Trapper

I set the first two traps in one of the channels near where I lived. I found holes under a mud bank that I presumed to be Muskrat dens. I pounded a wooden stick made from a tree branch into the bank close to the hole. Then hooked the ring at the end of the metal chain that was joined to the trap, over the stick and set the trap close to the hole. The next day when I came home from school I had caught a Muskrat. It was alive and snarling with its foot caught in the trap. I didn't know what to do with it. A neighbor came out from his house and told me I had to club it with a stick and kill it. This was not part of the plan, but I did it. He said you have to hit it harder. This was probably one of the more disgusting things I have ever done, but no one discouraged me.

I skinned it in the wood-pile next our house. Not sure how exactly I learned how to do this, but you had to cut with a knife, the skin down to the bone around the four ankles. Then one had to cut a slit in the skin from one ankle of the rear foot across the hindquarters under the tail to the other rear foot. Then you pulled the skin off the body from the rear end so that it came off inside out. When it was pulled to the neck you cut off the head so that it remained with the skin. Then you put it over the rectangle metal frame inside out to dry as hard as a board.

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