Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches

by Henri de Crignelle

Every small farmer or large proprietor, to protect his family and his cattle,—every shepherd, to protect himself and his flock, invokes to his aid the genius of strategy; and as the mind of man is a sponge full of expedients, from which once pressed by the hard fingers of necessity many an ingenious device is extracted, innumerable are the various seductive baits that in our plains and forests are placed in the way of the gluttonous appetite of the wolf; and I shall now describe the inventions that are more generally adopted.

The favourite trap employed in Le Morvan is the Traquenard. This is the most dangerous, and the strongest that is made, requiring two men to set it; it has springs of great power, which once touched, the jaws of the trap close with tremendous force. Each jaw, formed of a circle of iron, four or five feet in circumference, is furnished along its whole length with teeth shaped like those of a saw, but less sharp, which shut one within the other. To these redoubtable engines of destruction is attached an iron chain, six feet in length, and at the other end of it is a bar of iron with hooks; these hooks or grapnel, which catch at everything that comes in their way, impede the escape of the wolf when once seized, and prevent him from going any great distance from the spot where he has been caught. The trap should not be tied or fixed in any way, for then the wolf would probably in his first bound, his first frantic movement of terror, either break some part of it, or in his violent endeavours to escape, succeed, only leaving a leg behind him.

In placing the trap and chain, a little earth is taken away, so that both are on a level with the turf; after which, the jaws being opened, they are covered with leaves in as natural a manner as possible. Great care must be taken by the person who sets the trap that he does not touch it with his naked hand; this should invariably be done with a glove on, otherwise the wolf—always extremely difficult to catch by reason of his delicate sense of smell—would be awakened to his danger. The mode of taking the wolf by means of the Traquenard, is as follows:—A spot having been selected in the depths of the forest, and in a sombre pathway unfrequented by the beasts of prey, the trap is set about an hour before the sun goes down, and a dog, young pig, a sheep, or some other animal which has been dead a few days, is divided into five parts; one of the portions is suspended to the lower branch of the tree, under which the trap is set; and the other four, being each attached to a withe or the band of a faggot,—not rope, for in that the wolf detects the hand of man, and he hates the smell of the material,—are drawn by men along the ground in the direction of the four points of the compass. These men are mounted either on horseback, or on an ass, or they put on a pair of sabots and walk, each of them dragging after him, through the wood and along the unfrequented paths, his portion of the bait, stopping every now and then to let the soil over which it passes be as much as possible impregnated with the smell of the flesh on the verge of corruption.

The traineur should always walk as much as possible through those parts of the forest that are the clearest of underwood, for in these spots the wolf is least on his guard; and when he has thus traversed from 2,500 to 3,000 paces—the distance required in order to give the animal, (who will at first follow his track with caution and even suspicion,) time to regain his confidence—he stops, throws the bait over his shoulder, and walks home, leaving the result to chance, and the hunger of the savage game. When four or five other traps have been set for the same night, in a radius of three or four miles thus prepared, it rarely happens that some of these various lines—which intersect each other on every side and in every direction, taking in a considerable surface of ground—are not hit upon during the night by the roving wolves: and be sure that each wolf whose olfactories discern the scented line, and who at length arrives at the trap, is a wolf taken.

Well do I remember the fever of impatience with which I was seized, the first time I was present at the preparations for this sport, and the desire I had to know what would be the result of our machinations; so much so, indeed, that the arrangement being completed, I positively refused to return to the château;—climbing into a thick tree, distant about a hundred paces from the trap, I passed the whole night there on the watch, shivering in my jacket, sitting astride upon one branch, my feet on another, and Navarre at my side. Poor Navarre! he had in the beginning of the evening brought all his astronomical knowledge to bear upon me, with a view of proving that the night would be terribly unwholesome; that we should have a furious hurricane and be deluged with rain, blinded by the lightning, and terrified by the thunder; and that, in the way of eating and a cordial, the only thing he had in his game-bag was a sorry piece of black bread, hard enough to break the tooth of a boar. I had a stiff tustle with him before he gave in; but finding he could not damp the burning curiosity which devoured me, and that my ears were deaf to the somewhat rough music of his reasoning and his predictions, the worthy man at length closed the fountain of his eloquence, and, though growling and mumbling in an under tone at my juvenile obstinacy, which had deprived him of his bed and his supper, quietly took his seat in the tree; then drawing from the bottom of his pocket some tobacco and a short pipe—his consolation in his greatest misfortunes—he whiffed away, burying his irritated countenance in his breast by way of showing his vexation.

