THE HORRORS OF THE STEEL TRAP
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
S.P.C.A. has for years offered prizes for a humane and efficient rabbit trap ; yet it has never been able to award a prize, nor to advertise an efficient substitute for the steel trap.
Some of your correspondents think that the snare can be substituted for the trap ; and in my country (Eastern Low- lands and Western Highlands of Scotland) the snare is efficient, and most rabbits are caught by it, up to the New Year. After that time the grass is so down that the runs are no longer distinguishable, nor do the rabbits stick to them, and the snare becomes inefficient. Then the steel trap comes more into use, and the most efficient as well as the legal place for it is the mouth of the hole. As well as rabbits, vermin are caught at the mouth of the hole, and rats and weasels pay heavy toll. In the sandy bank of the river near my home are certain large burrows which have to be trapped several times a year—sometimes half-a-dozen times. It invariably happens that rats are got here and usually weasels as well. No doubt hunting cats get caught, too, but only if hunting ; and the same applies to dogs. In my long experience I have only once seen a cat, actually in a trap, and since the War only one of my dggs—a puppy—has felt a trap, and he did not break the skin of the bone, and had forgotten the experi- ence in three days. In my shooting experience in Scotland it is very rare to see maimed birds or to hear of a game-bird caught in a trap ; and it may be accepted that the serious abuses testified to by your Devon and Western correspondents are confined to those districts. The remedy should be easy to find through the S.P.C.A. and the Chief Constables or Lords-Lieutenant, or by public agitation.
But the imperative necessity for keeping down rabbits is as great elsewhere as in the West. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that were the steel trap made illegal without a thor- oughly efficient substitute being on the market, the rabbits in the districts I write of would become as serious a scourge as they have done in Australia. Though steadily shot, snared, trapped, and ferreted from August onwards, it seems impos- sible to exterminate them in certain areas.
In February last, after four months' absence, I walked with dog and gun through some hundreds of acres of rough wood, and saw but three rabbits. In March three men steadily at work were only killing enough to send a hamper * week to market. By the end of March rabbits become unsaleable and the men are employed on other work. By the end of May the rabbits have collected in again, and have bred, so that hundreds can be seen, perhaps a hundred at one fieldside. -A man has again to start killing by all agencies, and through June this year has killed forty, fifty, sixty a day, of which hardly ten per cent. have been usable ; again rats and weasels are at once caught.
If this killing did not take place, in some places near woods, or by moorsides, there would be no crop left.
It is trne that farmers have the right to kill ground game, and I have sometimes, allowed farmers to enter woods for the purpose of trapping—but in spring they have other work to do : so that farmer-owners do not in my district always trap as much as they would like to. I was lately asking a farmer- owner, my neighbour, if he had made his rabbits pay ! He said Yes, but I would gladly pay £5 a couple for the last of them."
A gale last January blew down a million trees in Central Scotland. It will take three or four more years to get these removed, and their branches burned, and even then the torn-up roots will remain as impregnable fortresses for rabbits and other vermin, and trapping such places is very difficult. Thus rabbits will be harder to keep down than ever. If therefore, greater difficulty is placed in the way of the land- owner, farmer, or game-keeper in his very important business of keeping down the rabbit, a very serious blow will be dealt at an already overburdened interest. Do not therefore abolish the steel trap without providing a really efficient substitute. All methods are needed to deal with rabbits in widely differing conditions. I have myself experimented with three forms of poison gas this year.—I am, Sir, &c'.,
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