Any fox that puts his head in the loop is sure to stay there. In the bush, I take advantage of all shanty roads, and I use spring poles when I find a suitable tree. I just trim the head and use a wire snare so that the squirrels, etc., will not bother it.
I set traps at the baits and in the middle of the fields in the same way as poison, with bits of liver around it, and I cover the trap with a light coat of snow with the same little shovel, and under the pan I place some cotton wool with a few drops of scent, and should, while the fox is picking up the pieces of liver, not step on the trap, he is sure to scratch for the mouse under the pan, and the trap will mouse him.
CHAPTER XII.
MY FIRST FOX.
I presume that almost every boy trapper in North America has an ardent wish to trap one of these cunning sharp witted animals, and I remember I thought when a boy if I could only catch a fox in a trap my reputation as a trapper would be made, says F. W. Howard, of Wisconsin.
Boys, you must not be discouraged if, after following the methods you hear, you fail to take a fox, for probably most of you have only traps enough to make one set; any of us older trappers I think will admit that it is rather a difficult feat to make one set and take a fox in a reasonably short time. Most of the trappers who use these sets have likely from a dozen to fifty traps out for fox at one time.
I have sometimes taken foxes in traps set for skunk, coon and mink, so that one may say that with a large number of traps out, even though not set with the care and precautions usually taken to catch a fox, the large number of chances open enable one to take here and there a blundering and unwary fellow. I trapped my first fox when about twelve years old, by following a method given me by my grandfather, who was, in his day, a famous New England fox hunter. He was a very old man at that time, but when I expressed to him my heart's desire, asking him how and where to set the trap (I had but one suitable for fox) he told me to get my father to let me take the oxen and plow, to make a couple of furrows in our back pasture. Following his instructions I boiled the trap in weak lye and then daubed it over with fresh cow manure. The back pasture spoken of was a place where foxes traveled, and I presume that there was no week in the year that at least two or three foxes did not cross there.