In building foundations for traps the utmost caution should be exercised in getting them good and solid. (See how well you can do it instead of how quick.) Begin in the fall before the trapping season is on, locate and build your trap, and be sure the top stone is plenty heavy, raise it up and let it fall several times. If it comes together with the bang of a wolf trap and will pinch a hair, so much the better.
To illustrate: While squirrel shooting one morning in the fall of 1905, I was standing on a ledge where I used to trap for coons, and I happened to remember of a trap underneath me. I just thought I would see if it was there. I went down and kicked away the drifted leaves and found it intact and ready for business. When I lifted it up the foundation was as solid as the day I put it there, and that was in the fall of 1890, and I want to say right here that it took all the strength I had to set it.
KILLED WITHOUT SCENTING.
Trappers, if you will try one or more of the above described deadfalls for those skunk, I think you can tie their pelts about your neck for protection cold mornings, and none will be the wiser as far as smell goes, provided, however, you put some obstruction to the right and left of the trap so it will compel his skunkship to enter direct in front, and then carefully adjust the length of bait stick so stone will crush him about the heart. I have taken quite a lot of skunk and very few ever scented where the head and heart were under stone, writes an Ohio trapper.
I always had a preference for above described traps for many reasons, yet if you live where there is no stone, you are not in it.
Deadfalls come in handy sometimes and with no cost whatever — unless the cost is building them. Will send two illustrations of the stone deadfalls writes a successful deadfall trapper. Will say that there is a right and a wrong way to set the deadfall. If you want to make sure of your catch never set your deadfall flat with short triggers shaped like figure 4, but make long triggers instead and have the weight or choker sit almost upright and draw the top trigger close to the one that it rests on at the bottom. In this way you have a trap that will be very easy to touch off.