While I feel that the Stop Thief will never begin to equal any steel jaw trap, I think there are times when it may be used to advantage, and I expect to try mine again the coming season and expect to do better with them than last season.
CHAPTER XII.
WIDE SPREADING JAWS.
Occasionally I see in H-T-T, trappers advocating a large spreading trap, writes an experienced Canadian trapper, and some even go so far as to invite the trap manufacturers to make still wider ones than are now on the market. My experience in trapping, which was varied and extended over a number of years, is that it's a mistake to have a trap that catches the animals too high up.
The best and most enduring hold a trap can have on an animal is the paw or just above where it joins the bottom of the leg. I have found this with beaver, foxes, marten, lynx, bear, and in fact all animals I have caught. Just above and the paw itself is a mass of sinews and muscle enveloped with a stronger skin than any part of the leg, and therefore must give more resistance. I have found a fox that was caught in a No. 2 Newhouse after three nights' struggle as secure as if newly seized. The jaws having closed securely across the thick part of the forepaw.
TRAPPER'S CABIN AND PACK HORSES.
Again from a shortness of a proper sized trap I once set a No. 4, for a fox. The fox was caught between midnight and daylight, and when I visited the trap at the latter limit (six o'clock), it was high time, for another half hour of struggling and the fox would have been clear and away. The jaws had caught him half way up the foreleg and snapped the bone like a pipe shank. With his twisting and leaping there only remained a strip of skin and one tendon that kept him prisoner.