Part 4
The word “trap” in the title of this book is intended to be made use of in a somewhat wide and also narrow sense. Under it I shall include what would otherwise be called a snare--namely, the “springe,” or “springle.” On the other hand I shall make use of it in what may seem a rather restricted sense, inasmuch as that I do not intend to tell you how to catch birds by means of the “gin,” or steel trap. Mind you, there are some birds--such as the magpie and crow--which it is almost impossible to catch in any other manner. For them the deadly, pain-dealing “gin” is justifiable. For the use of boys, I do not, however, recommend it in bird-catching; it always maims if it does not kill outright, and thus, should any of you desire to stuff the bird you have captured, its injured plight is much against its appearance.
The springe, as many of you know, is a horse-hair loop fixed to some immovable object, such as the branch of a tree, etc. Mr. Montagu Brown, in his “Practical Taxidermy,” thus describes the making of it. “Here,” he says, “I have a black horsehair about two feet long; I double it, holding it between the right hand finger and thumb, leaving a little loose loop about half an inch long; from this point I proceed by an overhand motion of the thumb to twist it up. On reaching the bottom I make a small knot to prevent it unrolling, then pushing the knotted end through the eye of the loop, I thus form a loose noose. I then attach a piece of wire to the free end by a twisted loop (Fig. 7). With about half a dozen of these coiled in an oval tin box I am ready to snare any small bird whose haunt I may discover.”
This springe is varied in a variety of ways, but it is remarkably deadly for nearly all birds. The piece of wire is of course twisted round a branch or other fixed point, and the noose, for such it is, is so arranged that the bird pecks through it, and so gets “haltered.” I always make my springes of silkworm gut, used in fishing, as being stronger and practically invisible.
Ducks, moorhens, and dabchicks can be caught with nooses or springes made of a sufficient number of hairs or strands of gut, and suspended to a line fixed across the ditches and small streams they are known to frequent. A springe mounted as shown in Fig. 8 (A in 9) can also be fixed in the ground, with the noose hanging over the probable spot of emergence from the water of either of these birds. Their exact “run” can easily be determined by the freshness of the excrement. Snipes are to be taken by simply attaching the springe to a bullet and burying this in the soft oose or mud where snipe are known to feed or run. Plovers can be taken in a similar way.
On the Continent, according to Mr. Box, the following is the method of using the springe for the capture of thrushes and such birds. The springes being made, the snarer cuts as many twigs about eighteen inches in length as he intends hanging springes. There are two methods of hanging them--in one the twig is bent in the form of figure 6, the tail end running through a slit cut in the upper part of the twig. The other way is to sharpen a twig at both ends, and insert the points into a stem of underwood, thus forming a bow, of which the stem forms the string below the springe, and hanging from the lower part of the bow is placed a small branch with three or four berries of the mountain-ash; this is fixed to the bow by inserting the stalk into a slit in the wood.
The bird-catcher is provided with a basket, one compartment of which holds his twigs, bent or straight, another his berries; his springes being already attached to the twigs, he very rapidly drives his knife into a lateral branch, and fixes them, taking care that the springe hangs neatly in the middle of the bow, and that the lower part of the springe is about three fingers’ breadth from the bottom. By this arrangement the bird, alighting on the lower side of the bow, and bending his neck to reach the berries below, places his head in the noose, finding himself obstructed in his movements, attempts to fly away, but the treacherous noose tightens around his neck, and he is found by the sportsman hanging by the neck, a victim of misplaced confidence.
Another adaptation of the springe is shown at Fig. 9. It consists of a wand of hazel, willow, or any other suitable wood, which is set in the ground firmly. A short piece of string, hair, or gut connects it with a cross piece of wood, and to this string also several (two or more) horse-hair or gut springes are attached, set in precisely the same manner as shown in Fig. 8. A in Fig. 9 is a piece of wood which is so cut as to present an arm at right angles to the perpendicular. This piece of wood is driven in the ground and the wand bent over; the cross-piece is now placed to the edge of the arm of A, and there retained as “ticklishly” as possible.
On this fine setting everything depends. Now get some short grass and cover up the cross-piece at A, so that it cannot be seen, then arrange your hair springes on the surface, and strew some crumbs or grains of rice, wheat, etc. The bird will settle on the cross-piece or on A, and peck at the crumbs, etc., and then will be caught by the legs or head. I have had excellent results with this.
