CHAPTER XXIII.

HUMAN SCENT AND SIGN.

There is a great deal said just now about the human scent theory, writes an Illinois trapper. Some claim that you can catch no animal if there is any human scent around, and they hardly take time to set their traps properly for fear of leaving scent. I always considered that the most important thing in setting traps was to cover them properly, and to disturb things as little as possible.

When your traps are set everything should be as natural as before. By that I mean that when you are trapping for the shrewdest game, such as fox, mink, otter, wolves, etc. For other animals such as skunk and muskrat, you need not use such caution, for they will blunder into a trap no matter how carelessly it is set. Still it is always best to cover your signs properly for you can never know what animal may come along. If your traps are carefully covered you are as liable to get a valuable pelt as a low priced one. Use care in setting; study well the nature and habits of the game you are trapping, and you will be successful. Never begin trapping until the fur is prime for one prime skin is worth more than five or six poor ones.

Among trappers there is a variety of opinion as to the different kind of baits to use, and also as to the different ways to avoid the smell of iron or steel traps. Some boil their traps in willow bark; others dip their traps in melted tallow or beeswax.

I have had a fox get into my snowshoe tracks and follow a long ways because it was better traveling. Now that shows he was not afraid of human scent writes a Vermont trapper. Now about iron. How often does a fox go through a wire fence or go near an old sugar house where there are iron grates. That shows he is not afraid of scent of iron.

Once there was an old trapper here, and the young men wanted him to show them how to set a fox trap, and he told them he would, so he got them out to show them how, and this is what he told them. "Remove all suspicion and lay a great temptation." Well there it is. Now in order to remove all suspicion you must remove all things that are not natural. A man's tracks, and where he has been digging around with a spade or with his hands are not natural around a spring, are they? No. Well then, there is where the human scent question comes in. By instinct he is shown that man is his enemy, and when a man has pawed the bait over he uses his sense and knows that danger is there, for it is not natural.

Now I have a question at hand; in one place he is not afraid, and around the trap he is afraid. Now, how does he know when to be afraid and when not? I think because when he sees a piece of bait in a new place it is not natural.

Once last winter I knew where there was a dead horse and I used to go by it, and one day my brother was with me, and of course he knew that I could get a fox there, so to please him I set a trap, and not another fox came near. Well, I smoked that trap, boiled it in hemlock and then smeared it in tallow, but the fox knew and never came within ten feet of it again, when they were coming every night before. When I went by there before I set the trap I left as much scent as after, and how could he tell when there was a foot of snow blown there by the wind after I set my trap?

Now they don't appear to be afraid of human scent or iron in some places and around a trap they are, so now why should they know where to be shy? Well, because it may be in an unnatural place, but what tells him it is in an unnatural place unless it is instinct or good sharp sense.

As for scent, I know that rotten eggs and onions are natural, although the matrix of the female fox in the running season is very good scent; also skunk or muskrat scent or decayed fish, as it gives out a strong smell.

One word to the novice fox trapper. You must make things look and smell natural around the spring, and put before them the food which God has provided for them, and you will have success. Place the trap in the mud of the spring, and a sod on the pan of the trap. Use one that has not been handled by the hand of a human being.

I will give some facts on human scent and human signs in South Carolina. Now I have not trapped "ever since the Civil War"; I have never trapped "all kinds of fur bearers that inhabit the Rocky Mountains", but have trapped every fur-bearing animal of upper Carolina from muskrat to otter, writes an experienced trapper.

The mink and fox are the animals most trappers referred to, we have no foxes here to catch, therefore I am unable to say anything about Reynard. Mink in the Carolinas are not afraid of human scent any more than any other animals, but they are afraid of human signs in an unnatural place. It is a common thing to find mink tracks in my path where I visit my traps every day, they are made late in the afternoon. I have set my traps almost at night and have had a mink in them next morning. I used no scent or bait, and mink are very scarce here, too.

My favorite set is in cane brakes and runways, using no bait. When I first began to trap, mink were not so scarce as they are now, but there are a few left yet. Not many years ago nearly every night I would have a muskrat's hide badly torn and sometimes the rat barbarously murdered and half eaten up.

One writer says, take bait and scent and set a trap properly, then go a little farther on and set a trap without either bait or scent, and see which trap you catch a fox in first.

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Now we notice that this writer brings in the bait every time. We are very much in favor of bait, and make bait one of our most essential points in trapping the fox. This writer says that those "no scent" men are the ones that say fox are afraid of human scent. For our part we do not claim anything of the kind; on the contrary, we claim that it is the signs that we make that the fox is shy of.

I see there are a great many talking about mink not being afraid of railroad irons and barb wire fences writes a Louisiana trapper. Well, I guess they are not, but some of them are afraid of human scent under certain conditions, while under some other conditions they are not.

