#257455 - 07/11/07 09:06 PM
Re: Kids Contest: Rules/Judges/Etc: (Updated Version)
[Re: mink2]
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baker
trapper
Registered: 12/23/06
Posts: 1310
Loc: south central,Nebraska
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Evan Blankenbaker, Age 16, 2 years trapping.
A Quest for a Bobcat
Im going to tell you all about my last trapping season and my efforts for a bobcat. Yes, the bobcat is a sly critter, sneaky, quiet, and has more patience stalking prey than some of the best hunters. These are all reasons why any saine person would attempt to capture a bobcat, but for some, its not about the thrill of the catch. Some see dollar signs and stick a barrel out the window of a 4-wheel drive and blow those dollar signs right into the back of the truck. For me, i dont see dollar signs, i see spots. About november last year those spots entered my sights, when i was bowhunting deer, i dropped down into a sandy creek bottom and was walking along tracking the deer i hoped was at the end of the tracks. when i looked down, another set of tracks peeked my intrest, the feline type. These were bigger than any normal feline, these were Bobcat tracks. when the season opened in december, i already had some traps out for coon and coyote. i decided that i wanted to trap a 'cat. i set out a couple traps, and in a couple days, i had only a coon to account for in that bobcat trap. i stuck too it, and trapped the coons and k-9's to tide me over. around the first of January, a good friend and I met in the grocery store and i told him about how i was trying to catch a bobcat. well this conversation led to a call to the landowner and he said that he would try to call me in a bobcat. well after a few sets in a call, move down the creek, call, move type deal landed us about 50 yards from a brush pile. he called for a while on a "woodpecker distress" and when i turned my head a bobcat was comming out of the creek looking at him-(15yds behind me and offset to the left) but my gun was in the wrong direction. i watched this cat inch closer, closer, closer, feeling every step with his paw before seting weight on it. when he reached 5 yards my nerves gave up in the fight and i shook. he saw it and sat down. now i dont know if any of you have had a cat at 5 yards outside of a trap sit down and look deep into your eyes, but he seems to look into your soul. finally the cat turned to look at a barking squirell that was behind him, and i swung my .223 into possition, but he saw me and ran out to 50 yards. he began walking up a hill staring at me and i took the shot. he jumped about 5 foot in the air and took off like greased lightning. his opposite shoulder was busted, i could tell that. we trailed blood for about 100 yds when the flashlight died and we decided to come back in the morning. the next morning it rained like no other and blood was imposible to find. my first failed attempt.
So after the ice finally went away and i could get sets up and running again, i had a few cat sets out. i bought some bobcat gland lure over the "ice break". i set up a dirthole, but blended the trap and thrown dirt in to the souroundings. i set gland lure on the backing and food lure in the hole and flagged with ribbon 20yds downwind. a few days later i found my trap thrown. i investigated and saw cat tracks leading up, then it looked as though he rolled at the set and once the trap snapped, it snapped on something other than a foot and he took off.-gland lure was to low i said to myself, so i reset with bigger backing and got the lure up off of the ground quite a ways.2nd failed attempt.
With that attempt failed, i set up another trap, but this was just like a coyote set, only in great cat location. it was on the edge of a hedge row, at the bottom of a valley. this was very sandy ground, so tracking was easy. i went up to the set and all looked normal, but when i looked closer, the pin on the dog of the trap was sticking straight up, but the jaws went moved. i looked at the pan and sure enough a perfect bobcat track was on it. i looked at the trap, and some sand was lodged in between the softcatch screw and the pin on the dog, making the trap vertually un-firealbe. 3rd failed attempt.
My last attempt lands in the last week of the season. i was trying hard to catch a bobcat making sets and not having anything. i set up a trap at the bottom of a tree that was all scratched up. i put a little gland lure on the tree and anchored/blended in the trap. i check traps every day, and on the 3rd day that the set was there, i noticed the ground torn up from a good distance away and got sooooo excited. i was so excited that i forgot my rifle on the bank when i was crossing the creek. but i took off running as fast as my knee boots would let me. when i got within 10 yards, i could see a clear catch circle, but nothing in it. i looked closer and i saw blood on the ground. then i walked to the base of the tree where the trap was anchored, i saw that the pogo anchor was cut cleanly where the trap would have been connected. i could tell that no critter did this, other than the 2-legged kind. i fell to my knees in disbelief. i looked at the circle, looked at the blood, looked at the tree. the tree was scratched up pretty good, so i think i probably had a bobcat, but i will never know. i went back, got my rifle, picked up the rest of my traps on the property and walked home. failed attempt number4.
