Trapping is practically the only paying method of hunting him. When he goes upstream he leaves the water below rapids and travels along its edge usually until he again reaches quiet water. If a trap is placed in the intervening space—the trail of the animal will show the trapper the best point—every mink in that vicinity may be caught without the trouble of baiting traps, which is a rather uncertain method where game and fish are plentiful.
MINK]
THE ERMINE
ALL lovers of our feathered song-birds kill the weasel at every opportunity, believing it to be one of the deadliest enemies to bird-life; and if sportsmen bear in mind that every time it gets a chance the little marauder fastens its teeth in the neck of a grouse or a rabbit, they will undoubtedly show it no mercy. Considering, however, the number of injurious rodents it kills, it is doubtful if this "little marten" is, on the whole, more destructive than useful. Certainly it does no more harm than the absolutely useless squirrel. I leave it to others to argue whether it should be killed or spared. I do not spare it in ruffed grouse cover and near home, where I wish to give the birds absolute protection.
Its tracks and trail, with the exception of the walk, which the weasel does not use where it could be tracked, are exact miniatures of those of its large relative, the marten, and are, judging from personal observations, frequently mistaken for those of other animals even by sportsmen of long standing. One will mistake its trail for that of the deer, another for that of a coyote, fox or lynx, and still another, under favorable tracking conditions, will confound its track with that of the mink or ferret. In loose snow, when its trail is likely to be mistaken for that of any of those mentioned, it should be considered that the jumps of the ermine constantly vary in length, while the individual tracks made by the other named animals usually stand a regular distance apart.
If the tracker follows an ermine's tracks which he takes to be those of a mink, he should soon discover that the animal has entered every hole and crevice along the trail, and that, judging by the number of tracks around them, it found rock piles, logs, brush heaps, etc., very interesting and attractive. Now, marten or mink investigate these things simply by passing over or through them—if they do not stop inside—but they never make regular paths around them as the ermine does. Besides this, the ermine makes a track hardly one-third as large as that of a small marten.
