted to get out of 
the country with their furs they were 
in constant fear for their lives. 
The foundation of that great insti- 
tution, The Hudson’s Bay Company, 
was built upon the beaver pelt. The 
skins were sold by the pound, bring- 
ing, in the height of their first popu- 
larity for that manufacture, as high 
as eight and ten dollars a pound. Trap- 
pers tried to cheat by leaving on all 
the fat and flesh they dared. An old- 
timer told me how they used to flatten 
lead and place it between the tissue 
and the hide, to make extra weight. 
Most likely it was just such practices 
that did away with that system of de- 
termining fur values. 
HE beaver is a greatly enlarged 
muskrat, or the muskrat is a much 
reduced beaver; in any event the ani- 
mals have habits strikingly similar. 
A muskrat weighs a very few pounds, 
a full-grown beaver will go as high as 
seventy pounds. Only the trapper who 
has packed one for any distance knows 
just how heavy they are. A _ short 
squat animal, his body a good two feet 
long and very thick, his weight is in- 
deed deceiving. He is heavier, in pro- 
portion to his length, than any animal 
we know of, even hogs, ’coons, badgers 
and skunks considered. 
MPHIBIOUS by nature, the beaver 
is at home both on land and in 
water. But he is clumsy in his move- 
ments on land and for that reason 
must maintain a constant watch for 
his natural enemies. In search of “‘tim- 
ber,” he often wanders some distance 
from the water, but never without pre- 
cautionary measures to locate any 
enemy who might be abroad. He is 
naturally one of the most sagacious of 
all wild animals, and the trapper who 
expects to make a success of trapping 
him must study his habits in detail 
and put an excessive amount of experi- 
menting into the task. 
Beavers have been classed by differ- 
ent men as lodge and bank beavers and 
you will occasionally come across an 
old trapper, who should know better, 
claiming that two different species ac- 
tually exist. Except for freaks, there 
is but one kind of beaver in North 
America, of that we are satisfied. A 
lodge beaver builds a mound-shaped 
home of sticks, stones and mud, while 
the bank beaver is satisfied with a bur- 
row in the bank of some stream. Once 
we “marked” a beaver, missing his 
head with a bullet which scored a 
great slice from his tail. I say “miss- 
ing his head,’ when actually he was 
creased just enough to allow of our 
bringing him into the shore, where he 
suddenly came to life and escaped. 
Later on we got him in a different sort 
657 
