Kids starting out and trapping future

I see a lot of kids online jump in all fired up about trapping documenting their exploits of getting ready one season and by the next they’ve flamed out. They don’t stick with it for life anymore. There have been several over the years on Trapperman and short periods of YouTube content from younger ones. I was told yesterday a place I was trapping had two kids show up last year all fired up to trap. They said they had their own YouTube channel and everything. Had GoPro cameras . They caught one beaver and quit even left three of their traps laying on the bank. Is this the trend of the future? Just getting some screen time enough for them? Several move on to something else like squirrel hunting and it’s one and done too. I’m trying to understand if there’s an answer or if our future is looking like a lost cause. They don’t do things like we did. There is no sustainability for trapping like this. I don’t like the “ one and done” future for us.

Plenty of kids in the past gave it a try and quit too. Out of a bunch of school buddies that trapped in the 80's I'm the only one still at it. It's not for everybody.

There is a lot to compete with out there. My boys are pure outdoors men especially my 13 year old. I'm just a dad that travels for work and is gone some times 14 day at a time or only making it home 15 hrs a week sometime then gone again. But last year I only worked 14 days Oct and November combined and it was pure hunting.

They trap, hunt everything they get a chance at. Had a great 23\24 session tagged out on nice 3 year old birds first day on public land, shot 5 deer each bother killed their best 8 points to date, my 13 year old killed both his first with his compound and x bow ( I got to be there for both one was his buck). They got to shoot rabbits over my friends dogs, shot a bunch of squirrels, 13 year old caught his first 4 coyotes on his own, and the 11 year old his first fox. Of course they caught a bunch of coon, skunk, an opossum. When I was home for my 20 hr there they wanted to go fishing last week but I didn't have time. They are ready for turkey and loved the clay range last month.

They have a friend frome wrestling son of my wife's friend I'm going to try to get started hunting this season starring him off with squirrel. He is 10 I think. His dad is a great guy but not a hunter. I will probably be teaching them both. My limiting factor is time.

Told my wife when my boys get to old for youth season I'm going to need to have some kids of her friends to take, honestly if we want to really promote hunting we should focus on getting the ladies involved. They will be the biggest influence on the youth and many love it but never had the chance or instructions or had poor experience of som Jack (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) giving them a 12g with heavy load for their first time shooting a gun thinking it's funny.

Honestly outdoor education is one of the biggest things we want to do with our farm. From teaching skills from canning, gardening, soap making, shooting, game cleaning and prep, food preservation. There is a big market for people wanting to learn basic skills. We love teach. Hopefully I make enough money to get things rolling in that direction. Currently the main hold up is needing a building for the classes to be in.

Get the Ladies involved and you have the hole family. And girls are easier to teach. They tend to lesson paying attention and ask good thoughtful questions. The boys and men think they already know it all and take longer

I trapped all through school. Then came girls and graduation and life. Got back in my 60’s. Sometimes it takes the seed a while to grow. It’s on us to keep planting the seeds.

Not getting a real paycheck for your effort is a enthusiasm killer.

Often the same with telling people about Jesus. Plant the seeds and watch God do the work.

Same here too. Seems like none in the past 20 years I’ve seen here have stuck.

I was born and raised in a suburb of the Twin Cities until I was 12 yrs. old. My parents had the opportunity to buy my grandparents farm at that time and they did in the same place I live today. An older gentleman that was our neighbor was a big snare man and took me along on his checks on the weekends. So snaring was where I started and haven't quit trapping and snaring since then. There isn't a chance I would go back to where I was raised before we moved north.

I think it has to do with work ethic and responsibility…two things that most kids seem to lack these days.

Yes trapping is like having a milk cow. You don’t get up in the mornings and decide you’re going to trap that day like hunting. It takes dedication.

Well it definitely takes effort, which most people aren’t willing to put in.

This is much like my story. I trapped fox, muskrat, mink and the occasional coon back in the early to mid 80’s off of my bicycle. Caught enough in 85 to buy a used Honda 200 3-wheeler. In 86 I made the varsity football team discovered girls. I continued to hunt every chance I could get but trapping fell by the wayside for lack of time. I trapped coon off and on around the sweet corn patch and feeders, but never really truly got back into trapping.

That changed this year when the coyotes started to come into the yard after my lab. I had never caught a coyote before so I started reading everything I could find and watched video after video. I joined Trapperman and asked a bunch of stupid questions.

As of yesterday’s check, I have caught 21 coyotes, 1 bobcat, 2 beaver, 1 otter, 10 skunks, and well over 20 each of coons and possums, and 4 armadillo. This all from about a 1000 acres or basically within site of my house. Working full time, I have to keep the line fairly small and close to meet the 24 hour check.

Word has gotten out about my success and I have people stopping my in town asking if I could set some traps on their land to help with the predators. It has even gotten me trapping and hunting privileges on a lady who was a strict no hunting advocate. After losing a couple of her beloved pets, I took 4 coyotes off of her. Now she just ask that I tell her when traps are active and have at the place.

My co worker is literally the laziest person I know. She’s not a “kid” but she may as well be , she’s 22. Showed a sudden interest in trapping. I thought wow maybe this will be good for her. She has a very poor diet and is obese and has several other health issues. I sent her some links and offered to show her my gear and have her come with me one day on my line. By the following week it had fizzled out. She never even came out to my truck to see a trap or how it works or smell a lure.
I honestly think she was bored.
Definitely discouraging

All the above ^^^^ is why I can't finish one beaver job b4 the phone is ringing with another beaver call.

