Anyone have any stories about trying to"get back in the swing of things" and have things go wrong because you did it in a hurry and you were just out of practice?

Forget a tool at a set? Leave one at home?
Slip and cut your hand while skinning? Nick a pelt while skinning?
Leave the safeties on a kill trap?
Forget to lure a set?...simple stuff gone wrong because it's all brand new again?

I had just finished a 200 coyote snare order, no problem.
Then ,this guy calls and orders some mink snares, you know, the itty bitty ones.

Just a couple dozen though...So, here I am doing them by the fireplace watching MNF out of the corner of my eye... and SMACK! Went to hammer shut a end ferrel and smashed the end of my thumb! ....and man did it ever bleed!

I sure hope those Saints were holding their ears!

last year on my first check of my coon traps, I drive out park the truck,get my stuff out, go to load the gun, forgot the bullits.I was just a bit peeved.

have a farm that I can trap walk in only... got to where I wanted to make my sets.. 1/2 mile walk.. had my traps but forgot my stakes... so instead I made 2 mock sets.. until today when I checked them and added a couple traps there.. not too bad of a mishap but caught me by suprise...

Forgot the driver... and my backup driver to my cablestakes one year. It was rebar all day - bleh.

Not opening day but last week i drove from one beaver job to another...22 miles.... but forgot to load the canoe back on the truck cause i was yakkin on the phone. I decided it would be quicker to just walk ALL THE WAY around the lake in waders in 80 degrees in the thickest bottoms around! Sometimes i wonder why i don't fall down more...shane

I thought I had forgot about this until this thread came up(Thanks LT). Set 2 330's to remove a problem beaver for a farmer, went home feeling good about the varmit I will collect in the morning, looking like a hero to the farmer, then laying in bed dreaming of dead critters and when I am going to skin it hits me, "you bumbA$$, you didn't take the safeties off". Went to check the next morning hoping I was wrong and sure enough there was 1 330 laid over with the safties still on. Not a good way to start the season.

Ha! Yep, done that one once too often!

i have forgeten my hammer at sets so far. forgot to bait one set. forgot to set off a fully mod. 1.5 before i started feeling for the stake. that on hurt the most

Oh been there before for sure.

1st day left my Berkshire stake driver at my secound set. I guess thats one way to start things off

well sunday i forgot to take the saftie off one of my 220 coni buckets and that was pretty devistating and after my line was almost done still didn't have anything so i was really getting mad then i walked up on a double on 2 nice large boar coon and i seemed to forget about that incident.

I set a fox trap next to a Burdock bush. I caught a Grey and had to spend an hour picking and brushing out the Burrs.

Discovering the "joys" of running coyote traps during our general deer season...

...normally I start on the 15th of October (coyote/fox opener) and trap until the day before deer season starts (last Friday of October), at which time I spriing my sets until the woods calm down a bit...

...this year, due to constant rain I didn't start until a week ago today, and out of seven coyotes so far 1 has been stolen along with the trap and three others have been used for target practice...

...today's coyote, judging from the broken arrow shaft beside the catch circle and the holes in the critter was used for archery practice.

forgot to take safety off a 280 in a hole going down to a creek bout 10 ft down. one of those nervana heavenly light showing down to light my way to a sure fire catch on what ever came thru. figured it out the next day when I came up to my sure fire set and it was tripped but both safetys were set so what ever it was probably left the wet spot before it eased out. LOL

I just got back from a nusiance beaver job. I guess I have them because the water keeps going down with no repair to the dam. I climb down the bank to re-do a conibear that has gotten too far out of the water. I move it deeper and start to stabilize it when Bam! it goes off, spraying me with water. I am shocked because it is a belisle "usually a little harder to spring". I climb back up the bank, get my setting tongs off of the 4 wheeler. Climb back down the bank. I reach and grab one set of the springs, compress them and put the safety on.The other side of the springs is just under water, and cocked up slightly. I usually twist them around when putting the tongs on, but nope, not today. Just about the time I had enough pressure on them that it was compressed, one side of the tongs slipped off. It was just right to get my middle finger nail between the two arms and pinch the heck out of it. I danced around and shouted out a while also.

didnt check the batteries in my flash light and went to use it and they were dead so i had to use a cell phone light to try and make sets with.. talk about slow and annoying

thats how im feeling this opening week.

Broke my thumb in a 220 last year after taking out a possum and trying to reset the darn thing up under a bush in a down poor

When I was about 18 I found a promising rat spot. Big feed beds all rapped in the alders. I told my trapping mentor about the spot he said they will be gone on opening day. It was a creek. I didn't believe him. On opening day I drove 10 miles up the fire lane put the canoe in and guess what all the feed beds were brown! Rats were gone. By the time I got to my second spot there was another guy trapping it. YOU GOTTA LISEN TO THE OLDTIMERS!

I laid my rifle down to remove a muskrat from a trap and was about 100 yards away when I realized I forgot it. Took me awhile to find the black rifle in the dark on the ground. Now I just pack my ruger bearcat and it goes back into the pack basket.

Easier to find on the ground then in 2 feet of water.Put my revolver in my pocket last year checking a couple traps.Get back in my truck no gun.Backtracked.Ended up finding it in the middle of the crick.

have forgot the gun at the house before made for a bad mood and a couple gallons of wasted diesel

I sure feel like I'm a pretty good trapper in the off season. Now that the season is here, and I have a couple of empty checks under my belt. I am returning to the reality of my mediocrity.

Setting from canoe this year lost rubber gauntlet looked all over couln't find but next day fount it floating in pond while checking sets. Last year lost trap setter took magnet to try to find but no luck oh well i can blame it on old age lol.

last year i just bought an new iowa disposabal driver i made about six or seven sets in the pond and laid the driver down in the water. couldnt find it to cry my eyes out i used a magnet as well to maybe find it. Couldnt find it at all. Caught a few critter deciedes to pull the sets about a week later and on last set where i lost it go to grab the trap and came up with driver trap and all here i laid the driver under the trap i had bedded what a dumb@@@2 i felt like . But also relieved. it is painted orange now .

Yes! That's what I do now with all my water drivers, T-Bars, coni-stabilizers, etc. is that I paint the bottom half orange!

OK....Now do you know there is no word in the dictionary that rhimes with orange?

: This educational fact has been brought to you by: LT GREY who has lost way to many things in the water and who does know some words that do rythm.... but are probably not indictionary as well!

How many times have you had a trap snap off in your face just after you bedded it? Every trapper has eat dirt at least once!

Then when that happens, Without thinking you automatically start spitting the dirt out of your mouth. So much for scent control at that set! lol

Dropped the cap off a bottle of lure right after cracking it open, felt around in the water for couple of minutes, then decided to put a clump of mud in the boat and shove the bottle in the mud clump.

Ditto a couple years ago, except that it was a bucket set for coon in a cocklebur patch. That was the awfullest mess I ever got into - more than an hour of picking burrs. The worst part was that I could have moved the set ten feet and been completely away from the cockleburrs.

I had a picture of a 'coon on here ( Ugliest Furbearer Post) with so many cockleburs, the buzzards would'nt even eat it!