After a few more visits and the trap down, bait invariably eaten, I made the pen smaller. The next round I brought a No. 1 Newhouse steel trap intending to set it if the deadfall was down without making a catch. Sure enough it was.
For some trips I had been suspecting that the "bait getter" was a small mink. I baited and reset the deadfall as usual. Next a small place was excavated inside the pen and near the bait, on the deadfall spindle, the trap placed and carefully covered.
STONE DEADFALLS.
The next morning I found everything as I had left it the day before, but the second round I saw that the "fall" was down before I got near and on closer approach saw a mink, a very small one, in the steel trap.
The mink was small and went inside the pen for the bait. In constructing deadfalls for mink care must be taken to have the pen built tight but not too large.
It is best to build deadfalls in advance of the active trapping season so that the animals may become accustomed to them, and the trap weather beaten. Chopping and pounding might tend to drive animals away. In August, September and October is a good time to build, for if in new territory signs, if any, should be readily seen.
While it is best to construct deadfalls in advance of trapping season, yet the writer has built deadfalls late in November, set and baited and found mink in them the next morning. If rightly built ten or a dozen is all a man can make in a day, and like setting steel traps, a dozen carefully set for mink are worth a hundred set at haphazzard.
Mink are great travelers, so that it is needless to set deadfalls close together. One about every mile is enough unless there should be many dens and rocky bluffs along the streams, then they could to advantage be built closer, for other game is liable to be caught. In this case they should be made a little heavier, as you may catch opossum, skunk and coon.