Chapter X: Northern Methods

As for sets, I think it all depends upon the country and seasons. For mink in my country, Ontario, I prefer a hollow tree turned up at the roots, setting a No. 1 trap, baited with either fish or muskrat. Such a set should be on the bank of a lake or river, as a hungry mink going along the shore is always running in such old roots and logs. As for water sets, they keep freezing up, and another thing, it is not natural for a piece of meat to be hanging on a string.

A Michigan trapper writes as follows: Now brother trappers, are you energetically putting in your leisure time during September and October looking up new grounds for hunting and trapping and finding signs and trails of coon, mink and fox, or are you lounging around and putting all this off till it is time to take out your line of traps?

September and October is the time to ascertain where the game is, and if you wish success and good sport and increased revenue, it is to your interest to do a little hustling and by watching their moves in your neighborhood. I have made mink trapping a specialty and for twenty-five years I have been successful in trapping him, and it did not take me long to appreciate one point, that is, I was up against a little animal of almost human intelligence, and today this animal is as smart and as shy as they ever were.

There are three rules very essential in trapping any kind of animals, one of the secrets of success is to know how, where and when to set a trap. Another is to get a dependable trap, which in my estimation is a Newhouse No. 1 and No. 2. I use these traps for every purpose from a weasel to a large coon. The third one I never vary from, and that is to set every trap as carefully as possible, as though it was intended to catch a shy mink or coon, as one of those animals will often happen around when one least expects it.

It is best to set a trap in good shape and always take time and conceal each trap carefully. I have before now set traps all around in wood and field for skunk. I have gone the rounds to my skunk traps and found a fine big coon or weasel instead of a skunk, or to my rat traps and found a large mink or raccoon instead of a rat, and these lucky surprises occurred because my traps were well set and concealed.

I will not outline my method how to set, but you may bet your old hat you will take Mr. Coon or Mink, or whatever animal happens along in your neighborhood, and you know where their trails are. From October until trapping time look for their signs and tracks along water edge, in woods, in old roads, cow paths in woods, pastures and fields, and under fences, keeping all these places in mind until the time for trapping comes. Then take with you lots of traps, then you know where to set.

Smoke your traps before setting, handle everything with gloves on, cultivate the habit of leaving the place with as little change as possible, and finish the job by brushing away your tracks immediately around the traps. Then visit your traps regularly and without any unnecessary company.

Trappers often notice that fur bearing animals have disappeared from the localities where once they were numerous. There are many reasons for this disappearance, the destruction of their dens or trees in which they live. No true trapper will cut a coon tree or dig out dens of mink, skunk or fox, if he wishes to ever trap on the same ground again.

Now I am not a professional trapper, says a Minnesota trapper, but I make all animal habits a very close study, and love to be among them in their wild homes and love to set a trap once in a while just for experience, and never fail to get my game.

The other day I went rabbit hunting. We have about two inches of fresh snow. I got one rabbit and found a fresh mink track so I concluded to follow him. Inside of a hundred yards I found another hole where he came out dragging something. I still followed. Another fifty yards further I found where he went in another hole (it was in a bog) and found a muskrat half eaten up and a fine place to set two traps.

I had no traps with me, so I marched home about four miles and got two traps all rusted up and tied with a piece of copper wire. I greased them up with sewing machine oil and started back. When I got to the place it was getting dark and I had to set the traps by match light.

I will tell you how I set the traps to fool the mink so he could not smell the traps or machine oil. I took the muskrat and rubbed all over the traps with the bloody side and set the traps one in each hole, and took an oak leaf and smeared blood on and laid it on the pan of each trap, and then laid the muskrat in the center of the two so he would have to cross either trap to get the rat. I then covered the hole up with the same dirt and moss that I dug out, and went home. At five o'clock the next morning I left home to get my prize.

I got there by daylight and there was Mr. Mink caught in both traps, one on each foot. He was the largest mink I got that winter. He was brown and when stretched measured exactly thirty-five inches from tip to tip.

I almost always trap mink in the winter with blind sets, says a Wisconsin trapper, by chopping a place for the trap so it will be, when set, about level with the surface of the mink's trail in front of the holes that the mink makes in the snow. I then take cat tails that grow in the marshes and spread some on trap bed; I then place my trap and next some more cat tails spread on top of trap, and last some snow which I spread over it all with a twig carefully so it will be nice and smooth. The cat tail I spread under the trap is to keep the trap from freezing fast at the bottom. I have had very good success with this set. I used to use bait altogether, but very few mink can now be caught around here with bait.

I once set a trap for a mink alongside of a log which lay across the stream, setting the trap on shore near the ice while standing on the log; there was about 20 inches of snow on the ground, so it left a space behind the trap in which I placed a piece of rabbit. The next morning I should have had a mink but instead of that the mink had that piece of rabbit, and a larger hole alongside the log showed that it had been dragged further back under the snow. I then set my trap again, tying fast another piece of rabbit, but Mr. Mink had enough rabbit for a while, so about five days afterwards I had a squirrel in it.

I then threw the rabbit away and put the squirrel in the snow along the side and above the trap, with only the tail out of the snow. About three days more and something had happened. The trap laid sprung in the place I had set it and in it was the tip of a squirrel's tail, and the squirrel I had laid for bait was gone. This might seem untrue but it is only too true, although just how it might have happened I cannot account for.

I then kicked up the snow and found that the mink had come from under the ice on the other side of the log and circled the end of the log, coming in behind the trap after the bait, all the way traveling under the snow. I have never gotten that mink, but have learned better ways since that time, and find that where mink are trapped much the blind set is by far the best.