That picture of that catch circle is burned in my memory. that trap may be worth 15 or so dollars to some people, but to others, that trap stands for sooo much more. something that trap theifs will never understand. like i said in the start of this story, some people see dollar signs, some see spots. it all boils down to respect. some will respect nature,others,others equiptment, but some wont. and the ones that wont will usually be the ones that you find tresspassing,shooting signs,and just plain thinkin there the top of the food chain so everything else dosnt matter. too me, i will try to catch my bobcat, but even if i dont get him, it dosnt matter, i love the outdoors and i love that the good Lord has givin me the privelige of being able to live in it.
o ya, if i win, i will use the money to buy some much needed bobcat traps for my extended line (just turning 16 and all) and also will probly get some lure for those sneaky spotted critters.
_________________________
~Evan~
"Of all the things I've ever lost, I miss my mind the most"-Mark Twain
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#257613 - 07/11/07 11:30 PM
Re: Kids Contest: Rules/Judges/Etc: (Updated Version)
[Re: mink2]
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HoosierKid_16
trapper
Registered: 12/26/06
Posts: 34
Loc: Union City, IN U.S.A
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Nathan Roth : Age 16
I'm not gonna talk like sum John Denver, i mean it's nice to hear all the feelings u get when you're on the line, but it's not about love of the outdoors as much as it is love of you're family. Growing up i never knew a thing about trapping.I was brought up more in the city side of life and had no idea what kinds of critters walked the outskirts of town and neither did i care. I was a bad trouble maker in school and had no respect at all for teachers who came down on me. Trapping was introduced to me by my brother bout 2 yrs. ago. Since then i have lost friends and had to cope with my new lifestyle. One of the first things i realized about trapping was the mental aspect of it all. I tried to find faults and and reasons to not trap, but everything was inviting. My dad encouraged me later on and told me that he himself used to trap when he was my age. It sounded to me like my dad knew i was bound to go this way eventually, but nvr once did i hear him speak of it. Growing up my dad and i nvr really had time to bond or find a hobby of similar interest. He worked alot and i didn't see him much because of his hours except for when he was off on vacation. That's just a part of life though and i knew my dad had to do wut he could to keep us afloat. Nowdayz days my dad worx 3rd shift and all we've been talking bout for these past two yrs. is trapping. My mom has bout lost her mind, but it won't be the last time!lol My brother and sister moved out last year, my sister joined the army and my bro went to college for a lil while and he's now married with two kids a 1 yr. old boy and a 2yr. old girl and one on the way due August 3rd!!! My dad and i won't be there when that child is born because we will be in Goshen. My brother is going to raise his children in the outdoors and so am i when the time comes. I guess the summary of what i'm trying to say is Trapping isn't always about the ammount of traps r in yur arsenal or how many of critters u take in a season, but rather a bond between the animals, the outdoors, and your family. If i'm fortunate enuff to even place my certificate will go to buying traps and supplies for my family, so they can enjoy it through the ages like i have thus far. God Bless America and all its' TRAPPERS!!!
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#257627 - 07/11/07 11:43 PM
Re: Kids Contest: Rules/Judges/Etc: (Updated Version)
[Re: HoosierKid_16]
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HoosierKid_16
trapper
Registered: 12/26/06
Posts: 34
Loc: Union City, IN U.S.A
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#257971 - 07/12/07 11:08 AM
Re: Kids Contest: Rules/Judges/Etc: (Updated Version)
[Re: Andy S]
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Gotcha!
trapper
Registered: 07/11/07
Posts: 900
Loc: Vermont...15 y/o
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My First Otter
By Arthur Kreis/gotcha
I got hooked on trapping last summer while reading a outdoor magazine. I forget the magazine and article but I do remember that a hunter with a large trophy room wanted a fox for his collection and went with a trapper on his fox line. On the way to the sets the hunter started complaining about how easy trapping was. When the trapper got to the fox sets he got a stick and drew a 2 inch circle in the dirt and said, “I have to make the fox step on something that sized in a 1000 acres, it’s a lot harder that shooting a deer with a high powered rifle at 300 yards.”
