Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Trapper Tales

Well I have been a busy little beaver! So busy in fact that Ive neglected my blog for awhile, so I'm hoping to do some catch up!  This past weekend my husband & I got our BC Trappers licenses, in a 3 day course.  Anyone who knows where I live, knows about all our beavers in our creek. Sometimes the populations get so large that culverts are plugged and our land as well as all the neighbours land floods to where you cant get home from work & the roads close!  I wanted to do something that would help, and as avid hunters we love animals, so we thought becoming trappers would be a fun hobby.  All respect to the fur bearers, every part is used and nothing goes to waste!  We also have a huge wolf population that is cleaning northern BC out of most of our deer & moose populations, and so the government has asked for help to reduce some wolf numbers.  Since they are so adaptable & hearty, we are risking loosing some wonderful animals to endangered list soon if this continues.
 Here I am in my class learning to nail beaver pelt to a drying size board.
Our instructor is great, and here he is teaching us about different types of trap settings.

Above he is prepping  a water beaver set.


Here he is teaching us a urine post set for coyotes.



Below are 2 giant nearly 60 pound beavers trapped
in our class. There are known to be more than 100 in just a few miles, so this
didn't really make a population dent in any sort.




I don't think you can see in the above picture where we learned to make wolf snares.


This is showing how to set a lynx trap


It was a great & educational weekend!


Trapping & trap lines have so much history, its interesting to learn all about how our ancestors lived off the land , and hunted & trapped.  If your interested in trapping, there are some great books out there , but nothing beats live demos and fresh air!!
great link on fur:


3 comments:

Kathy Felsted Usher said...

This is amazing! I believe they have classes here for the kids on beaver trapping. I know our subdivision lake has them and one of the residents usually took care of them but they moved so maybe this is something to look into. We have so many deer here that it can be dangerous to drive, they have sanctioned hunts in the office parks and neighboring subdivisions. Of course everyone gets up in arms about it that lives in town because they don't understand. Wolves are something we don't have. We battle coyotes, especially with having chickens, and a bobcat or two but nothing like wolves. There have been a few mountain lions spotted (Missouri of all places) and in the suburbs. Black bear too are becoming more numerous. That doesn't bother me but the mountain lions do.

Angie said...

Thanks Kathy It was alot of fun!
ang

Sherry Sutherby http://russ-stickacres.blogspot.com/ said...

Love your Blog Ang!! Thank you for visiting mine also. Yes on the free-ranging rabbits. They do very well, if you have a hearty breed. I'll add some comments to my Blog post. Thanks for following!