furs ranked with the same grade as the mink. Comrades,
just think that over and see how foolish we are to begin trapping so
early in the season. These same mink, had they been caught the last
of November or in December, would have been worth, easily, six or
seven dollars apiece. This same party had two mink that he had caught
the first of November and he asked five dollars apiece for them and
they were not near as large as those caught in September.

Now, brothers of the trap line, the most of us will admit that we are
not overstocked with worldly goods and we are not to be blamed for
getting a little money-mad; but when we get so money-mad that it
makes us so blind that we not only destroy our pleasure but we throw
away from twenty-five cents on a muskrat and four to six dollars on a
fox or mink we should stop and think!

While out in camp on our fishing trips this summer, let us invite all
of the boys of the neighborhood to come and let us talk this matter
over with them and show them how lame we are to indulge in this early
and late trapping and hunting of the furbearing animals. Let us
induce the boys to become readers of the H-T-T, one of the greatest
sporting magazines of the world, and through the columns of this
magazine, put up their fight for the protection of the furbearer and
the song birds. Unless the trapper puts up his own fight for the
protection of the furbearers, they will soon be exterminated. The
dog-man is now trying to place a tariff on the trappers' bread and
butter in placing a bounty on the furbearer to induce the money-mad
trapper to destroy the furbearer during the summer when their fur is
worthless.

Also, let us have a little chat with the dig 'em-outs or
den-destroyers. Boys, what is the difference how the skunk or coon is
caught, whether by the steel trap or by dig'em-outs or by the dog; if
the animal is caught is it gone, isn't it all the same? Well, it
looks to the fellow up the tree as though there was quite a
difference. Now comrades, if we dig out a skunk, that den, that
habitation is gone, is it not, and there is nothing left to induce
other skunks to frequent that location. Now, as to hunting the coon
and possum with the dog, two-thirds of the time the coon or possum is
treed in a den tree or rock and the tree is cut down and the rock or
other den is destroyed and you will get no more coon or possum at
that place. If this work of destroying the dens of the skunk and the
coon is