Jack the Young Trapper: An Eastern Boy's Fur Hunting in the Rocky Mountains

by George Bird Grinnell

The next two traps yielded nothing; the fourth another mink; the last two on the main stream were empty, but the four set on the little side creek had each a mink.

They reset all of their traps and returning to camp began to skin the mink, which Hugh explained must not be skinned open, but must be cased.

"Oh, yes, Hugh, I know what you mean," said Jack. "You split them between the hind legs and then turn the skins inside out. You don't split them along the belly."

"That's right," said Hugh, "and then you've got to have stretchers to dry them on. Of course, what we ought to have is boards, but I guess we'll have to do with willow twigs. They don't make quite so nice looking a skin, but they'll serve our purpose, I guess. You may think, son," he went on, "that skinning mink is worse than skinning beaver. These little fellows can smell fearful bad if you're careless about skinning them and cut into these glands that lie near the tail. Be careful not to do that. If you do you won't get rid of the smell in a long time. Watch me skin this first one and then you can go ahead for yourself. You won't lose anything by watching me do it."

The sun had disappeared over the mountains before they had stripped the pelts off their mink, and it was dusk by the time they had eaten supper.

"Now," said Hugh, "we ought to have finished this job up before supper, but I wanted to cook by daylight. Suppose you go over to that bunch of willows there and cut me a dozen straight and pretty stiff willow shoots, then bring them back here."

Jack went over as directed, and in a little while returned with the shoots.

"It was pretty dark, Hugh," he said, "and I had to do it all by feeling. I don't know whether these are what you want." Hugh took the twigs in his hand and looked them over, and after discarding two or three said, "These are all right. Now let's strip the leaves and twigs off them and make them as smooth as we can. It is not necessary to take off the bark."

When the twigs had been stripped off, Hugh showed Jack how to gradually bend them so that the two ends of the bent twig came together in the shape of a very long and flattened O. He took one of the mink skins—all of which were, of course, wrong side out—and slipped the middle of the doubled twig into the opening in the skin, slowly pushing it down toward the animal's head. The opening of the mouth was too small for the doubled twig to pass through, and the spring of the bent twig kept the sides of the pelt pushed out and stretched. This operation was repeated with each of the skins, and to overcome any shrinking of the pelt, Hugh cut a number of short sticks which he forced between the two ends of each twig which projected from the skin where the hind legs of the mink had been.