A curious thing once happened to a Dog-rib Indian at Great Slave Lake. One day he found a wolf caught in one of his traps and foolishly allowed his hunting-dog to rush at it. The wolf leaped about so furiously that it broke the trap chain, and ran out upon the lake, too far for the hunter's gun. In pursuit of the wolf, the dog drew too near and was seized and overpowered by the wolf. In order to save his dog the hunter rushed out upon the lake; and when within fair range, dropped upon one knee and fired. Unluckily, the ball struck the trap, smashed it, and set the wolf free; and all the hunter got for his pains was a dead dog and a broken trap—while the wolf went scot free.

The Chipewyan and Slave Indians set their traps inside a lodge made of eight or ten poles, seven or eight feet in length, placed together lodge fashion and banked round with a wall of brush to prevent the fox entering except by the doorway. The trap is set in the usual way, just outside the entrance, the chain being fastened to one of the door poles. Instead, however, of being placed on the snow around the trap, the mixed bait is put on a bit of rabbit skin fastened in the centre of the lodge; the idea being that the fox will step on the trap when he endeavours to enter. The Louchieux Indian sets his trap the foregoing way, but in addition he sets a snare in the doorway of the lodge, not so much to catch and hold the fox, as to check him from leaping in without treading on the trap.

Oo-koo-hoo told me that whenever a trap set in the usual way had failed to catch a fox, he then tried to take advantage of the cautious and suspicious nature of the animal by casting about on the snow little bits of iron, and re-setting and covering his trap on the crest of some little mound close at hand without any bait whatever. The fox, returning to the spot where he had scented and seen the bait before, would now scent the iron, and becoming puzzled over the mystery would try to solve it by going to the top of the mound to sit down and think it over; and thus he would be caught.

Another way to try for a fox that has been nipped in a trap and yet has got away is to take into account the strange fact that the animal will surely come back to investigate the source of the trouble. The hunter re-sets the trap in its old position and in the usual way; then, a short distance off, he builds a little brush tepee, something like a lynx-lodge, which has a base of about four feet, and by means of a snare fastened to a tossing-pole, he hangs a rabbit with its hind feet about six inches above the snow. A mixed-bait stick is placed a little farther back, in order to attract the fox, while another trap is set just below the rabbit. The idea of re-setting the first trap in the old position is to put the fox off his guard when he approaches the dead rabbit hanging in the snare. As, no doubt, he has seen a rabbit hang many times before, and snares so baited he has often robbed. The Indian in his extreme care to avoid communicating man-smell to the rabbit will even remain to leeward of it while he handles it, lest man-scent should blow against the rabbit and adhere to the fur. If that happened, the fox would be so suspicious that he would not go near the rabbit.

But to illustrate how stupid the white fox of the Arctic coast is in comparison with the coloured fox of the forest, the following story is worth repeating. It happened near Fort Churchill on the northwest coast of Hudson Bay. The trader at the post had given a certain Eskimo a spoon-bait, or spoon-hook, the first he had ever seen; and as he thought it a very wonderful thing, he always carried it about with him. The next fall, while going along the coast, he saw a pack of white foxes approaching, and having with him neither a trap nor a gun, he thought of his spoon-hook. Tearing a rag off his shirt, he rubbed on it some porpoise oil which he was carrying in a bladder, fastened the rag about the hook, laid it on a log directly in the path of the approaching foxes, and, going to the end of the line, lay down out of sight to watch what would happen. When the foxes drew near, one of them seized the bait, and the Eskimo, jerking the line, caught the fox by the tongue. In that way the native caught six foxes before he returned to the post; but then, as everyone in the Far North knows, white foxes are proverbially stupid creatures.

The more expert the hunter, the more pride he takes in his work. Before leaving a trap, he will examine its surroundings carefully and decide from which angle he wishes the animal to approach; then by arranging cut brush in a natural way in the snow he will block all other approaches, and thus compel the unsuspecting fox to carry out his wishes.

When a fox springs a trap without being caught, he rarely pauses to eat the bait, but leaps away in fright. The hunter, however, knowing that the fox will soon return, not only leaves the trap as the fox left it, but sets another trap, or even two more, without bait, close to the first, where he thinks the fox will tread when he makes his second visit. If that fails, he will trace the fox's trail to where it passes between thick brush and there he will set a trap in the usual way, but without bait, right in the fox's track. Then he will cut brush and shore up the natural bushes in such a way that, no other opening being left, the fox must return by his own track, and run the chance of being caught. Should that method also fail, the hunter will set another trap in the trail close to the first, in the hope that if one trap does not catch the fox, the next will.

Another device is to break a bit of glass into tiny slivers which the hunter mixes with grease and forms into little tablets that he leaves on the snow. If the fox scents them, the chances are that he will swallow each tablet at a single gulp. Presently he will feel a pain in his stomach. At first this will cause him to leap about, but as his sufferings will only increase, he will lie down for an hour or so. When he finally rises to move away, he will feel the pain again. Once more he will lie down, and the chances are that he will remain there until found either dead or alive by the hunter.

FASHIONABLE FOOLS

If my readers, especially my women readers, should feel regret at the great suffering resulting from fur-hunting, they should recall to mind its chief contributory cause—those devotees of fashionable civilization who mince around during the sweltering days of July and August in furs. The mere thought of them once so filled with wrath a former acting Prime Minister of Canada—Sir George Foster—that he lost his usual flow of suave and classic oratory, and rearing up, roared out in the House of Parliament: "Such women get my goat!"