Post by Lady Trapper on Jan 22, 2007 19:16:38 GMT -5
Nothing like spending some time on a trap line with a pair of veterans
By MIKE BARNABI T-R Sports Writer
By MIKE BARNABI T-R Sports Writer
For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by the sport of trapping.
I think it all started when I was a kid and I leafed through my first copy of Fur-Fish-Game or I saw my first pictures of people like Tom Miranda, who would be standing there smiling with pelts as far as the eye could see.
“Some of these guys are making their living doing nothing but trapping,” I recall thinking. “How awesome would that be?”
Of course I didn’t realize then how much time, skill, effort, etc. went into it. Particularly I think it was the skill part that really held me back. And fur prices are about the only prices I can think of that are actually lower now than they were in, say, the 1980s. So much for that career decision.
I also didn’t realize just how many stray cats were running around, how little possum and rabbit furs were worth and how upset the neighbors got when I managed to outwit their dogs with one of my sets – which usually consisted of some piece of aged left-over meat plucked from the refrigerator and placed nimbly on the pan of a 1 1/2 coil spring.
Obviously, my trapping career never panned out the way I had hoped! It doesn’t mean I lost all interest in it, it just means, like a lot of other things, I wasn’t very good at it.
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Even with fur prices low and the price of gas and trapping supplies high, I still managed to find a few dyed-in-the-wool trappers plying their craft. And, over the course of the last month or two, I spent a few days out on the trap line, something I haven’t done in a virtual coon’s age.
I rode around with skilled trappers like Jim Scott of Strasburg, whose personalized license plate -- JS TRAPR -- says it all, and Gene McCluskey of Dennison. And I learned a lot about the great sport of trapping. Like, for instance, it was a good thing I didn’t try to make my living solely by trapping!
Like most trappers in this day and age, neither of these veterans does it for the money.
“By the time you buy traps, snares, lures and everything else... if I make enough money to pay for the gas in the truck, I’m happy,” said Scott, who like a lot of us first started trapping as a kid. “It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy it.”
“When you figure the price of traps and snares, plus all the gas, tires, brakes and wear and tear on your truck, I probably don’t make a dime,” said McCluskey, a die-hard trapper for the past 65 years. “But I don’t do it to make money, I do it because I love it. I love the outdoors. I think being outdoors is healthy for you.”
Both men have nuisance-control licenses from the state of Ohio and are skilled at catching a wide range of animals, though Scott has honed in pretty good on catching raccoons, with over 100 to his credit this year alone.
Both also have embraced the art of setting snares, a practice that used to be illegal in Ohio.
“I use more snares now,” said Scott. “Snares are pretty cheap and they are nice around buildings. If you do happen to catch a domestic animal, they are a lot easier to release from a snare than they are from a trap.”
“Snares are easier to use,” said McCluskey, who pursues muskrats, coons, fox, coyotes, beavers and otters on a yearly basis. “Especially when the snow is on. You can track an animal in the snow and there’s no doubt where he’s traveling.”
Snares, otters, coon pelts bringing in $10 or so. There’s no doubt the game has changed over the years.
“Most U.S. fur goes overseas any more,” said Scott. “China, Germany, Russia, Italy -- those countries are buying a lot of fur.”
“I caught three otters last year and shipped them to Canada and I still haven’t gotten a check for them because no one has bought them,” said McCluskey, who added that prices are expected to be a little higher this year. One of those otters he shipped weighed over 27 pounds, which stood as the District 3 record for a while.
Even with all the challenges that trapping presents -- lately it’s been mild temperatures and torrential rains -- both men plan to continue plugging away at it, because, well, they still enjoy it.
“It’s like anything else,” said Scott. “A lot of guys like to hunt deer -- I like to trap. I guess it’s a competitive thing, kind of like me against the animals. It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy it.”
“Some guys like to golf, I like to trap,” said McCluskey. “I do it because I enjoy it. The pedal on a trap is only 2 inches across. If you can get a fox or coyote to step on that 2-inch pedal with all that land out there... it’s a great feeling.”
(Mike Barnabi is a sports writer for The Times-Reporter.)