Another springle shown at Fig. 10 is a remarkably good one for moorhens, or, in fact, any bird having a run, for the description of which quote “Practical Trapping,” by Moorman (though, indeed, I believe he got his description from Doucie’s “Rural Sports”). “The wand, or spring-stick,” he says, “cross-piece and nooses as before, but instead of the simple crutch use a complete bow with both ends stuck in the ground. At some distance from this drive in a straight piece of stick; next procure a piece of stick with a complete fork or crutch at one end. To set it draw down the spring-stick and pull the cross-piece under the bow by the top side farthest from the spring-stick. Now hold it firmly with one hand while you place the forked stick with its crutch pressing against the opposite upright stick and bring its free end against the lower end of the cross-piece, and adjust as firmly as you can. Finally arrange the nooses in such a manner that if one of them or the crutched stick is touched the latter falls, and releasing the cross-piece the spring-stick flies up and the bird with it.” (A) indicates the cross-piece, (B) the forked stick, (C) the adjustment. (Fig. 10).
IX. BIRD-CATCHING WITH TRAPS, ETC.
Yet another of the springle traps which I have seen used with very great success for the capture of flesh-eating birds is shown in Fig. 11. A and B are two sapling oak or ash-trees, growing near each other. Two holes are bored in A with a large gimlet; at C, in B, a wire loop is attached, and the loop E is passed through the upper perforation, as shown. At D a piece of cord with a round knot in it is passed through after B is bent toward A. F is a piece of wood, the point of which is shaped like a blunt cone, and this is sustained on the knot in the position shown by the spring of B, being similar, in fact, to the tongue of a wooden mole-trap, shown in a previous number. On this piece of wood is tied a fresh lump of meat, or a pigeon’s egg may be blown and stuck on. Indeed, any bait may be used, providing it is not too heavy. The bird, of course, pecks strongly at it through the loop E, and is instantly caught, or if it attempts to alight, which is often the case, the noose catches it alive by the legs. My drawing is a rough one, but sufficiently explains what is meant.
I have thus given a brief sketch of what boys can do in bird-catching with no more expense than a few cents--if we except the net, and that need not cost much if one is disposed to make it. There are many other traps which are variously successful. There is, for example, the trap-cage, which contains on one side a decoy bird, and a very useful one it is, and easily procured from a bird-fancier. Then there is the old sieve and string and brick trap, about which no boy needs to be told. I have taken twenty and thirty wild fowl in a night by baiting with pieces of sheep’s lights or lungs a large eel-hook. Then again for kingfishers there is a round spring-trap, which catches them by the legs, and is cruel therefore. Herons may be taken on a baited hook--the bait-fish, of course. When all is said and done, however, for general bird-catching, where sport and not torture is the means here set forth are decidedly the most satisfactory.
First and foremost, however, if you would be successful, take this practical counsel to yourself. Study the natures and habits of the birds; the droppings and footprints will always indicate a favorite resort. Why, I took a dozen birds the other day with half a dozen of Figure 9 traps in less than four hours by simply setting and resetting in the right places, and then retiring out of sight.
And not merely out of sight, let me tell the tyro, but out of the range of the sense of smell. Never get to windward of any birds if you are intent on catching them. It is a curious fact amongst the lower animals, especially those brought under domestication, that they perceive and appreciate at its value against themselves the presence of man by smell as well as sight. Creatures of prey, from the hatred with which they are held, seem to possess this faculty in the highest degree. Were it not so, indeed, the struggle for existence with them would soon end, and many at least of the species--whether fish, flesh or fowl--would become extinct as the dodo.
The bird-lime itself is the next consideration under this heading. I do not advise any boy to make it himself, but if he nevertheless chooses to do so, here is a recipe which will produce a very good “lime.” Half a pint of Linseed-oil should be put into an iron pot and carefully boiled over the fire for four hours, or, in fact, till it thickens sufficiently, stirring it repeatedly the while with a stick. The oil is smooth when it boils. In order to ascertain when it is done take out the stick and immerse it in water, after which see if it sticks to the fingers. If it does, the oil is ready to be poured into cold water, and thereafter placed in little flat tin boxes--the most convenient receptacles, as they fit in the waistcoat pocket, and can be used as required.
Birdlime is also made from holly bark, but according to the directions given in the “Encyclopædia Britannica” the process is much too troublesome for boys, and as one can buy birdlime enough to stick a flock of rooks together for a few pence from a professional bird-catcher, life may be considered too short for that process at this time. As I am some distance from a town, much less a professional bird-catcher, I make mine as above, and find it little if any inferior to that I have been in the habit of buying.
During winter time, when frost and snow cover the earth, birdlime is very useful, for at that time the “clap” net is of very little use. A good plan then is to sweep a bare place anywhere near a plantation or wooded garden, or even in the farm-yards, and having anointed a few dozen wheat ears with the straw attached--or rather, having anointed the straw for about a foot nearest the ear--to spread them about in the patch. The birds will attempt to take the ears away, and will so get limed and drop to the ground. You must very quickly pick them up or you will lose some, as their struggles not infrequently release them, at least partially, and they flutter out of reach.
