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.

When they came, they would, of course, find the corn, and while they were eating it they would be sure to find the trap.