In the fall I went to the Vermont Trappers Rendezvous and got my trapping license. I passed my test with flying colors. A fellow trapper gave me some traps when I passed my test. During Thanksgiving week I went to work on a farm that had a beaver problem. All that week I tried to catch a beaver, but my sets never connected
One day I overheard my friend talking about some nuisance otter in his family’s pond. I told my friend that I had gotten my license and would like to trap the otters. My friend’s dad, Bryan, showed me around the pond and told me there were no outside cats or dogs, so I could set a trap anywhere legal. I set a 220 right in the otter’s path that leads from the pond to a river. The next day I checked the traps on my way home. Out of pure luck, and great timing there was a huge otter in my trap. It weighed about 25 pounds and is about 46 inches long. I pulled it out and reset the trap. It was such a majestic animal and I felt privileged to be able to catch one. Bryan took lots of pictures and everyone was happy. We called the game warden and when he came to look at it, and tag it. . I am hooked on trapping for life. I am already looking forward to next year. Next year I hope to catch some raccoons, and maybe even some fishers and bobcats.
Arthur Kreis/gotcha
Wolcott, Vermont
14 years old
1-802-888-6628
2006-2007 results
5 otter
6 beaver
3 muskrats
0.00$
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#260003 - 07/13/07 10:52 PM
Re: Kids Contest: Rules/Judges/Etc: (Updated Version)
[Re: Badger Man]
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220cooner
trapper
Registered: 12/24/06
Posts: 415
Loc: western illionis
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My name is Ben and I’m 14
I was filled with anticipation as my dad and I pulled up to the old farmstead in his rickety old truck. Would the new traps connect? Would I catch anything? All my questions would soon be answered as I walked around the corner of an old shed and came face to face with a monster 21lb super prime boar coon.
It all started a week before; I was still tired from the weekend’s Boy Scout event, as my dad and I loaded a half dozen 220s, a bag of marshmallows, and some wood cubbies. The first place we set was nothing major but the next two were incredible. It was obvious that it hadn’t been trapped in a long time, there were huge piles of scat, and extremely well used trails. We set two cubbies and moved on, the next place was no different, and there we set a 220 in the culvert running under the driveway and the last cubby beside the barn.
I could hardly contain my excitement the next morning when I found my first double catch! One was in the culvert and the other in the cubby. Next we found something unusual, both traps were snapped and empty, but they were laying 10 feet away from there cubbies and it looked like they had been dragged. a week went by, catches gradually went down, and my traps were still being snapped and dragged, Finally dad said "this aint working," so after much thought (and looking up info on Trapperman) we went ahead and got 2 Lil’ Grizz traps, a pair of #2 Bridger’s and the book "canines 2000" ( I wanted to catch some coyotes.) I got all the new traps degreased in the dishwasher (what mom don’t know wont hurt.) modified and set. Then I caught "the big one" in my new Lil’ Grizz. He was the prettiest coon I’ve ever seen, a rich chocolate coat and the fire in his eyes. With the help of the amazing Lil’ Grizz and all the knowledge and wisdom on Trapperman my catch rate went up to three coons a day! I eventually caught a skunk in one of my coyote traps; I tried to use "scent free" dispatch methods, but it didn’t work so well. I proceeded to make a mound set with the skunk as bait, but the pan tension was set to light and I ended up with a toe catch, an escaped coyote and a stolen skunk. After that I had to pull traps because of a foot and a half of snow. Later when the snow melted I was able to reset but I didn’t catch much.
I’m hoping to use all I’ve learned to make next season as productive and fun as possible. If I win, I will use the gift card to buy more Lil’ Grizz traps.
_________________________
Patience is a virtue have it if you can, seldom found in Women and never in a Man.
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#260132 - 07/14/07 06:03 AM
Re: Kids Contest: Rules/Judges/Etc: (Updated Version)
[Re: Andy S]
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Alaska Trapper
trapper
Registered: 07/12/07
Posts: 5
Loc: Homer Alaska
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My name is Garrity and I am 12 years old.
I have been trapping since I could walk with my dad in bush Alaska. The First fox I ever snared by myself was a cross fox at age 9. I am totally in to it! We moved to Homer Ak two years ago but my dad still goes out there and runs a trap line. Last winter, I had the chance to be able to go out to my dads remote trap line for two weeks and go trapping with him. I had to keep a journal.