Sometimes it will be found that a few handfuls of oats, barley or wheat thrown down where the limed straws are will be of service when they do not seem to care for the wheat ears themselves. There is the probability of the little fellows coming in contact with the ears, and so getting limed. These methods are chiefly applicable, as I have said, to cold weather.
A different mode of procedure may be practiced when the weather is very hot. Cut, say, a hundred twigs of some smooth, thin wood, such as withy, and after liming, stick them down by the side of any rivulet of water near woody growths, and of course not near a large tract of water such as a lake or river. Cover over the stream with brush or fern, so that the birds can come only by where your limed twigs are placed. I have had remarkable sport in this way when the birds have been coming to drink during the forenoon and afternoon.
I tried an experiment for rooks with bird-lime some little time ago. We all know that in winter, during a thaw, rooks will frequent pastures in great numbers, especially if cattle be present. About fifty yards to the west of where I am now sitting is a long waterside pasture, and thousands of rooks could be seen digging right lustily. Rooks are too strong and wily to be limed in the usual way with bristles or twigs, so I made some paper cones--funnel-shaped, you know, like the grocers use for packing sugar--and anointed the inside with bird-lime, sticking also a few grains of wheat round the inner side. The result was ridiculous in the extreme. After scattering a few grains of corn about and placing about a dozen of these limed brown-paper funnels in a likely manner, I retired to a distance, and with my field-glass watched. A flock soon found out the scattered grain, and one after the other the cones were inspected, but for some time no one ventured to do more. Presently, however, after the loose grain was apparently all eaten, one of the wily birds had the temerity to poke his head inside a cone. The result was much to his evident surprise, for the cone stuck tight, and there he was tumbling and attempting to fly with a foolscap on which blindfolded him, and which stuck tight enough to allow me time to go up and release the poor fellow. I did not kill him, for old rook pie is by no means palatable. I tried this plan for a heron which continually frequented a little pond wherein my last year’s trout are kept, but did not succeed in capturing him, though he took both the cone and fish used for a bait away somehow. Anyhow it has most thoroughly frightened my gentleman, for I have not seen him since.
One fine morning some time since I had a delightful ramble with a quaint old character living hereabouts who gets his living by mole and bird catching. Old “Twiddle” he is familiarly called. One faculty he has, and that is a natural love for nature’s works and a gift of observation which has, perhaps almost unknown to himself, forced him into being a natural naturalist, if I may so use the expression. He can tell any bird on the wing by its flight, he knows all the fancies--some of them old, imagined fancies--of bees, each fly as it flits from the water’s edge has a name, though far from being that given it by science. No matter for that; a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and old Twiddle can tell something of its life-history. Well, Twiddle and I started on our ramble, and this was how he was equipped. A cage containing a beautiful little cock gold-finch duly and comfortably furnished with food and water, and protected from the sharp though clear air of the bright November day by means of an old silk handkerchief. Some dozen or two of prepared bristles, a small box of birdlime, and a “dummy” or stuffed gold-finch set up on a branch of wood with one end sharpened so that the latter could be stuck in the ground and then the bird retained in any position deemed desirable. The bristles were of the best shoemaker’s kind, and, were arranged in bunches of three on a stout carpet-needle.
By the by I have improved on these by substituting a fish-hook straightened (see Fig. 6). To do this take an ordinary eel-hook and make it red-hot in the gas or candle flame, holding it the while by means of a pair of pliers. It can be readily straightened after this, whether hot or cold, as the heating softens the wire. The utility of the barb lies in the fact that the bird cannot by any chance fly away with the bristle or lose it for you in its struggles, because of the barb’s holding power when thrust into the branch of a tree, etc.
But to return. Chatting about this and that we journeyed along till after old Twiddle had craned his neck over a ledge to regard the other side of a field he announced our walk for the present ended. On creeping through a hole in the hedge this field turned out to be a piece of evidently waste water meadow, so-called because the crops are, as it were, manured with water from the neighboring river, and a perfect little forest of thistles with their downy heads swaying in the breeze indicated the probable presence of the goldfinch. Some thorn-trees grew in a row down the center of the field, and hither and thither the sparrows flitted amongst their branches busily chattering the news of sparrowdom. But I saw no finches. “Twiddle,” said I, “where are the goldfinches?” “Ye’ll see where they be, sir, presently,” he answered, setting down the caged bird near the largest of the thorns. “Now, Billy,” he added, speaking to the bird, “crow away,” and with that he removed the handkerchief. Billy needed no second bidding, and his little throat quivered and trembled with the glad song which came thrilling forth.
Twiddle now placed the dummy bird just beneath a branch of the thorn close to the cage and so as to be easily seen, and all around it and round the cage the bristles carefully limed were stuck. All was now ready. We retired behind the hedge where we could see and not be seen.
