CAUGHT BY A MISSOURI TRAPPER.
When you have decided upon the place for a trap, make all possible preparations at a distance; then go to the spot and do your work as quickly and cleanly as you can. If the ground is soft, use a strip of board to stand on. If you use gloves, have some especially for the purpose, and never leave them lying about your dog's quarters or the house. It will do no hurt to smear them lightly with whatever you are using for scent.
See that the trap rests evenly and firmly, so that if any part of it be stepped on it will not tip and pull apart the covering, or grate upon rocks or the chain. Make your excavation quite deep, filling in the bottom with some two inches of hemlock twigs or something of like nature, so as to prevent the gathering of moisture and a consequent freeze. Secure to a clog, or use a grapnel. The latter is in most cases preferable, as it may be buried from sight, while the former adds one more to the objects likely to arouse suspicion.
The covering is something that you will pretty much have to learn for yourself. Like swimming, no one can teach it by any amount of talking; practice is necessary to acquire the trick. Moss, leaves and rotten wood are the principal materials used, though pinches of herbage and dirt may be added to harmonize with set and surroundings. Leaves, however, should be used sparingly, as they change shape with every phase of weather, and thus frequently spoil what would otherwise have remained a good covering. If well rotted they give less trouble in this respect, and offer less resistance to the jaws in closing.
When using bait, if not setting in a bed, find a spot where little building is required to protect it--a hollow log or stump, the entrance to an old burrow, a niche in a ledge or hole under a rock. Sometimes, where a trout-stream flows under a step bluff, a little shelf is found in the face of the bluff (and one can usually be made if it is not already there); and by placing a trap on the shelf and the bait just above it, you have sly Mr. Fox at great disadvantage, as he must leap from the opposite side of the brook to the embankment to reach the bait. A projection in the face of a cliff, several feet from the ground, if it is inaccessible from overhead or either side may be similarly improved.
Always be on the lookout for such places as these, where those sharp eyes and that keen, pointed nose will be kept at a distance from your set until it is too late for them to detect signs of danger.
Old roads offer good possibilities for traps without bait. Unused plain roads, where the grass has sprung up may be practically covered by placing a trap in each wheel-rut and the central path. The space under a set of bars may be partly filled with brush and two or three traps placed side by side in the opening with good chances of success. We say two or three traps, as by so doing a larger opening may be left, which adds greatly to your chances. An attempt to coax this slippery fellow into narrow quarters quickly excites his suspicions.
Cow and sheep paths are much traveled by reynard, especially those leading around and through swamps. These are more easily trapped than roads, a good method being to first go along the path with your decoy scent, applying at intervals to objects close beside the path, and then setting traps, without bait, between the "doctored" points. An old pelt of some sort dragged behind you will serve to kill your own scent, and to keep the intended victim to the path.
As stated, an important element of successful fox trapping is to make as little disturbance, and to leave us little scent us possible, in working around, and going to and from trap. It follows then that one should not only aim so to fix his traps that they will require no actual attention under ordinary conditions of weather, except at considerable intervals, but should invariably locate them with a view to being able to look after them in a way not to arouse wily reynard's suspicions.