They ran along, the fox trotting nimbly on the top of the crust and the dogs breaking through, and every few minutes that fox would stop and sit down to look at the dogs.

They were in a fury, and the wickedness of the fox in teasing them, made me laugh so much that I was very unwilling to shoot him." "You said your steel traps were cruel things, uncle," said Miss Laura.
"Why didn't you have a deadfall for the foxes as you had for the bears ?" "They were too cunning to go into deadfalls.

There was a better way to catch them, though.

Foxes hate water, and never go into it unless they are obliged to, so we used to find a place where a tree had fallen across a river, and made a bridge for them to go back and forth on.

Here we set snares, with spring poles that would throw them into the river when they made struggles to get free, and drown them.