Setting the Bear Trap.

ters disclosed a curious phenomenon of spring which I have seen described. The canoe passed over extensive patches of ice stuck fast to the bottom, showing where the water had frozen clear through. The rising flood of spring finally lifted these ice patches clear, bringing with them masses of lily roots and mud. After the ice melted, a great many of these lily roots, thick as a girl's wrist, were left floating on the surface.

Henry got his bear traps and provisions pretty well scattered out before the snow went away, and finally the time came when he concluded that the bears must be abroad. We visited the bones of two or three moose shot last fall, miles apart. At one place we found the tracks of a large bear. Henry thought it would be a good idea to set a trap here, as the bear might return.

The trapping of bears is an arduous art. Henry believes it to be justified from the sportsman's standpoint, because the bear is the deadly enemy of the moose. During the first few days of its life the baby moose is a clumsy, helpless creature, that wabbles feebly on its long legs, and can scarcely get out of the way of a man, to say nothing of a bear.

All the bears go moosehunting at this season, and any bear killed in May is almost certain to have moose-hair in its stomach. Since Henry and a few other trappers have decimated the bears and lynxes, the moose have increased enormously. Henry and one other man trapped eighty-four bears in three consecutive springs, a few years ago. Now, the bears are comparatively scarce, and the moose are certainly ten times as plentiful as they were in the early nineties, when I first began going to New Brunswick. You cannot set a bear-trap anywhere and anyhow, and expect success. Bears like green woods when the sun is warm, and they must get to water about as

There

stands a big ill-tempered bear.-Page 321.

fore, may be strung out on a line twentyfive or thirty miles long. Henry scoured the country, and set traps in the neighborhood of all the bear-tracks he saw.

The trap itself is simply a large, doublespring affair, with jaws a foot wide. It weighs fifteen or twenty pounds. The New Brunswick forest is well marked with paths made by the wild animals. Traps are never set in the paths, for fear of catching something not wanted. There was once a game-warden who walked into a bear-trap; but that was a long time ago.

A place is selected where three or four small trees grow close together, and these are surrounded with brush on three sides. In this little enclosure the bait is placed. If the brush is old and prickly all the bet

They are held down by levers, as shown in the photograph [page 318]. Then the trap is covered with moss, and slender sticks are stuck in the ground, crosswise, in such a way that the bear, in avoiding them, will put one foot on the pan of the trap and spring it. The placing of these sticks is the finest art in bear-catching. The people in the Harvey settlement have a peculiarity of speech by which they are known throughout the province. It was a man from Harvey who brought back a bear-trap to the blacksmith, saying: "This twop's no gude. It won't gwob a baw." But a skilful trapper can set a trap so as to "grab a bear by any foot he pleases. And what is the bait used? You would not guess in a long time. The very best

Spruce Partridge.

He

is a mixture of honey and cheese. Henry simply took a stick and split it, and into. the opening plastered a tiny morsel of honey and a little slice of cheese. placed the stick in the brush back of the trap, and left it; a patient, alert invention of the evil one of beardom. Almost anything will do for bear-bait. An old moccasin, a piece of birch-bark twisted up, a bit of raw-hide; any unusual thing will attract the attention of a bear, and he must stop to turn it over, as he comes loosejointed along the path, swinging his head from side to side, and seeing everything with his shrewd little pig-eyes. He falls a victim not to his necessities, but to his curiosity, and his liking for dainties. The trap is not chained to a tree. were solid, the bear would surely break it or pull his foot out of the trap. So it is fastened to a light clog, which allows con siderable freedom, and at the same time catches in trees, roots, and bushes, to the great hindrance and vexation of the bear. Some of the large ones go a long way, though. Our biggest bear picked up the trap, chain, and clog, and carried them over a mountain, nearly three miles.

If it

You would feel imposed on if you were

forced to travel as far daily as you. will willingly walk to inspect traps. You reach the first one. There it is, mossy covering undisturbed, the bushes intact, and the dreadful thing beneath almost hypnotizing you to put your foot on it, to see if it is really there. Not a sign of a bear anywhere. Never mind. Three miles away, on the other side of yonder tangled mountain, is another trap. It takes two hours to get there. Clothes are torn by the prostrate trees, and muscles tried by constant climbing. The moss here, too, conceals only yawning ennui. Now we are at the river, and the next trap can be reached by canoe. But how high the water is ! If we run down the next rapid we shall not get back to-day. So we canoe as far as the head of the rapid, and climb painfully up out of the deep gorge, to avoid the bushes. When the journey was made by canoe, it seemed no distance at all. Now the road has stretched out like a rubber string.

crossing ahead, and will probably get wind of us. Henry says perhaps not, as the sun is hot and the moisture rises. Sure enough, the big beast never turns his head, but trudges on, four feet at a stride, his black winter coat a little rusty, and his antlers nothing to speak of. In three months he will have a head-piece that will catch in all the trees, and then he will be very proud and important.

Now the moose has gone, and we have rested from our climb. It is all down hill to the dead birches which mark the location of the next trap. As we approach, unconsciously we increase our pace, and crane our necks to see. "Here's trouble," says Henry. The brush is scattered. The moss is torn. of frantic teeth.

The trees show marks The ground is clawed, and trap and clog are gone. But not far. There is a broad plain trail. We break into a run as we follow, and there,

but when Henry gently touches the black nose with the end of his axe-handle, the bear snaps his teeth in fury. There is a very decent sunlight among the trees, and as I focus the camera, the bear concludes it is some new trap, and makes a rush for it, getting his clog snubbed by a root when five feet or so away. I make a picture, and Henry gives the bear a quick one-handed tap on the head with his axe. An instant ago the bear was biting great strips from that green tree. Now he lies as still as a log.

There were days at a time when there was nothing doing in bear-traps. The real rushing business did not begin until about the first of June, when the moose calves had got big enough to run fast. Then Henry discovered to his great joy that the bears had begun marking anew their striking trees. The trapper who takes possession of a stream by blazing

trees with his axe is only imitating a custom that was old before Elisha studied bear culture. The big bears stand up as high as they can by certain trees and mark them with their teeth. Each year they bite them anew, at the beginning of summer, and Henry showed me several freshly struck trees one day. "That bear is an old settler," said Henry, as we looked at the bites on the tree, higher than a tall man's head. So he rebaited the nearest traps, and burnt the feathers of a loon which had come too close to camp. "I think he will smell those burnt feathers a mile," said Henry. Also he toasted cheese and stuck bits of it in cleft sticks about the neighborhood, to get the bear interested.

This diabolism worked its spell, for on approaching the trap, three days later, we heard roars and howls a quarter of a mile away. The bear had be

come entangled in a snarl of blow-downs, and having fought the trap and bushes for hours, lay flat on his back as we approached, wailing. his despair. Henry said he never heard a bear make so much noise.

There was a great difference in the way the bears acted. Some of them tried to get away, some became furious at our coming. But all of them took the final blow quietly, and died instantly. Henry seldom carries a gun while bearhunting. He thinks the axe is the most useful weapon a woodsman can have, and that, except when he goes out to

The Astonished Beaver.