The Time to Catch a Weasel
February is the month when it is fashionable for stoats and weasels to begin courting. The keeper finds the trapping of stoats or weasels less difficult work than usual in consequence. He maintains that all is fair in love, war, and gamekeeping. He relies chiefly on tunnel-traps. The old way was to fix a long, low, narrow box in a likely run—a box open at each end, but with shutters which dropped when a pan in the middle of the floor was touched by a weasel's feet; so the weasel would be caught alive, without injury—only, however, to be executed. Another old-time trap was the figure 4 trap, set with a heavy stone or slate, which fell upon and instantly killed its victim. These cumbersome and not always reliable traps have passed from the woodlands, and now the keeper merely slips a gin into the entrance of a tunnel. This is made sometimes of earth and sticks, or is a drain-pipe, or is made of three lengths of plank, about a yard long and six inches wide. A hole in a hedge-bank is a favourite place for the gin. These tunnel traps are commonly set a few yards from the end of a hedge, because stoats and weasels have a weakness for cutting corners.
