#122696 - 03/05/07 04:36 PM
First year trapping, the second time
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Cameron2
trapper
Registered: 01/01/07
Posts: 907
Loc: Nevada
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It's been a long, sleepless night. By the soft glow of the moonlight through my bedroom curtains, I keep an eye on the alarm clock on my dresser. In less than 48 hours, it will be November 1, the start of my state's trapping season. I’ll take the day off work and starting at daylight, I’ll set as many traps as I can before it gets dark. Then this weekend my son and I will go check our traps.
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I was about 8 or 9 when I saw my first steel trap. It was hanging in my cousin’s garage, and was sort of a mysterious object. When I asked what it was, my older cousin took it down, set it for me, and then snapped the trigger from under the jaws, causing a small cloud of dust to rise from the metal frame. To a young budding outdoorsman, it seemed like a magical thing, really.
With time, I acquired my own traps. I worked a summer job on a neighbor’s farm, and without my parents knowing about it, used one of my paychecks to buy a dozen 2 ½ Blake & Lamb longsprings. My goal was to catch coyotes and sell the fur. My parents didn’t have much money, and growing up in the Depression had given them a healthy respect for hard work and the value of a dollar. They would have been disappointed to know that I spent money so foolishly.
Using my bicycle, I set the dozen traps on the outskirts of town, waiting for the day I could show my parents a fur check. After more than 30 years, I can still drive you to the precise spot where I caught my first coyote. It was near a sheep carcass dump used my neighbor. I set the trap against a big rock and used some bailing wire to anchor the trap to another rock. When my friend Derrik and I came back some days later to check it, I could see the wire had been chewed and broken near the rock and the trap was gone. With the first coyote catch of my life on the line, I put my nose down like a hound and trailed the trap drag marks through the sage and cedar. Eventually we could hear the tinkling of the trap chain as the coyote tried to keep its lead on us. When we got to a clearing, there was the coyote making for another little ravine in the sage. My trusty, and ever present, .22 rifle anchored it before it could get away. On our way back to town, we stopped at the town Co-op where the neighbor worked, to show him what we’d caught. He gave each of us a brick of .22 shells and told us to keep up the good work.
I trapped constantly during high school, and put myself through college as a trapper, both for fur in the winter and doing damage control for the sheep men during the summer. It was then, and always has been, my favorite vocation, a special time in my life when I was my own boss, paid my own bills, maintained my own equipment, set my own hours, and determined the amount of my own income. Initially my parents frowned at it, and suggested that I get a part-time retail job on campus, but luckily it was during the fur boom, and when I came home one day with a check for several thousand dollars for a few weeks work, even my usually stoic father was pretty excited about my trapping.
And then came college graduation and I was off to law school. The traps were sold and I left my favorite occupation. I was told it was time to become an adult, to grow up. I got married, graduated from law school, had children and moved to the city to start my own practice. Although I had many exciting and rewarding outdoor activities, I could never really avoid those trapline memories from creeping into my mind during the quiet evening hours when adults reminisce about the times when they were young.
Two years ago, during one of these quiet evenings, my 12 year old son sat on the living room floor, thumbing through one of my photo scrapbooks of my trapping days. He paused at each page, carefully looking over the pictures of coyotes, fox, bobcats, badgers, ringtails, and the occasional accidental mountain lion catch. When he got to the end of the book, he quietly closed it and looked at me. “Dad, do you think you could teach me how to trap?” I hurriedly looked across the room at my wife. She didn’t even look up, but grinned a little to herself. In a way I can’t explain, she had always known how I felt.
So we bought a dozen traps. Boy, things had really changed. Coilsprings were the mainstay, and long springs a thing of the past. I had to learn a whole new vocabulary. “Four coiled,” “laminated,” “base-plated,” “disposable stake” weren’t common terms when I was a kid. There were only a couple weeks of the season left, but we managed to catch some fur. My wife said it was hard to tell who was the most excited to go check traps, me or my son. We put our fur money in my son’s college savings account.
With this brief taste of success, we planned all spring and summer how we could be better trappers. We acquired more equipment, attended seminars and conventions, hung around more experienced trappers, and bought every conceivable contraption on the market. Through the long, hot summer, we tuned traps, made lure and bait, and scouted new areas. With our new found knowledge, confidence of success is high.
So here I am, back where I started. I began my working career, in many respects, as a trapper, and I’ll probably finish my working career as a trapper, albeit a part-time one. It may not make the smartest economic sense to leave my law practice for a day to catch a fox or even a bobcat, but not every experience in life should be measured solely in dollars and cents. I’m raising a son, and that’s most important. At age 13, he knows something of responsibility, hard work, conservation and the outdoors. He has a college fund, and has developed the habit of promptly getting his homework done so he can go trapping with his dad. If trapping only gives him that much in life, it will have been a wonderful return on such a small investment.
Edited by Cameron2 (03/05/07 04:45 PM)
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#123037 - 03/05/07 07:56 PM
Re: First year trapping, the second time
[Re: Cameron2]
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Tom_LR
trapper
Registered: 12/26/06
Posts: 461
Loc: Longview, Texas
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Great Story!
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#319078 - 09/01/07 07:22 AM
Re: First year trapping, the second time
[Re: NYNovice]
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ZachAttack
trapper
Registered: 01/01/07
Posts: 937
Loc: Goodlettsville, Tennessee
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Very well written! Nice picture too!
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#373112 - 10/16/07 11:21 PM
Re: First year trapping, the second time
[Re: Gotcha!]
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James
"Frostbite Jimmy"
trapper
Registered: 12/26/06
Posts: 1491
Loc: Anchorage, Alaska
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Have you tried to sell that one? Good specific details ("causing a small cloud of dust to rise from the metal frame") help bring the reader into your scene.
Your trapping experience largely mirrors mine. I re-started trapping in 2000, playing hooky from the law office some days just to get outdoors. Wish I'd picked it up when my son was younger.
Jim
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#535236 - 01/22/08 10:32 PM
Re: First year trapping, the second time
[Re: James]
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Terry
trapper
Registered: 12/26/06
Posts: 1340
Loc: White Sulphur Springs, MT
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Thank you for sharing your experience. Sounds like you might be an OK dad.
_________________________
I always do part of my share.
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