My dad knew that I did not like to write, so he purchased a digital Sony voice recorder. All I had to do out on the trap line was speak into it and then when we got back to town we download it on to a computer using Dragon Naturally Speaking which changes my voice into words. The result was that I got a lot more writing than I would have had if I did it with paper and pencil. It did however take hours of editing. I collected the graph data out on the trap line and made the graphs using Microsoft Excel.
Below is my entry,
I hope you like it,
Garrity
March 7, 2007
In Homer I was packing my bags. I was going on a trip out to my dad in St. Mary's on the Yukon River. I was going to go trapping, fishing and camping and it was going to be a blast. I was going to leave that day and get to Anchorage, wait two hours in the airport and get on an airplane and fly to St. Mary's. It was about a 45-minute flight from Homer to Anchorage and from Anchorage and to St. Mary's about an hour and a half.
After landing in St. Mary’s I waited for about 15 minutes until my dad came. We drove back to St. Mary's We stayed there for two days. It was very windy and cold so waited for the weather to improve.
On Saturday we got up and started packing our camping gear. I was so excited since we were going to go trapping for the first time since I had arrived.
Once we were ready to go start our snow machines my dad told me to drive to the bottom of the hill. We followed the North fork of the Andreafsky River For about 2 and a 1/2 miles then we went up on a large ridge for about 13 miles and then we came down off the ridge and on to the South Fork. We followed this for about 9 and a 1/2 miles then we broke off and went threw a timbered portage for about 6 and a 1/2 miles until we came to a large lake. About five minutes out onto the lake my machine just shut off and my dad came back for me. It was out of gas, so my dad switched it over to the four-gallon tank I'd been running on a 2 gallon tank. On the lake the odometer read 166 miles, I'd started out with it reading 133 miles. I had gone 33 miles since we left St. Mary's, I went 33 miles on 2 gallons of gas, that's about 16 miles per gallon. We switched tanks and started back on the trail again.
Here I am on the south fork revved about trapping.
On the edge of the lake, we stopped and got some wood where my dad had camped the previous week. After getting firewood, we headed into the trees were my dads camp was buried. He gave me a satellite phone and asked me to call my mom.
I walked down to the lake and tried to get a hold of my mom I waited for about 15 minutes. I finely got reception but It was the wrong number. My dad had dialed it wrong!
I walked back to camp and showed the phone to my dad. He tried getting reception in the trees. I could not believe it, we did.
My dad did not know we could get reception in the trees. We got to talk to my mom and sisters for about five minutes it was really good to hear their voices. When we we're done talking to my mom I helped my dad put his woodstove together. Once we we're done putting up the tent we started bringing in our supplies.
While I brought in supplies my dad ran down to the lake to get the cardboard that he had used the previous week as an ice fishing house. He was going to lay it down under his sleeping bag. When he got back we had dinner, freeze dried Chicken Ala King made by Mountain House. It was very good.
The next morning I got up and recorded in my journal.
11 p.m. March 11th.
This morning when I got out of bed the tent was nice and warm for me, my dad had started the fire, and he had boiled some water and made some oatmeal for us. It was very good and smelled wonderful. After we had had breakfast we got our warm gear on. We were going to go check our marten sets and set some more wolverine traps.
This is the plant pot set that my dad used most of the winter for marten. It was a tip up pole and a plant pot with a piece of bait inside and a 110 conibear.
After we had gotten our backpacks, bait and traps onto the back of our snow machines we took off headed for the mountain.
First we crossed over an empty lakebed, it was cool to think that this had been a lake during the summer. We first wound our way through a small forest of black spruce.
The first trap we checked was a wolverine cubby. We were hoping we would drive up to it and see a wolverine fighting to get out, but with disappointment we drove on to the next trap.
A wolverine cubby equipped with a 330 conibear.
We then headed up the hill covered with mature spruce and birch trees to check our marten sets. After about the third marten trap we had not caught anything. The marten were not cooperating as usual this year. As we drove to the fourth marten set there hung a beautiful dark male from a tree about head high on me.
Here I am holding the first marten of the day!
