Jeez, I was thinking of sending some more work your way. With all the rain I'm two days plus behind.
Dave

Dave send all the work my you want I will find time I work in the rain haha. How ya been havent heard from you in a while? Staying busy I hope!

hello-
i just joined the forum. this is not trapping related but it is an odd wildlife experience. years ago i i was fishing st john's creek just north of beaufort, mo. a beaver dam created a good fishing hole. i was in a lawn chair watching my poles & i saw something moving on the bank. below & to the right of me sits a bullfrog & he's just staring at me. what possessed me i don't know but i slowly bent over & picked up my worm can which sat at my right foot. i take out a worm & toss it to the frog who promptly ate it. that frog sat there for & let me feed it worms til someone walked by me & spooked it. pretty odd considering that most of the time the only thing you see is the ripple in the water after the frog jumps in.

thanks for sharin'... welcome to the ADC forum.

Along those same lines here's my fish story.

I was sitting flat of my butt on a creek bank fishing. I heard some crows up in the hayfield behind me raising cain at something. I perked up and listened to the ruckus. Not long after I heard an animal coming down out of the hayfield moving towards me. I froze waiting to see what popped up. A small bobcat stepped out onto the trail headed my way. I remained motionless and knew the wind was in my favor so I would see just how close it would come. Well at fifteen feet it slammed on the brakes and eyeballed me real hard. Well wasn't this cool my first up close and personal experience with a bobcat. That is until the look in it's eyes changed and it crouched and the tail started twitching. I swear that kitty had just read the menu and liked the special of the day!
That's a real bad feeling to be looked at like your lunch. So bad that I jumped to my feet and let out a holler (It was probably just a little on the shrill side too). If I had had a stretcher ready I could've hung that cat up to dry as it near about turned itself inside out when it swapped ends.

lol the scare/intimidation tactic works well i hear... the flickin of his tail means he was looking to play, all you would have to done was get in a crouched crawling mode and start moving towards him...

Great stories! Here's my contribution. When beaver first moved into my area I was hired to remove a group that was damming a lake outlet. I found a secondary dam not far from the road and was in the water leaning on it when I saw this small beaver swimming upstream toward me.
Not having much beaver experience, I froze to see what he would do. My hand was obviously resting on the crossover because he stepped on it with both his front and back feet as he was going over the dam. I guess you can't get much closer than that.

That's when you missed your chance to grab him by the tail and hold on.... not easy to body slam a beaver, even a small one.

I drove to Homedepo to get some skinning glove forgetting that I hAD loaded yesterday skun catch on the tail gate...lol....I must be a careful driver as it was still all there.......

Home Depot?


Bet you got some looks on that trip!
I'm suprised people weren't calling you with your number on the side of your truck!

Mixing fur trapping with ADC work is often a bad idea....no more evident than today, when I stopped to dispatch a "worthless" possum and left the door open, on a rather windy day.

I look up to see my paperwork and a $9,000.check blowing across an open (picked) soybean field...


Some 300 plus yards ( in hip wadders, mind you) I caught up with it...so out of breath, I thought my heart would explode!

Dang, I'm too ( huff) old (puff) for all this excitement!

Game warden refered a buddy and I to a really nice lady who was loosing fowl to predators. After a nice phone from the lady, I agreed to drive out to her place- there were every kind of exotic bird you could imagine and one old gander that followed the lady around like a pet dog. Buddy and I find the last kill- confirm the tracks, and backtrack the approach and gettaway trails.
Because there are so many loose birds, we decide to trap the hedge row that the K9 used for access and to stay well back away from the ladys yard full of noisy, smelly (inviting to any coyote or bobcat)birds.
This is where the problem starts- we take the gal with us and show here where we are setting up so she can check them in the am instead of us comming back before the target is caught. (I'm not a pro- just a name and number the game warden keeps handy). The lady and I look on while my buddy is down on one knee adjusting the first snare. Mind you we are 200 yards from the homestead, but becuase of the set up (one hedge row and plowed ground either side) we are confident we can catch the coyote(s) coming in and avoid pet birds.
Except one...the pet gander walks in front of me as I casually drop to a knee to eyesight down the trail and threw my buddys snare and make any needed recommendations (up, down, tilt- left, right etc) when that silly gander walks in front of me all bowed up and hisses at me from about eye level. W/o even thinking, I make a hand motion at him to shoe him away and you guessed it- he shewed right threw the snare. When he hit the end of it, he tried to fly, got jerked back to the ground, tried to fly again (you get the picture right?) all the while this buddy and I try to grap the poor &^*^& to free him. Of course he gets a little defensive and shows us just how well a 15 lb goose is armed and lets just say it got a little bit western.

Once we got the little gander free, and only when we had him free, did we remember our customer. Her eyes showed white all the way around, she was pale as a ghost, and you could have flown a 747 into her open mouth. No, she didn't run us off (she needed the coyotes thinned out really badly), but she penned her prize goose for a couple of weeks.
On the way home, this buddy and I laughed pretty hard, but with her standing there looking at us like we had snakes coming out of our noses, we didn't have the heart to even snicker once!!

... Well you sure got me laughin'...
Almost fell out of my chair!

About 6 months back, I was contacted by a business man to do a mole job. This was in a "posh neighborhood", so I was glad to get in there hoping to contact more business during the course of my contract.

From the looks of things,( kids bicycles etc.) he was obviously a family man, but I didn't find anyone home on a Saturday, except him...which is NOT all that unusual.

We agree on a price, I set the traps, he signed the contract, gave me a check and I left.
Pretty standard procedure.

I had some trouble with a few sets, as I was using OOS mole traps and the grass roots were extremely thick, so the traps didn't want to close properly at some locations. I decided to bring an old knife next time to cut a groove, so the traps could close tighter, ( a trick I sometimes use with this type of lawn.)|

The following Monday about 7:30 am,after parking on the street, I am walking around the back of the house, KNIFE IN HAND, when the wife who's having her morning coffee and NEVER MET ME, looks out the window sees this strange man with a "BUTCHER KNIFE" sneaking around the house!

..and calls 911 !

About the time I get to my car,(not knowing anything of course) parked on the street, I see two crusiers coming down the street at a high speed...and I think to myself, "I wonder where they're going?"

...little did I know...

Now thats a classic LT!

lol

We've got 19 pages on this post and most of 'em are stories by the original poster. If those film crews followed LT around they'd probably have a new prime time hit on their hands! They could call it "Leave LT To Beaver."

lol

Paul,
Feel free to add an interesting story when you see fit.
Don't tell me I'm the only misfit ADC trapper on here...

In most of my stories I end up in the hospital and most people don't think that's very funny.

I do remember when we were up in Canada hunting ducks, sharptails, and Hungarian partridge. We were doing good on ducks and sharptails but not so hot on partridge.
The next morning a local farm kid came riding into our camp on horseback. After introductions I asked him if there were any Hungarians around there. His answer. "I don't think so. Lots of Swedes and Germans though."