Presently the singing was answered and we saw a gold-finch hopping about amongst the branches of the thorn. Suddenly it caught sight of the dummy bird and with a pleased swiftness flew towards it. In another second it had touched a limed bristle and was rolling over and over hopelessly liming its wings with every fresh bristle it touched.
Very carefully the little chap was dusted with a little fine earth to mitigate the stickiness and placed in another cage which the bird-catcher always carries for the wild birds. It is flat and long and well supplied with food and water; in the upper part of it is a hole sufficiently large to admit the hand, and to the two edges of this hole is tacked the leg of an old stocking, which falls inwards. Then the bird can easily be placed inside, but cannot escape, because the folds of the stocking fold together.
We caught five there and, as the market value of the birds was about twenty-five cents, Twiddle, it must be owned, had a very profitable morning’s work. Let me express a hope that my readers may be so successful.
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The Art of Stretching and Curing Skins.
The market value of skins are greatly affected by the care used in skinning and curing. We take the following from The Trapper’s Guide, the best known authority on these matters:
In drying skins it is important that they should be stretched tight like a strained drum head. This can be done after a fashion by simply nailing them flat on a wide board or a barn door. But this method, besides being impracticable on a large scale in the woods (where most skins have to be cured) is objectionable, because it exposes only one side of the pelt to the air. The stretchers that are generally approved and used by good trappers, are of three kinds, adapted to the skins of different classes of animals, and shall call them the board-stretcher, the bow-stretcher, and the hoop-stretcher, and will describe them, indicating the different animals to which each is adapted.
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THE BOARD-STRETCHER.--This contrivance is made in the following manner: Prepare a board of bass-wood or other light material, two feet three inches long, three inches and a half wide at one end, and two inches and an eighth at the other, and three-eighths of an inch thick. Chamfer it from the center to the sides almost to an edge. Round and chamfer the small end about an inch up on the sides. Split this board through the center with a knife or saw. Finally, prepare a wedge of the same length and thickness, one inch wide at the large end, and tapering to three-eighths of an inch at the small end, to be driven between the halves of the board. This is a stretcher suitable for a mink or a marten. Two larger sizes, with similar proportions, are required for the larger animals. The largest size, suitable for the full grown otter or wolf, should be five feet and a half long, seven inches wide at the large end when fully spread by the wedge, and six inches at the small end. An intermediate size is required for the fisher, raccoon, fox, and some other animals, the proportions of which can be easily figured out.
These stretchers require that the skin of the animal should not be ripped through the belly, but should be stripped off whole. This is done in the following manner: Commence with the knife at the hind feet, and slit down to the vent. Cut around the vent, and strip the skin from the bone of the tail with the help of the thumb nail or a split slick. Make no other slits in the skin, except in the case of the otter, whose tail requires to be split, spread, and tacked on to the board. Peel the skin from the body by drawing it over itself, leaving the fur side inward.
In this condition the skin should be drawn on to the split board, (with the back on one side and the belly on the other) to its utmost length, and fastened with tacks or by notches cut in the edge of the board, and then the wedge should be driven between the two halves. Finally, make all fast by a tack at the root of the tail, and another on the opposite side. The skin is then stretched to its utmost capacity, as a boot-leg is stretched by the shoe-maker’s “tree,” and it may be hung away in the proper place, by a hole in one end of the stretcher, and left to dry.
A modification of this kind of stretcher, often used in curing the skins of the muskrat and other small animals, is a simple board, without split or wedge, three-sixteenths of an inch thick, twenty inches long, six inches wide at the large end, and tapering to five and a half inches at six inches from the small end, chamfered and rounded as in the other cases. The animal should be skinned as before directed, and the skin drawn tightly on to the board and fastened with about four tacks. Sets of these boards, sufficient for a muskrat campaign, can easily be made and transported. They are very light and take up but little room in packing, thirty-two of them making but six inches in thickness.
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THE BOW STRETCHER.--The most common way of treating the muskrat is to cut off its feet with a hatchet, and rip with a knife from between the two teeth in the lower jaw, down the belly, about two inches below where the fore-legs come out. Then the skin is started by cutting around the lips, eyes, and ears, and is stripped over the body with the fur side inward. Finally a stick of birch, water-beech, ironwood, hickory, or elm, an inch in diameter at the butt, and three feet and a half long, is bent into the shape of an oxbow and shoved into the skin, which is drawn tight, and fastened by splitting down a sliver in the bow and drawing the skin of the lip into it.
This method is too common to be easily abolished, and is tolerable when circumstances make it necessary; but the former method of stretching by a tapering board, in the case of muskrats as well as other small animals, is much the best. Skins treated in that way keep their proper shape, and pack better than those stretched on bows, and in the long run boards are more economical than bows, as a set of them can be used many times, and will last several years, whereas bows are seldom used more than once, being generally broken in taking out.
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