If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man. - Mark Twain

A couple of things bring me a modest amount of pride. One is being able to trap varmints around the house and the other is teaching bone headed dogs to retrieve. I have been trapping since I could read Outdoor Life magazine accounts of the old trappers of the Great Northwest, knee deep in winter, and whiteouts, and snarling wolverines.

I never made any real money on any of my extensive traplines but it was always excited me to find some hapless critter had been outwitted. Here lately trapping has consisted of chicken coupe security. It seems that about this time every year the coyotes, skunks, owls, gopher rats and coons deem my Jungle Fowl and Rhode Island Reds just about plump and slow enough to make an easy meal. This summer I have had a raging and rather protracted war with something eating my hen's eggs.

The egg eater has defied even my most subtle sets and in desperation I had to call in a consultant from Sale Creek. Dave and his wife Laney are expert trappers. They have trapped hundreds of coons and skunks and gopher rats over the years on their place in Sale Creek so it was only natural that we compare notes. After great deliberation and dozens of lost eggs we decided that the egg eater had to be a big snake. The tip-off was a huge shed skin in the loft of the barn.

I laid two #6 Maxfli's in the nest box and the trapline was complete. Within 24 hours both golf balls had disappeared. I had expected to find a big reptile with a golf ball stuck in his jaws gasping for air but he never materialized.

The other day while searching for an old tree stand in the barn, I noticed a five foot long King snake trying to squeeze his rather round torso through a large crack in the barn. He was really stuck good and he did not seem able to get his reverse gear to engage.

I did not retrieve the golf ball. One down and one to go.

I doubt that the old trappers in the Yukon ever tried a Maxfli for bait.

Since the other golf ball is still unaccounted for that may explain the dead skunk.

The dead skunk brings us to the retriever. Training a retriever has always brought me satisfaction, especially since my first attempt was trying to convince a Beagle that he should swim out into icy waters and retrieve ducks. I was a miserable failure as a Beagle/retriever trainer.

The old hound never did get the hang of the concept. Although he was a damn good rabbit dog, he would only retrieve farmer's chickens, which he dearly loved to deliver to hand, with a wonderful feather eating grin on his face. It seemed that his idea of a good rabbit outing should first start with assaulting any available chicken within sight of the truck. As he got older and began to associate chicken chasing/retrieving with severe beatings before every hunt, he would thoughtfully wait until the hunt was almost over. As the evening shadows lengthened and he sensed that we were growing tired from our day in the field, he would quietly slip away from us as we ambled toward the truck and he would streak to the nearest flock of available chickens topping off his day with a stylish retrieve.

The dog cost me many a dead chicken fee paid at often highly inflated prices. On more than one occasion some irate farmers wives would banish us altogether from ever returning to their farm.

The next series of dogs were a little easier to train. This was probably due to their bloodlines, which were highly suspect. But with the aid of a series of books and patience that came with the understanding that the dogs had almost as much patience as I did, the dogs and I were able to learn the fine art of retrieving.

The retriever that I now feed is deaf, which does not seem to bother him one damn bit. He never really seemed to care for my commands anyway and he is savvy enough to know that if he finds a bird, or rabbit, or skunk just laying around, then the dead animal, or even a wounded animal for that matter, should be delivered to the door nearest the kitchen

Over the last 10 years I have noticed that his nose is getting keener which confuses me when it comes to skunks. He appears to have no problem whatsoever when it come to fetching up skunks and laying them next to the door mat. It is amazing how impervious a house is to the odor emanating from a well trained and freshly killed skunk covered dog. Purging a house from this smell is a time consuming business.

My outdoors wise friends, that have actually never tried to clean a skunk retriever all say, "Bathe the dog in tomato juice!" like they are old hands at this phenomena. Let me submit that this may actually work if you could afford shopping carts full of tomato juice but who wants to waste all that Bloody Mary mix on a dog.

I admit I tried this once. First I bought three cans of the juice and since the store that sold this stuff was close to my buddy Edro's house, I stopped off to consult with him on this matter. You see Edro maintains a vast stock of plastic gallon jugs filled with highly volatile, potato based, aiming fluid, made by a bunch of old Communists. One can of tomato juice was eliminated immediately in preparation for the great dog washing. The remaining two cans of juice were applied liberally to the odiferous dog and the dog hated it. Not only was the dog mad but it turned out to be a complete waste of a bunch of tomatoes and it had absolutely no effect on the skunk scent. We decided that at least 20 gallons of juice might actually touch the problem but we gave up on this cure prematurely and settled for trolling the dog behind a bass boat for about three hours. We outfitted the dog with one of those neoprene retrievers vest that all the catalogs sell and tied a ski rope to his collar.

He had a big time but the fishing was terrible, which we attributed to the oil slick coming off of the vest. Now the vest is soaking in tomato juice and the dog is about back to normal. We did note that all of his fleas and ticks have died.

I have looked on the WEB for information pertaining to skunk retrieval debriefing but my search engine appears to be deficient, or maybe I have the only well trained retriever in the world and the great trainers of our times have just not yet discovered skunk fetching. Maybe if the trappers of old had good retrievers like mine, skunks would now be on the endangered species list.

That would suit me just fine.



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