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

by George Bird Grinnell

"Well," said Hugh, "I suppose that's habit, but it's necessary. You take a man that is careless, and that leaves sign about everywhere, and you'll find that he never catches any fur. I have been out with men of that kind, and they were always poor trappers."

As the two started on Jack looked at the sun and asked, "Do you know what time it is, Hugh?"

"About noon, I guess," said Hugh.

"I guess so, too," said Jack, "and just think, it's taken us a whole morning to set two traps."

"Yes," replied Hugh; "it has taken a long time, and we'll be lucky if we get two or three more set before it's time for us to turn back to camp, but in two or three days you'll find that things will run along a good deal smoother and we won't have to take quite so much time as we have to-day."

They went on up the stream, keeping well back from it, but occasionally, where there was an opening in the brush, riding out to the bank. A mile or two further on another dam was found with a pond smaller than the one below, and immediately above this the rise of the valley was sharper so that the stream was swift and shallow.

After they had left the horses and were prospecting along the bank for a place to set, Hugh pointed out to Jack a slide from the grassy bank down into the water, which he said had been made, not by the beaver, but by an otter. "Sometime," he said, "we may try to catch that fellow. We're not rigged for it to-day, and I guess we'd better stick to beaver." At a little point near the head of the pond on the east side Hugh set another trap just as he had set the two previous ones, and then going to the head of the pond they crossed over and set another on the west side. Here the main current ran close under the bank, and Hugh was obliged to build up a little bed of stones and gravel on which to rest his trap.

"You see, son," he said, "you must have your trap so near to the top of the water that when the beaver makes a kind of a dive with his foot to raise his head up close to the medicine on the bait-stick, he will strike the pan of the trap with a foot and so spring it. Sometimes, if the water is a little deeper over the trap than a man thinks is just right, and he hasn't any way of building up a firm bed for the trap to rest on, he will take a stick and thrust it into the bank, pointing out level into the water about two inches below the surface. The beaver, swimming along toward the medicine, will hit this stick and it will stop him, and then when he makes a strong effort with his foot to get over it he will sink his foot so deep under water as to hit the pan of the trap.

"There," he said, as he backed away from the last trap set. "Now let us walk up the stream for a little way, and then go out of it and around to the horses. I have always thought that if a man takes reasonable care in setting his traps, there is more danger that the beaver will notice where he's gone in and out of the stream than there is of their suspecting something about the trap. Of course, you've got to be careful always in setting, but I've always had an idea that when a beaver gets the scent of the medicine in his nose he becomes so intent on that that he doesn't notice other signs right about the trap."