Deadfalls and Snares: A Book of Instruction for Trappers About These and Other Home-Made TrapsHarding, A. R. (Arthur Robert)
General
Deadfalls and Snares: A Book of Instruction for Trappers About These and Other Home-Made Traps
Harding, A. R. (Arthur Robert)
Animal traps; Animal traps -- Juvenile literature
Young trappers when you are making triggers preparatory for your
sets, tie each pair together separately as they are finished, then
when you are ready to set there are no misfits. Now we are up to the
bait stick. It should under no condition, be more than 9 inches long,
and oftentimes shorter will answer better. A slotted notch on one end
the width of triggers, and sharpened at the other, is all that is
necessary. Then the bait will lay on the foundation of trap within 5
or 6 inches of front of the trap. Don't put bait away back under
stone. You loose all the force when it falls.
In building foundations for traps the utmost caution should be
exercised in getting them good and solid. (See how well you can do it
instead of how quick.) Begin in the fall before the trapping season
is on, locate and build your trap, and be sure the top stone is
plenty heavy, raise it up and let it fall several times. If it comes
together with the bang of a wolf trap and will pinch a hair, so much
the better.
To illustrate: While squirrel shooting one morning in the fall of
1905, I was standing on a ledge where I used to trap for coons, and I
happened to remember of a trap underneath me. I just thought I would
see if it was there. I went down and kicked away the drifted leaves
and found it intact and ready for business. When I lifted it up the
foundation was as solid as the day I put it there, and that was in
the fall of 1890, and I want to say right here that it took all the
strength I had to set it.
[Illustration: KILLED WITHOUT SCENTING ]
Trappers, if you will try one or more of the above described
deadfalls for those skunk, I think you can tie their pelts about your
neck for protection cold mornings, and none will be the wiser as far
as smell goes, provided, however, you put some obstruction to the
right and left of the trap so it will compel his skunkship to enter
direct in front, and then carefully adjust the length of bait stick
so stone will crush him about the heart. I have taken quite a lot of
skunk and very few ever scented where the head and heart were under
stone, writes an Ohio trapper.
I always had a preference for above described traps for many reasons,
yet if you live where there is no stone, you are not in it.
* * *
Deadfalls come in handy sometimes and with no cost whatever--unless
the cost is building them. Will send two illustrations of the stone
deadfalls writes a successful deadfall trapper. Will say that there
is a right and a wrong way to set the deadfall. If you want to make
sure of your catch never set your deadfall flat with short triggers
shaped like figure 4, but make long triggers instead and have the
weight or choker sit almost upright and draw the top trigger close to
the one that it rests on at the bottom. In this way you have a trap
that will be very easy to touch off.
[Illustration: RIGHT AND WRONG WAY.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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