The traps, a
basket containing the "figure fours," with which they were to be
set, a bag of corn for bait, an axe, with which to clear away the
underbrush, and a spade to dig the trenches, having been packed away
in the vehicle, the boys got in and drove off. They directed their
course along the fence, which ran around the plantation, and wherever
they found a clump of bushes or a little thicket of briers and cane,
there they stopped long enough to set one of their traps.
The traps were made of slats split from oak boards, and were a little
less than four feet square and a little more than a foot in height.
In the top was a slide covering a hole large enough to admit one's
arm, and it was through this hole that the captured birds were to be
taken out. The undergrowth was first cut away with the axe and the
trap put down in the clear space, a narrow board being placed under
two sides of it, to give it a solid foundation. A trench just large
enough to admit a single quail was dug under each of these boards,
one end of the trench being on the outside of the trap and the other
on the inside. A small ear of corn was tied firmly to the trigger,
the trap set with the "figure four," a few kernels were scattered
about in the immediate neighborhood, and the trap was ready for the
first flock of quails that might come that way.
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