There simply isn't any other trappers interested in doing this.

We are a dying breed. This has been proven here on Tman on the "How old are you" threads.

A lot of kids (especially ones who are more interested in becoming youtubers than whatever they are actually doing on the videos) are looking for instant success. Trapping isnt something that most people are instantly successful at. Its a craft or skill that takes time and lots of energy to learn. At one time, the learning was worth it because there was a financial incentive at the end of it and you were probably making decent money by just being decent at it.

These kids arent gonna get much clout on youtube by setting a handful of traps and catching just a few animals.

It definitely helps to have a friend or relative of some kind for support and to keep the interest.
I've noticed the kids that i've trained that have a parent willing to do it with them tend to stick with it the most

Yes it’d be very difficult anymore without help at home. When I coached little league and a kid was late for a game or practice it was not their fault. They need a good parent or mentor at home. Someone said something about it takes years to develop, that is true. Maybe some get bored before they even begin learning. Also here, they want to start out on bobcats, deer and turkeys instead of smaller stuff. They’re being influenced by others online stuff to the point they can’t simply enjoy themselves. I can’t remember a kid here in the last twenty years that started and continued to grow and stay with it. We are truly dying out I believe.

Kids use to start out with small game and work up.. Now they start with deer and turkey.. Ive known kids come thru hunters ed who could set up a wireless game cam, tell me what grain broadheads go with what arrows/bolts to get a given velocity but they could not kill a squirrel if they were starving...
Now they are out and thats great but think about it, they have nowhere to go.. Dad has his 6 year old killing deer off a trip pod with an AR and he gets bored of it fast.. I spend a good portion of class begging kids to try small game hunting and trapping. telling them about bird hunting, coon hunting, frog gigging, fish gigging and all the other awesome outdoor opputunities they have..
I can vouch for talking to a student who had killed 11 deer by the time he was 9-10 years old and stopped hunting because he was bored.. Though he had never made a blind, scouted an area to hunt or gutted a deer... Family did it all for him..
We need to help kids understand the long game and the satisfaction that comes from developing and learning..Dont even get me started on youth sports and what its turned in too

Here's my experience with getting kids into trapping and I'm not ragging on the program or anything. But in SD, we have the 4H Ethics program where they find a local trapper and have him mentor a class of about 10 kids. I was in this with 9 other kids and after the first year of it going on, all of the kids but me stopped trapping and hung the traps in the shed. Most of them have even offered for me to buy them off of them. Now I'm sure there are places around SD that have a higher turnaround rate but this is just my experience with it and it honestly really kicked off my trapping hobby.
About the YouTube thing, I know a good friend of mine who got going with it and he does really well. So obviously I followed in his footsteps and started recording like he did and it just wasn't worth carrying a camera to me. It also kind of ruined it for me as I spent more time doing camera work than trapping. Now if I want a video I just record it on my phone quickly and then I'm done, I do try to upload them to YouTube but I'm not going out of my way to do it. I do still post on one social media app where I have a good following and that's mainly why I use my phone instead of my GoPro.

truth!

The best hope for trapping is to get off the cold war with Russia and China. They still want our fur. Money. That is the incentive to trap.

I wasn't allowed by my dad to deer hunt until I was 12. Was a common practice of the time, given the maturity level of an 8 or 10 year old. However, my dad used those non deer hunting years to teach me safe gun handling, small game hunting, and general woodsman ship. For me, those years developed a love for the outdoors that will last a lifetime.

There is a lot to this. Up at the farm we had a situation where varmints.......mainly coon.......were causing a lot of trouble. Discovered there was a kid in the neighborhood who had developed an interest and a knack for trapping, so he was brought in. Sure enough, he did have a knack and caught a bunch of coons right off. They were even paying him $25 each, so there was incentive.

Short while after that I was talking to his grandfather and asked how the trapping was going and he told me that had cooled off. It wasn't the money......it was an ethics thing. Catching and killing coons....then dumping them out for the buzzards to clean up was not something he wanted to do. Along the lines of shooting deer just to leave them lay. The waste of it. Putting up the fur for free to salvage something wasn't a motivation either. Kid had decided the best thing to do was leave them be. Or at least that was what I was told.

Teaching a few 4H classes of younger kids I’ve found very few of them that want to learn everything and even fewer stand out as life long trapper candidates. I see my job as to give them the tools and it’s up to them to choose when to use those tools in the future. The tail bounty has sparked a lot of interest in trapping with the younger folks so that’s a start that might never of been there before.

Dispute all of the constant negative talk as usual a lot of good has come out of the program and there has been a major drop in nesting predators in the last several years in my area some of that should be credited to the bounty program combined with other factors. I have had 5 traps out at a place along a lake with heavy cover using fish for bait and have caught nothing. The complaint was a skunk smell so I should have known better before setting it up. LOL

Kids get a month head start then it’s open to everyone but that’s never a problem with the quota being reached they go over they pay. If the quota is being met or close to being met ( I don’t have a chart to reference) the program is working as intended and the kids are getting out there and learning trapping skills.