To fasten the trap is some of the job. Cut a bush with a lot of limbs to it, and wire your trap to the middle of same securely, but do not have the brush drag so heavily that he cannot run off with it; it is intended for him to go immediately after he is caught, for these reasons, he will soon hang up some distance away, and thus fastened, he is not stationed at this good place where another may be caught, besides his chances of pulling out of the trap is less than it is if he was stapled to something he could not move. The brush is a give and take game, see?
Be sure to cover chain of trap good, and have everything look as natural when you leave us when you came to set trap. Use No. 2 Newhouse, handling it and everything with gloves; always stand In one place; leave no paper or whittlings on the premises. I use this method just outlined. Try it boys.
CHAPTER XIV.
MANY GOOD METHODS.
There is no animal roaming the woods so hard to catch in a steel trap as the fox, says a writer in the _Orange Judd Farmer_. Yet when one understands his nature he is easily taken despite his cunning. The following method I have employed successfully: First take four good steel traps and cover them with fresh blood at a slaughter house. Take a dead hen (one that has died a natural death will do if there is no odor), and run a wire up in her head and down in her body; also wires through her feet and legs. Select a place where foxes run near a low bush or small tree. On a branch of this, about three feet from the ground, fasten your hen solidly with the wires in her feet. By means of wire in her neck, bend it so she will look as if she were on a roost. Be very particular on this point. Set your trap a little below the surface of the soil, so that the tops are level. Now cover up with leaves and grass so that there is no difference in appearance from the surrounding ground. Be sure the chains are well staked. Mr. Fox comes up and sees the hen. He squats down on his stomach. He will lie there for five minutes watching the hen. Then he makes a spring for her neck, and gets it, but the traps get him and the boy gets the fox if he is cute enough.
Well here is how I caught my first fox, says C. F. Hotchkiss, of Wisconsin. It was in the winter of 1887 and 1888. I was working for a farmer here in Shawano Co., had to drive the stock to the river to water all winter. I noticed fox tracks on the ice so I bought a double spring Newhouse. Gave 60¢ for it, took some chaff from the hay in the cow stable for a bed and set the trap on the river bank under a large hemlock to protect it from storms, covered trap with chaff and strewed pieces of chicken and feathers on the bed. In four days I had two foxes, then some one stole my trap and I did not try any more then. Last winter I was working for the same farmer again. He lost two sheep. We drew the carcasses out in the woods, set four traps at one sheep and six at the other. In seven weeks we had 14 foxes and we lost no time from other work. We pulled wool from the sheep to cover the traps with. I do not think it best to spit near a fox trap, especially tobacco spit. There may be some foxes that do not care for it, but I know they are not all built that way.
One of my methods of trapping Reynard was as follows: First, thoroughly besmear the trap with droppings from cattle, using no other preparation, neither boiling or smoking, as some recommend to prevent their fear of human scent, then my favorite sets being in the path of some old timber or wood road or cattle path in some unusual pasture. After selecting the place best suited, according to my best judgment, take a knife to cut out a hole corresponding to size of trap, remove carefully all loose earth. I usually carried a small basket for the reception of everything taken up this way. Set the trap carefully, covering loosely with some coarse material and topping the whole with material to correspond with the surrounding surface of paths, and lastly laying a small twig across just at one side of where the trap is set, as a fox will always step over any small obstruction, and by placing the twig in this manner he would step over into the trap.