My first venture at leaving them in the bush says a Northern trapper was in this way. I began at the furthest end of my line and gathered them till I had twenty. These I tied securely together with a piece of twisted bale wire through the rings. I then stepped off the main line to a clump of evergreens and bending a sapling down bow fashion, secured the bunch to the top and let the tree fly back to its place.
Regaining the main line I took a memorandum in my note book as to the cache something like the following: Cache No. 1 — "Bunch of twenty No. 1 traps, left opposite rotten stump on left hand side of road in thicket of evergreens, about thirty paces away," and so on with each deposit always mentioning some land mark as a guide to my finding them the next autumn.
Well, this mode was not a success. It was alright as far as the safety of the traps were concerned, but I found them in a frightful state of rust from the action of the rain and atmosphere, and it took an hour of my time at each "cache" to rub them into a semblance of cleanliness. Moreover, there was a remote possibility of a bush fire running over that territory, which, while it might not consume the traps, the action of the flames would have drawn the temper from the springs to a degree that would have made them useless.
The accidental leaving of an otter trap set all summer led me to "caching" my traps under water, that is those that I could conveniently carry to a lake or river. This otter trap when I came to it the following fall was covered with a light fluffy rust the color of yellow ochre. It stained my hands like paint, but was readily washed off. I held the chain in my hand and by sousing the trap up and down several times in the water, was surprised to see the metal come as clear as when first the trap left the shop.
I therefore, ever afterwards hid those traps that were near a lake or river in the water. There were traps, however, which were too far from water to be easily transported and as the tree tops were voted bad, I set to considering other modes of storing them. The atmosphere being too corroding I decided to bury them underground. The result was that the next autumn I found those that were in clay or heavy Soil came out rusty, while those in sandy soil were very little acted upon, but the best conditioned were those hidden under rotten leaves or vegetable matter, so ever afterwards I kept my traps either in the water or hidden under the last conditions.
When leaving a bunch in the water I simply tied the bunch together, went a little to one side of the direct canoe route and dropped them overboard in about three or four feet of water, being careful to have some noticeable object ashore in direct line.
When next required I merely lashed a large cod hook to a short pole, fished them up, took them aboard my canoe and washed the bunch clean at a portage. In any case I do not think it is adding to the luck of a trap to have them greased and hung up in or about the house. The smell imparted to them is worse than the odor of clean iron. If I found a trap slow in snapping I usually rubbed a little odorless polish into the joints of the jaws and carried a rabbit's foot to use as a brush.