tracks obliterated.

A well set trap will not reveal itself to the game or to any other trapper. A hole set trap should not be approached unnecessarily. Mink will seldom get in the first night, and it takes too long to reset them.

Mink will stay in holes several days if they fear danger. I had one stay twelve days because there was a Stop Thief trap over the hole, but I kept it there because there was a steam visible at the mouth of the hole, and I got her. I have used scent to some advantage, not to draw but to detract the mink's attention, but as to baits I have faithfully tried them all from muskrat to a frog, and I have never known a mink to approach any of them no matter where, when, or how left, except if left by themselves.

In the fore part of the winter I caught about all the males, perhaps because they were bolder. Later I got the females. The largest mink I got stretched 42 inches from tip to tip, and his hide on a five inch board was 24 inches. He was light brown. No. 0 held him by two toes. In fact, I never lost a mink from that sized trap. Those that chewed out were caught up too high.

My experience in trapping is altogether in mink and in a prairie country, and it has always been a great pleasure and very profitable for me, says an Iowa trapper. As I have said, trapping mink is a science which few trappers understand, and can learn only by long experience and close study. Any one taking two or three dozen traps and stringing them out, setting in holes and ditches, can catch a few mink. I know men who have trapped for years and claim to catch lots of fur, but it makes me smile to see how they set them; they simply don't know their A B C's about trapping mink.

MOSES BONE.

The time that I have put in trapping mink for the last 37 years has paid me bigger money than anything I ever tried; of course I mean buying and shipping at the same time of trapping. Counting ten hours as a day's work, I have cleared from five to twenty dollars per day. Now as I said several years ago, I have no secret or I would let brother trappers have it; I use no scent whatever but fresh bait, which is all that is necessary.

You must learn by experience where and how to set your trap. That is all the secret any mink trapper has. The method for setting for mink, rats or coon are all the same, can catch either in the same trap. Water set is my way of setting and far better than any other I think. In ditches or streams where the water is shallow enough to set your traps in where the current runs against the bank; then scoop out a hole 8 inches into the bank. I have used a butcher knife to dig the mud out with; the water must flow into the hole, which should be two inches deep. Cut a forked stick, one prong one inch long, the other 6 or 8 inches long; sharpen it, run your bait on this, put the stick in the back of the hole which fastens your bait.

Now set your trap, turn the spring to one side, fasten the chain the handiest way you can so it is secure. I never had a mink cut his leg off and get away. Now stick up weeds or sticks on either side of the hole so the mink can't get the bait without stepping on the pan of the trap. The current should run strongly over the trap so as to keep the water from freezing, for there are very few nights after trapping time sets in but that the water freezes in still water. I sometimes dam the water to make it run strongly over the trap. Everything about the trap should be left looking as natural as possible.

In cold weather I go on the same principle. When everything is frozen solid I use a hatchet cutting a hole in the bank; use ice or chunks of wood to make a lane to set your trap in, and throw your bait in as far as you can get it. Of course you cannot fasten it.

To show how well animals can scent a bait or anything of that kind I will relate an incident that happened several years ago. There was a fresh fall of snow and being warm the skunk were out of their burrows, and I was tracking one going southeast course. All at once it turned square to the left going some thirty feet and came to an old dried up mole covered with the snow. He nosed around it a while and then went the same direction as before. That showed plainly that animals can scent their game.