The young trapper's first essay for the mink should be with some sort of water set--dry sets requiring much greater skill and caution--and of the many methods employed the following is perhaps the most effective for one so simply contrived. Having chosen a suitable location for your trap, preferably some good sized pool with the water still and not too deep at the edge, and the bank rising so abruptly that the set will not easily be over-flowed; gather up a few dead sticks 1 1/2 inch thick and break into stakes about 15 inches long. Drive these firmly into the ground to form a three-sided pen four inches wide by eight inches long, the open side at the water's edge.
Hollow out a little place for the trap and place with the spring in line with the entrance, as the animal's foot will then be less likely to be thrown out by the jaws closing; press the chain down into the mud out of sight; fix the ring pole, running it well out into deep water; put the bait (fish, bird or squirrel) in the pen, pinning securely with a dead stick, lay a few sticks over top of pen, and cover trap carefully with rotten leaves fished up from the bottom, dropping on a few pinches of mud, and sticking a row of short twigs on the outer side to keep them from spreading or floating away. Then if the water falls the trap will remain nicely covered.
You now have things pretty well in shape, unless you apprehend trouble from trap thieves. In such case you cannot conceal your set too carefully, for a theft may not mean merely the loss of a trap, but possibly a valuable pelt as well. An excellent mode of concealment is to cut several fir, pine or hemlock shrubs and stick them up, as if growing about the pen, which is most likely to attract the eye. Also throw a scraggily top of some kind into the water over the ring-pole to hide the catch after drowning. Lastly, rearrange as naturally as possible the leaves and dead stuff disturbed in your work, see that nothing has fallen on the trap, spatter a little water about and your set is complete.
Another good way is to drop two traps side by side in shallow water, surround each by a little circle of rocks and hang the bait by a thread about 12 inches above them. In trying to reach the bait Mr. Mink runs a good chance of blundering into one of the traps.
Better yet, get a shallow box having a weatherworn appearance, bore half inch holes in the sides, and sink in the brook so that the water coming in through the holes will cover the bottom to a depth of three inches. Drape the sides with moss and weeds, put in some live trout and two or three traps along with them, and for those mink that are so particular as to want to take their food alive, you have a set that insures them a warm reception.
Yet another method is to find an over-hanging bank with a narrow strip of beach between it and the water. Beginning at the water, drive stakes at an acute angle out to the bank, both up and down the stream. At the apex of the V shaped fence thus formed place trap under water. No bait is needed.
I was speaking of water sets. One more and I will pass on to the land set, for though an almost endless variety of the former could be given those presented, with such modifications as will suggest themselves under varying conditions, will serve as a very good elementary education for the young trapper. The following was given me by an old trapper: We were riding together near a brook when he said, "I set a trap here three years ago, which I have never had an opportunity to visit, but I will wager you there is a mink in it if it is to be found." Whereupon he left me for a few minutes, returning triumphantly with the trap and the skeleton of a mink's foot in the jaws.
His way was to go along to shallow rifles, pin a piece of meat to the bottom, place the trap a few inches below it, and a little above drive a short line of stakes at right angles to the current to keep off drift. High water or low, cold weather or warm, you were sure, he asserted, of every mink that came up or down the stream. And my own experience has gone very far towards making this claim good.
Now, all of the foregoing sets are easily made, and may be used by the novice, after a little practice, with every probability of fair success, but when we leave the water for dry land greater difficulties will be encountered. There is a smell about iron which wild animals are quick to detect and recognize as an indication of danger. Water destroys this scent, but of course in the land set this advantage is lost.
Various directions are given for killing it by smoking or steeping, but I have found that if the trap be properly covered there is small need of spending time in this way. And right here let me say that in dry sets success hinges largely on the skill with which you cover your trap, especially if bait be used, and it is best to use bait until one has gained a pretty good idea of the habits of his game. The bait may be protected by a pen of stakes such as is described in my first water set, but placed a little back from the water in as dry a place as possible.