CHAPTER XXI.
THE PROPER BAIT.
While baiting traps is not necessary when trapping at dens, yet the trapper who baits his traps will catch more game than if the traps were not baited. To show where a baited trap has the advantage, we will suppose that an animal passes a den where a trap is set but not baited. It is just as a notion takes the animal--it may pay a visit to the den and go in, and again it may not. If a trap is baited the chances are that if the animal passes within a few feet, it will reach the bait.
Bait, whether bird, fish, chicken, beef offals or rabbit, should be fresh for most animals. When trapping at dens the bait should be stuck on a short stick, so as to keep it off the ground, and placed back in the den, beyond the trap some eighteen inches or two feet. Should the bait be gone morning after morning and the trap unsprung, your game is pretty sure to be still in the den and living off your bait. In this case it will be a good idea to change and place the bait on the outside. If the animal is getting the bait from within, you are pretty sure to make a catch within a few nights.
If trapping in the woods for coon or along streams, where they travel, a piece of bait nailed to a tree, some two feet from the ground, and a trap set directly under it is not a bad set. For mink, bait can be suspended from a branch, tied by a string, to within say two feet of the ground. To set a trap directly beneath the bait if properly done and near where these animals travel, is a good way to take them.
The methods used by some trappers of placing bait on the pan of the trap should never be employed. An animal in reaching for the bait will spring the trap with its nose, and unless the trap is a very large one, not get caught. The correct place to put bait is where an animal in reaching for it, will be apt to get one of its fore feet in the trap. The way to do this can be told by a little study before setting the trap. If the animal you are trapping is a small one the bait should not be placed so far beyond the trap as for a larger one.
Should you find the bait gone when visiting your traps, replace it at once and see that your trap is all right. In nine cases out of ten, the animal will be around again in a night or two for another meal. Persevere and you will get your game sooner or later. Seeing that your traps are kept properly baited is an important item; also, keeping bait as fresh as possible. After the bait has been at a trap for a week if it has not been molested, it is best to replace with something fresh. Do not throw the old bait away, either hang it up, out of reach of animals or carry it away from the den. If you have plenty of fresh bait, it will pay to replace oftener than once a week.
If you have a large quantity of fresh bait and have more than you can use to advantage, on your traps, it can be made use of, by cutting into small pieces and testing a number of dens. By this we mean putting a small piece of bait at dens you think are good or show some sign of game, but at which you have no traps. In a few days, visit these dens again and at all where the bait is gone, rebait and set a trap. This is a very good method and has helped many a trapper to increase his catch.
Most trappers do not take into consideration the keen scent of the animal they hope to victimize. To know how to set a trap properly is far from all in the line of success. To know your "critter" at every turn he may make and to entice him from his wonted way by means that challenges his cunning through his appetite and yet overcome that suspicion of place and the circumstances of immediate surroundings is the real acme of trappers' art.
To place a bait anywhere above the trap is well enough for an animal of less cunning than a fox. But to challenge that cunning in a fox, better way is to bury the bait. The proper way to go about it is to make a trail by dragging through the brush or thicket a hare, squirrel or bird, and at the proper distances along this blind trail, strew the feathers of some bird, or make a bed for your bait, no trap being set, until you "take the sign" of one of your varmints.
Notice well the approaches to your intended "set." To be sure of your game, you must notice the "run" of more than one animal at a given place but the buried bait must be adhered to thruout your whole line. A bait, to my experience is more attractive when it is out of sight but so placed that your critter must work to reach it, in common phrase "root hog, or die." By this means the cunning of your victim is cast aside in its endeavor. Much depends on the patience of the trapper and his real handiwork. Where a set of this kind is made or contemplated, the presence of a few feathers are the prime requisites. Make it appear that a carnival of flesh has taken place and that the spared remnants lie buried just beneath. Drawing on your game in this belief for some time before making a set, is the proper caper.
If you can procure an ancient egg you have the tidbit for any varmint that may hit your track. You perhaps have heard much about the so-called "scents" or oils. They in a way are good to disguise the dreaded human odor, but may well be dispensed with and some are entirely out of place. Time will obliterate any and all human odor, providing you use your implements with tact and good judgment, your bait will keep and it will draw better a day or two after the first set. I never could teach any one much unless he went along the line with me. Trapping is a profession and not every one is by nature adapted for it, but some take to it as natural as a duck to water.
I get three or four dead chickens and start out. I place them along the bank and usually tie them to some small tree so that the head will about reach the ground. I never build a pen around them. I wait until something get to eating them, and then I take a trap and place it directly in front of where it has been eaten, and use more traps if necessary. I have caught as many as three skunks around one chicken,--have caught more that way than any way I have tried. Brother trappers try my plan and be convinced.
The entrails of muskrat, rabbit, chicken or duck will make far better bait than the animal or bird itself. In very cold weather I use the oil of wild duck which I save in the fall, but even in using the baits I speak of I invariably dig up the ground, unless it is a water set or a swamp set on some log.
In cold weather, or in fact during the entire trapping season, fur-bearing animals are searching for something to eat and consequently the trap that is baited is more liable to catch than one that is not. Fresh rabbit is an excellent bait for most animals.