ODORLESS AND WHITE AS SNOW.
When you get ready to set your traps go out in a large field where foxes are traveling, make a good path across the field by traveling back and forth. Where you want to make a set leave a little partition across the path to guide the fox in the trap, which is covered with white paper and a little snow. Be careful in setting and not leave tracks outside of the path nor lay any sticks across. When going to your traps walk in the path, which makes it better, and don't let too much snow get over them. Be careful and you will get your fox.
Do foxes eat skunk? I might say in answer to this question they do, and they will kill skunk if found outside of their dens. And if a fox is run in a den where there is a skunk, their odor is most always sure to prove fatal to a fox in a very short time. Several instances of this kind have happened in this locality where I am hunting and trapping.
Foxes are very fond of skunk for food, and the musk makes a good scent for trapping foxes. A good scent for cold weather, for it never freezes. No doubt a good trapper will say, give me fresh bait. I might say give me a strong smelling bait, for when the fox is smelling a strong bait or scent he cannot smell anything else at the same time.
Now for instance, if you were going out for a fox hunt, and your hound got scented by skunk, it would spoil his scenting anything, and he could not follow the trail. Several experiences have led me to think this is one reason why we make a better catch on a damp or rainy night. The bait smells so much stronger that it takes up more of the game's sense of smell and makes our chance of a catch better. The old trapper will oftimes make this remark, "Boys, I am going to make a big catch tonight--why, because it is going to be a damp and rainy night." Who knows why?
I trap foxes by land and water set. I sometimes use a set called the all around land set. Every locality calls for its own method. I use two kinds of traps, Blake & Lamb and Newhouse. They are both all right. My trapping grounds are near the mountains where the foxes defy fox hounds, for they have dens in the rocks.
The Hunter-Trader-Trapper, Columbus, Ohio, is in touch with fox trappers, hunters and owners of hounds from all parts of America, so that interesting articles are constantly being received and published.