CHAPTER XXIII.
HUMAN SCENT AND SIGN.
There is a great deal said just now about the human scent theory, writes an Illinois trapper. Some claim that you can catch no animal if there is any human scent around, and they hardly take time to set their traps properly for fear of leaving scent. I always considered that the most important thing in setting traps was to cover them properly, and to disturb things as little as possible.
When your traps are set everything should be as natural as before. By that I mean that when you are trapping for the shrewdest game, such as fox, mink, otter, wolves, etc. For other animals such as skunk and muskrat, you need not use such caution, for they will blunder into a trap no matter how carelessly it is set. Still it is always best to cover your signs properly for you can never know what animal may come along. If your traps are carefully covered you are as liable to get a valuable pelt as a low priced one. Use care in setting; study well the nature and habits of the game you are trapping, and you will be successful. Never begin trapping until the fur is prime for one prime skin is worth more than five or six poor ones.
A FEW DAYS' CATCH.
Among trappers there is a variety of opinion as to the different kind of baits to use, and also as to the different ways to avoid the smell of iron or steel traps. Some boil their traps in willow bark; others dip their traps in melted tallow or beeswax.
I have had a fox get into my snowshoe tracks and follow a long ways because it was better traveling. Now that shows he was not afraid of human scent writes a Vermont trapper. Now about iron. How often does a fox go through a wire fence or go near an old sugar house where there are iron grates. That shows he is not afraid of scent of iron.
Once there was an old trapper here, and the young men wanted him to show them how to set a fox trap, and he told them he would, so he got them out to show them how, and this is what he told them. "Remove all suspicion and lay a great temptation." Well there it is. Now in order to remove all suspicion you must remove all things that are not natural. A man's tracks, and where he has been digging around with a spade or with his hands are not natural around a spring, are they? No. Well then, there is where the human scent question comes in. By instinct he is shown that man is his enemy, and when a man has pawed the bait over he uses his sense and knows that danger is there, for it is not natural.