CAUGHT WHERE SCENT IS MUCH USED.
In winter and spring I prefer decoy, although I have caught a good many foxes without it. During winter and spring, the main thing is to know just how and where to set the trap. The best way to find this out is to study the animal you wish to catch, then go after him. A fox is almost as easy to catch as a skunk if you conceal your trap, chain and all, and leave things as you found them around the trap.
It is well to buy some good methods, for they will give you a good idea of your work and help you get a start. Should you try them and fail the first time, try again. Keep right at trying and after a while you will get to catching foxes. There is no man that can use another man's methods as well as the discovered himself; at least, not until he learns them and finds out how to use them. I care not how plainly the one selling his method explains it to others, it takes practice before the best catches can be made.
About scents, some may be good, but most of them are worthless. I sent to an old trapper for mink scent and it came in a plain tin can, I used it in every way I could and mink would turn and go around it, so I stopped using it and took to the old Scotch scent. Here is the recipe for making it:
Take two dozen minnows three inches long, put in two quart cans filled with water and seal. Let stand one month in warm place, then put on bait for mink or skunk. I use no scent for mink in water sets.
If a mink is hungry, writes an Iowa trapper, and finds bait that has been left for him, he will pay no attention to human scent, while if he is not hungry, he will not take the bait, be it ever so fresh. A mink will sometimes make a trail in the fresh snow by passing several times over the same route and then never use that trail again. I have also known otter to do the same. I caught two mink last winter, in a ditch, setting my trap in the water. The first night I caught a medium-sized mink and the third night I caught a small one. I believe that I would have caught every mink that went up that ditch if it had not froze up, and snowed so much during the time, that I could not keep my traps properly set. If a person sets out a line of traps in this country while there is snow on the ground, he is simply going to a great deal of trouble to give them to some thief.
In trapping mink I watch for signs and when I locate a mink I consider it mine and it generally is. If you bait a trap where you may think it is a good place to catch a mink, it often happens that you may make a good many trips to your trap and not succeed. You may say to yourself that it is human scent that keeps them away, when perhaps there has not been a mink near your trap. My advice to young trappers is not to set your traps where a mink may go, but set it where you know he is going, and you will find it no trick to catch mink.