Usually my dad used a plant pot to hold the bait and traps. On this one, unlike the rest, he had just wired the bait to a tree and made a small cubby for the trap. It had worked well. A little ways down the trail my dad pointed out to me, up in a tree, a porcupine carcass. I could not tell what it was at first and it scared me. It was a piece of bait to a wolverine trap that my dad had set the previous week. At the top of the hill my dad had made another set for the wolverine that was making him so upset. We had not seen any wolverine tracks so my dad was hoping that we had caught him in one of our traps. To our disappointment the trap was empty. Bummer! We were pretty upset because we knew that he would probably be on the rest of our marten line eating the bait from our sets. We set a larger trap for him hoping that if we did catch him we would have a better chance of holding him. It was a Bridger #5 foot trap. The trap was not all that easy to set, it was very strong. Using the rack of my snow machine. My dad pushed down on the springs, while I spread the jaws. We finally got it set. Looking at the set there was a piece of goose carcass hanging in the middle of three spruce trees. My dad added a piece of beaver to the set and positioned the trap right under the bait, so when the wolverine came in he would try to reach up and get the bait and his paw would step on the trap.
The wolverine had made a habit of following our snow machine track. My dad named him “The Can Opener.” My dad thought it would be a good idea to set a trap in the middle of the trail underneath an overhanging tree with a piece of bait tied to it. As we went underneath an overhanging birch tree my dad thought it would be a good place to set a wolverine set. We drove about 20 feet past it and then stopped.
He hung up a piece of beaver from the birch tree over the trail, then he hid a trap directly underneath the bait in the middle of the snow machine trail. He covered the trap with snow and drew lines over it to make it look like a snow machine and driven over it. I could hardly tell where the trap was.
When we were done, we headed down the hill and over to a different part of the line, where we would hopefully have a couple marten.
On the new part of the line there was spruce and birch. We were going to head up the hill and check our traps along it. Some of the overhanging branches caused me to have to duck so that they would not hit me in the face. My windshield got pretty scarred up and I got stuck a couple times. The trail weaved through the trees so it is very hard to keep on the trail at times and I would get a tree between my skies sometimes. I got quite a few scratches on my face as we went along our marten line checking and picking up our traps. We were going to pick them up because the wolverine would destroy our sets whenever he came to them and the marten were not cooperating. After a long time we finally got a marten. It had some white on its back and was a lot smaller than most. We would not get as much money for this one.
After a while my dad and I started to get hungry. We stopped and got some soup out that all you had to do was add boiling water. I ate it very quickly then we went on to check the rest of our traps. We got another marten. He was larger than the last but smaller than the first. My dad told me that the previous time that he came to this trap he had had a marten and the wolverine came and tore it down and drug it and the hanging pole back into a covered stump area. He had eaten everything but the head.
At one point in the line we went to the top of the mountain range, it was very cold and windy up there. I wanted to go back to the trees because it was making my forehead cold. We had a few more traps to check on the side of the mountain. The wolverine had been there and had followed our snow machine tracks. My dad had been collecting the wolverine urine from other sets that the wolverine had taken the bait from. My dad made a urine post set on the side of the snow machine trail with another one of the #5 Bridgers. We set two traps there, a urine post and a piece of beaver hanging from a tree. We were hoping that he would go for it for a change and we would get rid of him!
Heading home we noticed headlights flickering towards us, it was a couple of my dad’s friends from St. Mary's, Chunky and Darrell.
We talked to them for about 10 minutes and they said they had just come out for a Saturday ride looking for wolves. They told us that they were going to head home.
When we got back to camp we needed to bring in more firewood so we went and cut down some more dead spruce trees. My dad cut them up with his chainsaw while I brought them into the tent. Once we got all the firewood in, we made dinner. When my mom was packaging the food, she did not make a good seal on the Food Saver bags, so while we were warming it up in the pot of hot water, the seal opened up and the food came out. My dad was really mad! After our watery dinner we both curled up in our sleeping bags and I fell asleep in seconds.
It felt good to climb into my sleeping bag after a long day of work.
March 23. 2007
My dad and I are eating spaghetti and drinking apple cider. We have had a good day. We left St. Mary's and got on our trail to the Atchuelinguk River today. We drove probably about 45 miles. My dad had the idea that we could take gas and hang it up between trees so the bears wouldn’t chew on the gas cans in the summer time, and so when he comes back he won't have to haul it out in December when the traveling conditions are very marginal and it is hard to travel. We were having trouble getting it up in the tree but we finally figured out how to do it. We were there for probably an hour and 15 minutes.
March 24, 2007
We got up, we were going to go check the marten and the wolverine sets up on the mountain. We were hoping we would have the can opener. Once we had eaten breakfast we got all our stuff on and got on our snow machines and headed out.
Here I am putting my dry insoles into my winter boots.
