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Updated: June 8, 2025
He and his big brother trapped together, and in turn followed the ten days' swing through the snow-laden forest which they had covered with their dead-falls and steel-jawed traps; but when the ice went out in the rivers, and the great pines dripped with the melting snows, they had nothing more to do but cut a few cords of wood for their widowed mother's cabin near the post.
The sizes of the traps will depend upon the game sought, No. 2-1/2 being a good average. With this supply, relying somewhat on dead-falls, twitch-ups, and the various other devices described in our early pages, we can guarantee lively sport, of course, presuming that good judgment has been used in the selection of a trapping ground.
A fine skin that Hector brought triumphantly in one day, the spoil from a fox that had been caught in one of his dead-falls, was in due time converted into a dashing cap, the brush remaining as an ornament to hang down on one shoulder. Catharine might have passed for a small Diana when she went out, with her fur dress and bow and arrows, to hunt with Hector and Louis.
For the first time in days the sun was shining in a cold blaze of fire over the southeastern edge of the barrens, which swept away in a limitless waste of snow-dune and rock and stunted scrub among which occasional Indian and half-breed trappers set their dead-falls and poison baits for the northern fox. Sixty miles to the west was Fort Smith.
All the game we could catch was the marten or sable, which the Indians called Waubusash. The males were snuff color and the female much darker. Mink were scarce, and the beaver, living in the river bank, could not be got at till the ice went out in the spring. We now began to make marten traps or dead-falls, and set them for this small game.
All day long thus they would tramp, forcing their way through the blackthorn thickets; clambering over and under the dead-falls and débris of the slashings; climbing the side hills with the straight, silvery shafts of the poplars; wandering down the narrow aisles of the old logging roads; plodding doggedly across the unproductive fields that lay between patches of cover; always lured on in the hope of more game farther on, picking up a bird here, a bird there, each an adventure in itself.
The black bear is often trapped and snared, in various ways such as by log-traps, nooses tied to bent saplings, dead-falls, and steel-traps and he is thus caught much more readily than either the lynx, the fox, or the wolf. It would be easy to fill a volume with anecdotes and adventures in which the black bear figures as the hero.
With them came a shingle weaver, with a pony and a small sled, and some Indians also. We now had to take up all of our steel traps, and rob all our dead-falls and quit business generally even then they got some of our traps before we could get them gathered in. We were now comparatively idle.
Dead-falls of large size will be found to work successfully, baiting with the body of some small animal, such as a rat or squirrel. A piece of cat, beaver or muskrat flesh is also excellent, and by slightly scenting with castoreum success will be made sure. Several of these traps may be set at intervals, and a trail made by dragging a piece of smoked beaver meat between them.
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