The Book of the Otter: A manual for sportsmen and naturalists

by Richard Clapham

Otters are playful beasts, a favourite game of theirs being sliding. They choose a steep clay bank, or a smooth snow slope, and toboggan down it on their stomachs with evident enjoyment. Although one seldom sees these slides in this country, they are very common in Canada where we have often come across them. During the cold weather of a Canadian winter, otters spend a good deal of their time beneath the ice, being able to breathe at the air-spaces round the shore. These air-spaces are left when the water lowers after the ice is formed.

Concerning the otter's feeding habits, there appears to be a good deal of misconception. Some people imagine that the otter exists entirely on fish, and for this reason should be done to death as a river-poacher at every opportunity. We have in the previous chapter compared the teeth of the otter and the seal, the latter animal swallowing its food whole, while the former masticates its food. Seals live upon fish, but it must be remembered that the otter belongs to the marten family, and, though well adapted to lead an aquatic existence, it still retains some of the marten's hunting instincts, and its teeth are suited to seizing and holding both furred and feathered prey. The pine marten, stoat, and weasel will all eat trout greedily when they can get it, so it is only natural that the otter, their relation, well equipped for swimming and water work, should show the same taste. As a matter of fact he does exhibit the same taste as his smaller relatives, and to a much greater degree, but he is also glad to vary his diet and add both flesh and fowl to the menu.

The uninitiated, whose knowledge of otters has been gained by visits to the Zoological Gardens, while realising the swimming ability of the animals, look upon them as clumsy beasts on land, and ill-adapted to lead an active existence on terra firma. In an article comparing the badger and the otter, it says, "The otter, on the other hand, though an expert swimmer, is on land nearly as clumsy as his cousin the badger." The author of the said article can have done little or no otter-hunting, for if he had, he would never have made such a foolish statement. Despite his webbed feet, the otter is built like the weasels, and exhibits a great deal of their activity and quickness on land. For this reason he is well able to cope with furred and feathered quarry.

Beginning the otter's menu with fish, we find he eats salmon, sea trout, trout, and coarse fish. On the west of Scotland and in the Hebrides, otters live a good deal on the coast, but in the autumn they follow the salmon up the streams. Where salmon are plentiful and easily secured, otters kill a fish, take it ashore, and eat a portion of the shoulder only. In the old days in the Highlands, when otters were more numerous than they are at present, the crofters used regularly to visit the otters' landing places, in order to gather the salmon left there. The marks on such fish were known as the "otter's bite." In that delightful book, "Wild Sports of the Highlands" by Charles St John, the author refers to the above practice as follows: "I was rather amused at an old woman living at Sluie, on the Findhorn, who, complaining of the hardness of the present times, when 'a puir body couldna' get a drop smuggled whisky, or shot a rae without his lordship's sportsman finding it out,' added to her list of grievances that even the otters were nearly all gone, 'puir beasties.' 'Well, but what good could the otters do you?' I asked her. 'Good, your honour? Why scarcely a morn came but they left a bonny grilse on the scarp down yonder, and the vennison was none the waur of the bit, the puir beasts eat themselves.' The people here call every eatable animal, fish, flesh, or fowl, venison, or as they pronounce it 'vennison.' For instance they tell you that the snipes are 'good vennison,' or that the trout are not good 'vennison' in the winter."

Although an otter is a capable swimmer, he cannot travel half as fast as a salmon under water. In low water a single otter can tire out or corner a salmon in a pool, but evidence leads us to believe that otters often work together, one driving the salmon about, while the other keeps watch on the shallows. On all rivers there are places where fish can be more or less cornered when the water is at normal level, and of course when it is very low in time of drought, salmon and other fish are practically pool-bound, and thus fall victims to otters and other predaceous creatures. It is pretty safe to say that an otter—like a pike, or a cannibal trout—will go for any fish which appears to be weak or in difficulty. A spinning lure—such as a spoon that wobbles instead of turning truly—is often far more attractive than one that spins "like a streak of silver."

In the Field of June 5th, 1920, there is an account of an otter attacking a hooked salmon. The writer of the account says, "While I was playing a salmon on the Teify on Friday, May 21st, an otter made two attempts to get at him, and very nearly succeeded once. This seems so unusual to me that it would be of great interest if others have had a similar experience. This incident took place about eight in the evening, and in a pool where there was only an opening of a few feet where one could gaff the fish owing to trees. The trees undoubtedly accounted for the otter failing to see me, but as soon as he raised his head above water in midstream and saw that there were others as well as himself after that fish he soon cleared off, and the fish was successfully landed. The wild rushes made by the salmon after the otter's first attempt were extraordinary, as the fish was about done and fit for gaffing. To me this was a clear proof of the instinctive fear and wonderful vitality in a fish when his natural enemy appeared."

Other instances of a similar nature have been recorded from time to time, in some of which the otter has succeeded in taking the hooked fish. There is no doubt that an otter or otters frighten fish, particularly salmon, when chasing them about a pool. The instinct of all wild animals is to attack a weakly or wounded creature, even if belonging to their own kind, and the otter which goes for a hooked salmon does so because he knows he stands a better chance of catching it than other fish in the same pool which are free and untrammelled.

The otter must, therefore, do considerable good by ridding the streams of weak and sickly fish. An otter deals with large sea trout as it does with salmon, but in the case of trout it frequently eats them entire, leaving nothing to waste. When devouring fish an otter eats like a cat, with half-closed eyes. In the case of coarse fish, the otter often discards the head and tail, and in the same way with an eel, the head may be left. Those who decry the otter as a fish-poacher should remember that the animal does not confine his attentions solely to one pool or to one species of diet during his nightly wanderings. He may fish and otherwise feed up-stream for some miles, taking a trout here, an eel there, and perhaps a young rabbit somewhere else.

We have already seen that the otter must do good by killing sickly or wounded salmon, and in the same way with trout, he captures many an old cannibal fish which is far better out of the water. These old trout not only prey on their own smaller relations, but are great devourers of fish spawn, and the same applies, only in a much greater degree, to eels, which are the worst vermin in or about a river or lake. Many coarse fish, too, are inimical to spawn and young fry, therefore the otter does far more good than harm by feeding on them. Eels and frogs, the latter being skinned by an otter, are the first quarry that the bitch otter teaches her cubs to hunt. These are sought for on land and in the wet ditches and shallow runners. Later, the cubs are initiated in the art of fishing.