Where one stream empties into another is often a good place to construct a deadfall. If before selecting your places to build a few trips are taken along the streams it will be a great help. Where small streams empty into ponds or lakes or the outlets will be found ideal places for mink.
When deadfalls are built before the trapping season it is well to set them, having the top of the pen covered, just as though the trap was baited and ready for business.
Another thing that should be carefully looked after is triggers. Many cut triggers from green bushes. If this is done, hard wood such as oak, hickory, dogwood, sugar, beech, etc., is best. The upright trigger, which is only a straight piece of wood about a half inch thick, should be slightly rounded so that the spindle will slip off easier when the animal is at bait.
It is a good idea to prepare a lot of triggers in advance. For stone deadfalls the figure 4 must be used as the two piece will not work--going off entirely too hard.
Of course we all admit the steel trap is more convenient and up-to-date, says a New Hampshire trapper. You can make your sets faster and can change the steel trap from place to place. Of course the deadfall you cannot. But all this does not signify the deadfall is no good; they are good, and when mink trapping is consumed the deadfall is the trap you want. To the trapper who traps in the same locality every year, when his deadfalls are once built it is only a few minutes work to put them in shape, then he has got a trap for the season.
BOARD OR LOG TRAP.
I give a diagram of a deadfall (called here Log Trap) which, when properly made and baited, there is no such a mink catcher in the trap line that has yet been devised. This trap requires about twenty minutes time to make, and for tools a camp hatchet and a good, strong jack-knife, also a piece of strong string, which all trappers carry. This trap should be about fifteen inches wide with a pen built with sticks or pieces of boards driven in the ground. (See diagram.) The jaws of this trap consist of two pieces of board three inches wide and about three and a half feet long, resting edgeways one on the other, held firmly by four posts driven in the ground. The top board or drop should move easily up and down before weights are put on. The treadle should be set three inches inside, level with the top of bottom board. This is a round stick about three-fourths inch through resting against two pegs driven in the ground. (See diagram.) The lever should be the same size. Now put your stout string around top board, then set, pass lever through the string over the cross piece and latch it in front of the treadle, then put on weights and adjust to spring, heavy or light as desired. This trap should be set around old dams or log jams by the brook, baited with fish, muskrat, rabbit or chicken.