Buckshot's Article

Trappers Mentality

One of the old great trappers Bill Nelison wrote it is not the numbers of animals a person catches that determines if the person is a better trapper then someone else. Bill likes to point this out for a very good reason. If one person is in say Iowa and his first coon check he caught 20 coons in one night sounds like he is a very good trapper compared to someone say out in Northern panhandle of Idaho on his first check caught 2 coons. Simply looking at numbers you would ASS-U-ME the Iowa trapper was better. But the truth is they maybe just be as good as each other simply because Iowa is full of cornfields and is over run with coons and Idaho doesn't have the same numbers especially in the Northern panhandle. Each area is very different and the trapper must learn to adapt to each area to trap or snare the animals he/she wants.

New trappers assume that there is a secret set or bait or whatever that causes large catches. The truth is the person normally has been trapping the area for several years is in a great fur pocket and has low competition from other Trappers. The majority of trappers are out to have fun on limited time and they get all excited when they hear about some new secret and go out and try it. Some work and some don't but, the most important thing is they miss what is the target animal in their area to begin with. What ? Of course the animals are there you say I caught them last year. Ahh, now we come into studying the animals and cause and effect.

What cause and effect for each area will be different each year. Here is good example from my trapline. One farm caught 5 red fox and no raccoons. Now the following year it would be easy to assume the farm would be a another 5 red fox but, what happened the following year was 6 raccoons and no fox. What happened was Parvo raged through and wiped out the fox and nature filled the void with raccoons. The 3rd year produced 2 coyotes and 4 coons but, again no red fox. The coyotes drove the fox out. The fourth year was the big disappointment, 1 coon and 1 coyote. A wolf family moved in and the coyotes left and so did the raccoons (or the coons were eaten.)

Thinking like a trapper you have to study the animals and how they travel and hunt. But interesting things happen all the time on the trapline. The biggest rule is nothing is written in stone. You have to play around try this and that area and set for all animals coming through. Why in the world would you set just for fox and not coyotes? But understanding the coyote travel circle is vital too. Coyote here in Michigan are on a 7-10 day circle. This can be very frustrating especially when the coyote has a full stomach and walks by your set.

I have been telling people that the wolves here are wiping out the deer herds but, no one believes me. Why? Because the DNR says there is only 350 wolves for 5 years. But, a little research into the subject I found that wolves are breeding machines that will increase in size 1000% every 8 years. That means they increase by 112% per year but, for sake of argument we will say 100% per year that means the Michigan wolf population in 5 years has a total of 1,750 wolves. But the problem is wolves don't read hunting regulation and hunt deer all year long. Most biologist will admitted they have no clue on how many fawns are being wiped out by wolves because the whole carcass is consume hooves head and all. I would estimate that those 1,750 wolves are eating about 50,000 deer a year. The general public has been brainwashed for years by TV. They just follow the DNR around like lemming over the cliff and believe everything they say. The cliff in this case will be the wiping out of the deer herd. Each year the wolf population will increase and the deer herd will shrink.

I have the trappers mentality and understand cause and effect very well. The results are going to be disastrous for the U. P. of Michigan deer hunting. Then when the facts are so overwhelming they can no longer be denied only then will the DNR do something about it. Maybe.

Bruce "Buckshot"