A still hunt rarely brings you in sight of a fox, as his ears are much sharper than yours, and his tread much lighter.  But if the fox is mousing in the fields, and you discover him before he does you, you may, the wind favoring, call him within a few paces of you.  Secrete yourself behind the fence, or some other object, and squeak as nearly like a mouse as possible.  Reynard will hear the sound at an incredible distance.  Pricking up his ears, he gets the direction, and comes trotting along as unsuspiciously as can be.  I have never had an opportunity to try the experiment, but I know perfectly reliable persons who have.  One man, in the pasture getting his cows, called a fox which was too busy mousing to get the first sight, till it jumped upon the wall just over where he sat secreted.  Giving a loud whoop and jumping up at the same time, the fox came as near being frightened out of his skin as I suspect a fox ever was.

In trapping for a fox, you get perhaps about as much “fun” and as little fur as in any trapping amusement you can engage in.  The one feeling that ever seems present to the mind of Reynard is suspicion.  He does not need experience to teach him, but seems to know from the jump that there is such a thing as a trap, and that a trap has a way of grasping a fox’s paw that is more frank than friendly.  Cornered in a hole or a den, a trap can be set so that the poor creature has the desperate alternative of being caught or starving.  He is generally caught, though not till he has braved hunger for a good many days.

But to know all his cunning and shrewdness, bait him in the field, or set your trap by some carcass where he is wont to come.  In some cases he will uncover the trap, and leave the marks of his contempt for it in a way you cannot mistake, or else he will not approach within a rod of it.  Occasionally, however, he finds in a trapper more than his match, and is fairly caught.  When this happens, the trap, which must be of the finest make, is never touched with the bare hand, but, after being thoroughly smoked and greased, is set in a bed of dry ashes or chaff in a remote field, where the fox has been emboldened to dig for several successive nights for morsels of toasted cheese.

A light fall of snow aids the trapper’s art and conspires to Reynard’s ruin.  But how lightly he is caught, when caught at all! barely the end of his toes, or at most a spike through the middle of his foot.  I once saw a large painting of a fox struggling with a trap which held him by the hind leg, above the gambrel-joint!  A painting alongside of it represented a peasant driving an ox-team from the offside!  A fox would be as likely to be caught above the gambrel-joint as a farmer would to drive his team from the off-side.  I knew one that was caught by the tip of the lower jaw.  He came nightly, and took the morsel of cheese from the pan of the trap without springing it.  A piece was then secured to the pan by a thread, with the result as above stated.