use No. 0.

[Illustration: SPRING SET FOR FOX.]

The average trapper also makes a mistake in listening to some one's
ideas about scents in trapping the animal, instead of going to the
forest, the field and the stream and there learn its nature, its
habits and ways, and its favorite food. He also makes a mistake by
spending his time in looking after scents, rubber gloves to handle
traps with and wooden pincers to handle bait, instead of spending his
time in learning the right way and the right place to set his traps.
For one little slip and the game is gone if the trap is not properly
set. It is like hunting in the days of the percussion cap gun. I have
tramped all day long over hills and through valleys to get a shot at
a deer, and just at night get the coveted opportunity, taking every
precaution to see that there was no bush or obstruction in line. I
would take deliberate aim, holding my breath that my aim might be
sure. I trick the trigger, flick went the hammer, up goes the deer's
tail and away he bounds beckoning me to come on. Come on, and my
day's tramp has been in vain all on account of a damp gun cap. Now in
these days of fixed ammunition, such mishaps rarely occur.

It is so in setting the trap, one little misfit and the game is gone.
In the Hunter-Trader-Trapper, I read, undoubtedly written by a
trapper of many years experience, telling the true way of setting the
trap in front of a V shaped pen. He said that the trap should always
be set so that the animal had to pass over the jaws of the trap and
not between them. Now mark my mistakes, for of late years I have been
very particular to set the traps so that the animal passed between
the jaws, not over them for I reasoned like this: I thought that the
animal might step on one of the jaws and turn the trap up without
springing it. In so doing be frightened away, or that the animal
might have ball of foot resting on the jaw of the trap, while it set
the trap off with its toes, or the ball of the foot might rest on the
latch, while the trap was sprung with the toes on the pan. In either
case, the animal's foot would be thrown entirely from the trap or so
that it would only get slightly pinched, which would put a flea into
the animal's ear that he would never forget.

In days long since past, I was not particular how I set the trap,
just so I got it planted, but in those days I also made the mistake
of running after scents. We make a mistake in thinking tha