The favorite haunts are along marshy shores of lakes, rivers, creeks and other swampy places, and where muskrats are plenty there you are almost sure to find mink. When hunting for mink the best place to find them is in old muskrat holes near the point or end of an island, and the next best place is under bridges where the approaches have been filled in with stones or logs; there are other places not so good, such as stone piles, heaps of fence rails, hollow logs, under large stumps, and have even found them under snow banks where I knew there were no holes at all.
The principal food of the mink is fish, birds and their eggs, frogs, mice and small snails, and have had them partly eat muskrat while in my traps. I do not know whether he can kill a muskrat or not, never having seen him do it. No doubt there are many other things upon which he feeds of which I do not know, but these are the principal ones.
The mink is an animal of peculiar habits, sometimes remaining near his burrow for weeks at a time, and then suddenly disappearing and not returning for as much as seven or eight days, and all this time he is roving around in search of food, running all night and lodging in the best hole he can find when daybreak comes, and can often be seen in early morning or in evening at dusk.
LOOKING FOR FOOD.
The mink is not so hard to trap if you know his habits; when you find he has left his burrow do not take up your trap, for he will surely be back in a few days; when you come to a place where a mink has laid up for the day (that is, in a temporary burrow), do not trap on the route he has already traveled, for when he comes out he will go straight on just as if he had just looked in and come out, but set traps and bait; when he comes out he will be hungry and is sure to be your mink.