Make sure your pole is longer than needed to get the job done. Fox are very fast and have very sharp teeth.

I was dispatching a skunk with a stick. All was going well until a fella drove by on the service road and decided to honk his horn as I was in dispatch. Full blast on me. Surprised how fast a skunk can spin his rear end around. Got the pleasure of smelling it all day on the trap line.

Was cleaning leaves out of a 330 in a culvert set for beaver right under the dirt township road. It was around 0 degrees so I left the truck running with the heater blasting and I just went bare-armed into the water. Apparently the current washed a stick into the trigger and the trap fired.......hitting me across the base of my thumb. The big meaty part where it meets the right hand. I shook it off and grabbed a rope from the truck. Re-set the trap and finished up. Jumped in the 90 degree truck and started down the road.

About a mile down the road.............my hand warmed up................

Dumbest thing I can remember is setting a bobcat set up and it had to be just right and snapped my thumb in a #3 Northwoods. So started over again and snapped the same thumb minutes later. Third time was the charm, it didn't happen again.

Dumb is relative soooo many I hate to try to count!

Shattered a wheel on my truck going across a feild after a coyote once... another time I was using a peice of foam to float back and forth across a creek. I'll try to dig up a picture of that.

Trying to cross a swollen creek

I took to much for granted. I have some good memory's of some truly wild places and remote country. Enjoyed all of it. I don't think i really appreciated it. Just thought I could keep on keeping on. My body is wearing out. Cant trap a lot of stuff I used too even if I was still 50. Dont make the mistake of not appreciating every minute your outside.

Very true We sometimes become so wrapped up in what we are doing ,that we forget how much we love what we are doing ,.I started trapping /hunting in the 1960's A lot has changed since those times .It was in the 1980's until I got a more focused attitude about hunting and trapping .I can see now that I wasted way to much time on things that really did not make me happy or improve my life .As I approach 70 I am slowing down And the rate of speed that I am slowing down is picking up speed .And yet if I think back to say 1990 (I killed my first archery buck that year ) it surly does not seem all that long ago .Do what you want to do when you are able to do it If you miss out on things because you just do not make time for them it would be a dumb mistake for sure

It was 1958 and I was 6 years old. About noon I was setting a #2 Blake and Lamb underspring for skunks at a hole alongside an old chestnut tree by the farm dump and I managed to get both thumbs in the trap, one on each side next to the spring levers. No way to be able to stand on the levers to release myself. Chain had already been stapled fast to the tree. Just before dark one of the farm workers came down with a load of garbage and released me. When I got home my Dad wacked me with a belt for not feeding the calves on time! Didn't give a hoot that I had 2 black and blue thumbs.
Never stapled another trap to a tree..

Yotetrapper30 don't feel bad when I got my frist black coyote went to load the 4 wheeler and shot one of the ramps out and it kick the other one over under the 4wheeler. That was a mess had to roll it off on it side after unloading everything wench it back over on all 4 wheels. Then load everything back on it and try to load it again needless to say I was calmed down a little.

I ran in to check a 220 cubby. Had the family in the car maybe 30 yards away.
Nothing in it. Saw some snow that needed to be brushed out.
Put my glove hand in the trap to just clear it a little.
Bang. Trap chained to the tree and got me behind my thumb on my hand. Almost to wrist.
Bet I was there 10 min before my wife came looking for me. Hand had a big bruise and hurt for quite a while.
Wife was really impressed. Always put safetys on before I act stupid.

My son was checking a weasel trap. He was maybe 10 years old.
Had a weasel in it that he was removing. He said Dad the weasel is soft. I just said ok.
He pulled it out and just that quick the weasel bit him on his glove and He was screaming. It was funny to watch. It never bit thru the glove.
He didn't get the weasel either. He brings that up often. Or we do just to not let him forget.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has ever done this. Leave a safety setter on a 330 and have a beaver set it off.
Holding the jaws of a 220 with my only free hand and thinking I was fast enough to throw it on the ground without getting caught.

Ten years ago today slipped down a creek bank and tore my knee up hobbled around for six months till I got it fixed

Remind me not to get in a foot race with swamp wolf .

Taking a broadside shot from a canoe in the middle of a lake at low flying ducks with a twelve gauge. Canoe was full of traps and gear, I salvaged canoe, shotgun, and life!

Told another local trapper how I was catching 120+ fox a year

If you know about the location a salvage magnet is great. It's how I recovered my rifle after flipping my kayak.

You're lucky he didn't take out your eye! He came mighty close.