We were checking our line and had not gotten anything! The next trap was going to be a wolverine trap! As we drove up, we saw that the trap had been set off. It looked like a wolverine might have gotten caught in it. There was some fur caught between the jaws. It looked like a marten had gotten caught in it and a fox had come and eaten it after it had died. We were pretty bummed out that it was $60 that a fox had eaten out of a wolverine trap. We got to the next few traps and did not have anything.
As we came up to another one of our marten sets it had gone off. There was no trap up on the leaning pole. My dad had used the smaller wire and the marten had broken it off. We saw where he had walked off with the trap. It looked like marten tracks with something hanging off the left side. We tracked him for about half a mile or more and we could not find him, he just kept on going.
The last traps were going to be wolverine sets that we were hoping would contain a wolverine. My dad thought it would be a real good set. Once I got to it we looked down and there was a marten caught in the wolverine trap it was definitely not a wolverine.
A marten caught in a #5 bridger set for a wolverine.
We filled up our snow machines at my dad's old camp where he had stashed some gas. Then he went on to check some more wolverine traps. When we were almost to the next wolverine set, I was crossing my fingers. This was going to be our last chance to catch “The Can Opener.” This was where my dad had made the urine post and the bait hanging from a tree with a trap underneath it, we were wondering if he would show much attention to them. At the set we saw that he had not shown any interest in the sets and walked by! When we saw that the bait had been chewed on. The trap was still under the tree. It looked like a porcupine had climbed up the trunk and reached over and ate it. It was hard to tell because there were wolverine and porcupine tracks all around the tree. When my dad looked at the trap, he saw that the trap had been set off, but the jaws were stuck at the springs and would not go of! We picked up the traps and headed to camp.
Here is what the wolverine set looked like when we drove up.. All that was left of the beaver was the stomach.
There was lots of wolverine and porcupine activity around the set. The trap was directly underneath the bait in the snow.
Looking at the trap we thought the reason it had not gone off when triggered was that it was froze down from the snow covering.
Only after my dad had carefully uncovered the trap from all snow did we realize the springs had gotten hung up at the jaw hinges.
Once we got back to camp we made dinner. It was carbonara that my mom had made and packaged, it was delicious!
My dads 9 lb 11 oz Kifaru wood stove melting a pot of snow to warm up our dinner of carbonara my mom had made and packaged in foodsaver vacume bags.
March 25, 2007
The last few nights that we had spent here, I had got a little bit chilly during the night. I did not like the cold at all. So I decided that last night I was going to be toasty warm. The temperature was probably around 5 below. I wore what I had been wearing the few nights before. My wool socks and about three shirts including the long johns and my down vest, I was going to be toasty. The next morning I woke up and I had not gotten cold at all and I slept very well, and we went to sleep about the same time as the night before and I got up earlier. I could tell that I'd gotten a better sleep.
We were going to go ice fishing at some point in the day but we had about 14 or 15 traps that we had to check. We were going to check 10 of them before we went fishing and then four of them afterward. Once we got to where the line began we checked the first trap. We had switched these sets from plant pots to cubbies. We were hoping that the marten would not be so intimidated to go up in to them. Sure enough we had a marten then we had another one. That was two in a row .
This is a picture of one of my dads cubby sets baited with beaver. It had proven itself to be more successful than the plant pots. It also has a tip up pole which raises the marten when the trap goes off. Preventing the marten from being eaten by shrews and voles.
Once we we're done checking the line and had 2 more marten, we headed back to camp. We got back to camp and took the tent down and reset it up on the river to ice fish for pike. Once we had set it my dad started the fire, it was nice!
My dad and I with standing on the Atchuelinguk River with our Kifaru Tent in the backround.
We were using daredevils with laser sharp hooks, some pink flagging and a piece of beaver for bait. It had been working the week before and we are hoping it would work again this time. We fished for probably about 45 minutes and then I caught one. He was about 16 pounds. It was usually about a 20 min to half an hour wait between each fish until closer to the end, then it started picking up and in all I caught 10 fish.
This is my 16 lb pike that was caught on a daredevil with pink flagging and beaver for bait.
This is the data collected on my pike before the scale broke.
After about three hours of fishing, I noticed an airplane flying low coming towards us. It turned out to be a trooper airplane, it was my dad's friend Dan Dahl coming to visit us. He landed on the river and came in and had some chili. We talked for a while and then we went out to his airplane. I got to sit in the cockpit! It was so cool and my dad took some pictures. Then he got in and took off. He was going to go check on a couple other people down river that were fishing.
