number of animals larger than it really is. The fact that foxes travel during the coldest weather as well as any other time, gives the trapper an opportunity to show his skill when such animals as bear, coon, skunk, opossum and muskrat are "denned up." Fox skins at such times are at their best.

As mentioned elsewhere, the greater per cent of the methods published in this book are taken from the Hunter-Trader-Trapper, an illustrated monthly magazine, of Columbus, Ohio, devoted to Hunting, trapping and raw furs. New trapping methods are constantly being published in that magazine, as experienced trappers from all parts of North America read and write for it.

CHAPTER II.
BAITS AND SCENTS.

I prefer cat or muskrat for bait, says G. W. Asha. Cut it in pieces as large as an egg, place it in a perfectly clean can, zinc, screw cover, place it in the sun, allowing the bait to taint. This must be done in July or August, or can be done about two weeks before using. In regard to using scents, many don't believe scent is a help to trappers, but I'm one that believes in scent, because if there's a heavy rain storm it takes the scent from the bait. If a little scent is added, your bait is fresh again. Even heavy frosts have the same effect in this case. You have seen advertisements saying that scents will call an animal a mile. Don't take any stock in it, because any animal can't smell at the most only a few hundred feet away if the wind is right, not half as far if the wind is not right.

If any of you are beginners trapping fox, scent is a great help, if you happen to tuck anything around the trap that have effect, if a little scent is added. A fox can smell only one thing at a time. If the scent is stronger than human scent, they will not smell the human scent. Too many accidents in this way have their effect because the fox is a forest animal in existence. I use for fall trapping the fox pure skunk glands and pure strained honey (not sugar fed honey) but clover or flower honey. Winter scent, pure matrix from the female fox taken in the running season during the heat, a little muskrat musk and pure strained honey. This scent attracts the male fox and is the strongest scent in existence.

VERMONT HUNTER AND FOX SKINS.

Here is a first class fox decoy which can be made very easily, write Irving Brown, of Vermont. Take one half pint of skunk oil and the musk glands of a muskrat and one scent bag of a skunk, and you have the celebrated scent of Schofield, one of the first water set fox trappers in the East. This should be made in spring, but it is all right made at any time. It is not the best scent, however, but it is a most excellent one.

Here is the secret of the best and it is hard to prepare because you cannot get the female fox in the running season, which is February or March, in this climate very easily. Take the matrix of a female fox taken in the running season or, in other words, cut out the entire sexual organs and place them in a pint of alcohol, and the result will be the best scent ever made. Some do not use alcohol but salt the matrix. This is the scent you will buy the secret for $5.00, and you will be told that foxes are just crazy to get it. This is in a measure true, but a red fox will not step into a trap unless you use care in setting it, with any kind of scent. I don't care how frantic a fox is to get at the bait. They don't commit suicide if they know it.

There are many other ways to prepare for both mink and fox, all of them possessing merit, but my aim is to give the best, not those which are no use to the trapper. The more simple, as a rule, are the best. Some trappers are opposed to the use of scent, but you will find that man far behind others. The capture of fur bearing animals has become a science, as mink and fox become more wary so does man become more skillful in overcoming their shyness. We hear lots of secrets that were learned of the Indians. No doubt they had some good ones too, but the white trapper in the same place will outdistance any Indian I have ever seen or heard of. My experience among those people is that they are too lazy to use the care that a white man will use in either setting traps or stretching skins.

I have had a fox get into my snowshoes tracks and follow a long way because it was better traveling, says M. H. McAllister. Now that shows he was not afraid of human scent. Now about iron. How often does a fox go through a wire fence, or go near an old sugar house where there are iron gates? 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 there is danger, for it is not natural.

LEFT FOR THE FOXES TO DEVOUR.

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 or 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 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 with 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 my 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, unless it is instinct or good sharp sense. As for scent, I know that rotten eggs and onions are not natural, although the matrix of the female fox in the running season is very good. Also such as skunk or muskrat scent or fish, as it smells rotten and makes a strong smell.

One word to the novice fox trapper, and I will leave space for something more valuable. You must make things look natural around the spring and smell natural, and put before them the food that God has provided for them, and you will have success by placing the trap in the mud of the spring, and putting a sod on the pan of the trap that has not been handled by the hand of a human being.

CHAPTER III.
FOXES AND ODOR.

Last winter I could not trap much because the river along which I do my trapping and the woods all around were full of lumbermen, and I was afraid my traps would be stolen. I did a little experimenting on foxes in their relations to the odor of man and iron, says Omer Carmerk, of Quebec.

The results of my experiences confirmed my previous observation that foxes are not afraid of the odor of iron, neither of the odor of man, but mighty suspicious of a bait connected with both odors. I made a trail about two miles long, scattered about it pieces of meat, chicken, rabbit, cheese, etc. I dragged a dead chicken, but I