Find a place where they are liable to come, and tramp and tread around just like an unexperienced trapper would do, taking an old rusty or new trap, handling with naked hands and set either concealed or naked, stick a chunk of meat up over it on a stick, and then remove sticks and stones making a disturbance. This will make mink afraid of human scent in that place. A great many are afraid of a bait stuck up on a stick if there is human scent around it, so I think it is a combination of these; namely, disturbances, human scent and the unnatural place to find food that scares them away. Yet they are not all that way by any means.

Now let some of these fellows who think animals are not afraid of human scent try to catch an otter that has been caught before and got away, and they will think differently. I caught one last winter, that had his front leg off within an inch of the shoulder. I also caught a coon that had both front legs off high up, and strange to say this coon was fat and in good condition. He wasn't a very large one, and his teeth were badly worn off. He must have looked funny walking around on his hind feet like a bear, that is the way he walked for I could tell by the tracks.

I see a great deal of discussion about mink being afraid of human scent writes a prairie trapper. I think there is a difference between mink concerning this: some mink are afraid and others are not.

Last winter I caught a mink in a trap but he got away before I got there, and that mink after getting loose, followed the tracks I had made the morning before for about a quarter of a mile up the river before he turned in close to the bank. Now he didn't seem to be afraid of human scent.

Again I have walked up to a mink path, carefully set and covered my trap, and then carefully walked away in my old tracks, but never a mink would I get, nor would the mink even go along that path any more. I have even walked up to a path when I had no traps with me and then walked away, and altho the path had been used every day before, it was not used again for about nine or ten days.

I once set a trap at the bottom of a muskrat slide without covering, and although I had walked all around there and my trap was not covered, I got a mink.

I wish to say that mink are not afraid of human scent and in proof will tell a little experience I had with a mink while trapping for muskrat, writes a Massachusetts trapper.

One night I came to one of my traps which contained a muskrat that was partly eaten. I knew it was the work of a mink. Going on up the stream a short distance I had a mink, and I allowed that this mink would steal no more muskrats, but on investigating I discovered that this mink was coming down stream, while the one that had eaten the muskrat was going up, and after all I had not caught the thief.

Next night the same trap contained a muskrat partly eaten and I determined to catch the mink. I took the rat out of the trap and fixed for Mr. Mink by setting a second trap about three feet from the first one. I then started to look at other traps and was not gone more than an hour, and on returning to these traps I found that I had already caught the mink, and it was a big one and very dark. If this mink had been afraid of human scent he would not have returned.

In regard to human scent it does seem to me that after a man has trapped for a number of years he ought to know something about it, writes a trapper of the Great Lake region.

I do positively know that human scent will drive most animals away. I have been a great lover of taking the otter. Brother trappers, how many of you that have trapped the otter, but what have found out that he can tell that you have been there if you are not very careful, and he is not very much sharper than mink or fisher.

I do think that all animals can scent a human being. I have caught almost all kinds of fur-bearing animals this side of the Rockies, and I don't know it all yet, but I do know the nature of all the game I trapped, and that we must all know to make trapping pay.

In regard to scents, will say that undoubtedly the most taking scent for male fur-bearing animals is that taken from the female during the mating season. Yet there are other things that will attract them sometimes.

I believe there are times when the female mink can be trapped more easily with the blind set, in fact at least one-half the mink I ever caught were taken in that manner, without any muskrat meat.

I believe that a party may have and use all the scents, baits and methods in existence but without some knowledge of the animal sought, and also a little practicable common sense, and knowledge of setting traps he will meet with indifferent success.

Trappers are divided as to their views on "Human Scent and Sign". Some of the old and experienced ones think there is nothing to either for as they say they catch the shrewdest animals without any trouble. This is true but the trapper of years of experience knows how to set his traps without leaving "sign."

There is no question but that the shrewdest animals "look" with suspicion upon "sign" or anything out of the ordinary especially at their den or places where they often frequent.

The hunter knows that deer, bear, fox and other animals rely upon their sense of smell as one of their ways to evade them. Is it not as reasonable that they smell a trapper when on his rounds?

Of course after the trapper has made the set and gone, his scent will gradually leave and the "sign" is probably the cause of the animal keeping away, should it continue to do so.

That human scent is quite noticeable to animals is proven from the fact that bloodhounds can follow a man's trail or scent even tho it has been made hours before. Yet after a day or so the scent is lost and the best bloodhound cannot follow it.

Do not the same conditions apply to the scent left by the trapper when setting his traps for wolves, foxes, mink, otter, beaver and other keen scented and shrewd animals? It surely does, and after a few days, at the farthest, the "human scent" is all gone.

This being true, then it must be the "sign" that keeps the animal away. Again, it may be that the animal has had no occasion to return.

Where the trapper has just set traps for foxes or wolves and these animals visit them within a few hours they perhaps are aware that a person has been about as both "scent" and "sign" may be there.

To overcome "human scent" and "sign" the trapper must leave no "sign" and as for "human scent" it will leave in a short time. In visiting the traps do not go near unless disturbed.