Here I am in Trooper Dahl’s Cessna Supercub. I was so excited when he said I could go out and set in the cockpit.
Once we were done fishing, we came back to camp and set up the tent. We had a few more traps that we needed to check. We cut some more wood and brought it in the tent so we would not have to do it in the dark later that night, then we went on to check traps.
March 26th 2007
The next morning we woke up and had oatmeal for breakfast. Since this was our last day that we were going to be here, we were going to pack up our camp. It was going to take a while because we had so much stuff. We had two sleds that we could stuff and then strap some more stuff on to the back snow machine rack. It took us about three or four hours to get everything taken care of. We hid traps up in the woods for next year before we left. My dad and me had a little bit of the spaghetti; my dad said it would probably be our last meal till the next day.
We had about 30 traps that we needed to pull on the way home and we were hoping we would have a couple marten. When we got to the first section of our line we left our sleds since we did not want to take them through the trees and we headed up to check a couple of traps. We did not have any on the first section. At the next section we did the same thing with our sleds. As we came up to one of our sets we saw some fresh marten tracks in the morning snow. It had been there just before we had got there. While my dad was packing up the trap I looked up in a tree and saw something moving, I thought it was a squirrel but then I saw that it was too. It looked at me and I saw that it was a marten, I said “dad look” and he didn't know what it was until he saw it. Then he said get the gun out! I looked up and he was jumping from tree to tree. When he finally got to a spruce he started running down the trunk. When I saw him doing this I ran up to the tree hoping to scare him back up. When he saw me, he ran back up. My dad came up with the 22 semi automatic rifle and said it was shooting a little bit to the left and so I would have to shoot about an inch to the right. But it must have gotten hit, or something had happened to it because it was shooting a lot more left than it had been. I took two shots and missed both times. I aimed more to the right on the third shot I drilled him right through the head and he fell 30 feet out of the tree! Thank goodness it hit the ground. As I went to grab him, I noticed he was still alive. It had just gone through the meat on top of his head and skimmed across this skull. My dad had to stop his heart. I was so excited! I had just shot a marten and I had never even seen one alive in a trap but this was even cooler because it was not in a trap.
It was pretty cool. She was a small female and was not very dark but my dad said that she was my marten since I had shot it. I had just made 50 or $60 dollars. I was pretty psyched. As we went on checking are other lines we had a marten. It was not that good of a marten but we would definitely get money for it.
As we went on checking traps we saw where many marten had come to our traps and walked away. It was nothing new they had been doing that for a long time and my dad and me were tired of it.
Here is another set where a marten had come and looked at the bait and walked away. An abundance of marten prey like voles and squirrels had caused many marten to no longer be interested in our pot sets.
That night we had caught two marten and I had shot one. It was about 11:30 when we checked the last trap. We were going to head home now and it was very windy as we went over a big mountain. It was blowing snow into our faces and it was hard to see. Once we got back to St. Mary's we took in what needed to be brought in like the gun, marten my dad’s backpack and unloaded the rest the next morning. It was pushing 2 am. I slept so good that night.
Here is a graph showing male and female marten weight and length comparison. As you can see the female marten weigh a lot less than the males but are nearly as long.
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#261721 - 07/15/07 08:16 PM
Re: Kids Contest: Rules/Judges/Etc: (Updated Version)
[Re: Andy S]
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Derek Brayen
trapper
Registered: 12/23/06
Posts: 2731
Loc: Erieville, New York
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excelent story Alaska Trapper i really enjoyed it
congrats man
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#262421 - 07/16/07 03:23 PM
Re: Kids Contest: Rules/Judges/Etc: (Updated Version)
[Re: ZachAttack]
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Andy S
trapper
Registered: 12/22/06
Posts: 5931
Loc: IN
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Okay, I am STILL waiting on the judges 
Here's what we got though
The best overall entry out of all categories, will get $140 instead of the $100
We will also have a fourth place winner in each category which will receive an MTP gift certificate generously donated directly by Minnesota Trapline Products (Tim Caven Himself)
And we will have fifth place winners, winner in the older kids will get a nice box of used traps donated by sdavis, and the winner in the younger kids will get three trapping books donated by offshoretrash.
Come on judges, you're killing these kiddies!
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Moderator: Drifter
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