It seems to me but yesterday these eight hours passed in the forest in the silence of that starlight night, hid in the branches, and waiting for the wolves! We caught three, and nine galloped under the very oak in which we were seated. This midnight scene was exciting beyond description; and the worthy Navarre, notwithstanding his pipe, his fox-skin cap, and his goat-skin riding-coat, caught such a melancholy cold, that he did nothing but sneeze and hoop the whole of the next day, making more noise than all the dogs and cattle in the farm put together.

Wolf-hunting with traps has its dangers and its inconveniences, and the Traquenard must be used with great caution. Every morning it should be visited and shut; otherwise a man, a horse, a dog, or some other animal, may fall into it, and be taken. In order, therefore, as much as possible to prevent accidents, our peasants, farmers, and poachers, when using this kind of trap, always tie stones, or little pieces of dead wood, to the bushes and branches of the trees near the spot in which it is set; they likewise place the same kind of signal at the extremity of the pathway which leads to the trap, as a warning to those who may walk that way; and the peasants, who know what these signals dancing in the air with every puff of wind mean, turn aside, and take very good care how they proceed on their road.

In spite of all these precautions, however, very sad occurrences will sometimes happen in our forests. Some years ago a trap was placed in a deserted footway, and the usual precautions were taken of hanging stones and bits of wood in the approach to the path at either end. The same day, a young man of the neighbourhood, full of love and imprudence—upon the eve, in fact, of being entangled in the conjugal "I will"—anxious to present to his fiancée some turtle-doves and pigeons with rosy beaks, with whose whereabouts he was acquainted, left his home a little before sunset to surprise the birds on their nest; but he was late, the night closed in rapidly, and with the intention of shortening the road, instead of following the beaten one he took his way across the forest. Without in the least heeding the brambles and bushes which caught his legs, or the ditches and streams he was obliged to cross, he pressed on; and after a continued and sanguinary battle with the thorns, the stumps, the roots, and the long wild roses, came exactly on the path where the trap was set. The night was now nearly dark, and, in his agitation and hurry, thinking only of his doves and the loved one, he failed to observe that several little pieces of string were swinging to and fro in the breeze from the branches of a thicket near him. Dreadful indeed was it for him that he did not; for suddenly he felt a terrible shock, accompanied by most intense pain, the bones of his leg being apparently crushed to pieces—he was caught in the wolf-trap!

The first few moments of pain and suffering over, comprehending at once the danger of his position, he with great presence of mind collected all the strength he had, and by a determined effort endeavoured to open the serrated iron jaws which held him fast: but though despair is said to double the strength of a man, the trap refused to give up its prey; and as at the least movement the iron teeth buried themselves deeper and deeper with agonizing pain into his leg, and grated nearly on the bone, his sufferings became so intense that in a very few minutes he ceased from making any further attempts to release himself. Feeling this to be the case, he began to shout for help, but no one replied; and as the night drew in he was silent, fearing that his cries would attract the notice of some of the wolves that might be prowling in the neighbourhood, and resolved to wait patiently and with fortitude what fate willed—what he could not avert. He had under his coat a little hatchet, a weapon which the Morvinians constantly carry about with them, and thus in the event of his being attacked by the dreaded animals, he trusted to it to defend himself; but he was still not without hope that the wolves would not make their appearance.