I have experimented with scents for years and have found scents of no particular benefit for trapping the fox. I have tried the skunk and muskrat scent, the matrix of the female fox taken at the proper time. I have had a female fox and have lead her to my trapping place, and I have tried many so-called fox scents and all to no purpose. Fox urine may, in some particular places, be used to some slight advantage. It is not so with other animals in regard to scents, for they do not use the same acute instinct that the fox does.
I do not wish to insinuate upon those that do use scent, but for me, I would not give a cent for a barrel of so-called fox decoy. I boil my traps in soft maple bark, hemlock boughs or something of that nature. I do not do this because the fox can be any more readily got into the trap, but because it forms a glazing on the trap and thereby prevents them from rusting and the trap will then spring more readily. It makes no difference how rusty the trap is, so far as catching the fox is concerned.
No boys, no scent for me, the fox soon learns to associate the scent business with the man, then you are up against it. With me there is nothing mysterious about trapping. It is simply practical ways of setting the trap, learned from many years of experience.
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I have had fifty years experience as a hunter and trapper. I have netted wild pigeons in the Adirondack Mountains, in New York, to the Indian Territory, so you know that the articles in H-T-T are very interesting to me. I would say that no young trapper should be without this journal, although I would advise them not to take too readily to scents and decoys.
As to the discussions that have been in H-T-T, one writer says he has twenty ways to catch the fox; now I have just as many different ways as there are different conditions. I would say that no one can become a successful trapper until he learns to comply with the natural conditions, which will differ with almost every trap he sets when trapping fox, mink, etc.
I will tell my brother trappers what I have been doing this fall (1902) along the line of trapping. In August I took a trip through portions of Montana, Idaho and Washington, to look up a site to do a little trapping this winter. There is much more game here than in the East, but nothing like you hear talked of. I found the mountains too steep and the underbrush too thick and from what I could learn, I was afraid the weather was too cold for one of my age and condition of health, but, oh boys, what trout fishing I found in the Clearwater; this is a branch of Snake River and empties into that river at Lewiston, Idaho.
As I found things, I thought I would return to old Potter County, Pennsylvania, and have a little fun trapping the fox and skunk as that is about the only game there is in this section when we have no beechnuts, for that is the only mast we have here. We have no beechnuts this season and most of the fur bearing animals have migrated south of here where there are chestnuts, acorns and hickory nuts.
Brothers, I will tell you where my camp is, and you will always find the latch-string out. My camp stands at the very head of the Allegheny River, 1700 feet above sea level. From the cabin door you could throw a stone over the divide to where the water flows into the west branch of the Susquehanna. In a half hour a person can, from my camp, catch trout from the waters of the Allegheny, and the Susquehanna.
As we have no beechnuts we have no bears, so I have not set my bear traps. This will cut my sport considerably short. I have put out but about sixty small traps, so I spend my time about equally between camp and home.