Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i The Trapper

Two fox species are commonly pursued in North America: the red and gray. Smaller kit and swift foxes are hunted in isolated plains habitats, though they’re often protected because of relative regional scarcity. The red fox has garnered a well-deserved reputation as a sly operator. The reason is twofold: its predominantly Eastern digs and increased exposure to man in those more densely populated regions, but also its general inclination for nocturnal tendencies. Like the woodchuck, the sporting literature of my youth was filled with red fox calling tales, sparking early predator calling ambitions. Red foxes, like coyotes, are omnivorous but relish meat. It’s important to remember red foxes are relatively small, and a 15-pounder is a brute. Consequently, red foxes generally disregard the coarse calls of jackrabbits or deer fawns,…

I was a lot like most new trappers many years ago when I only sold my furs to the local country buyer. It was a simple process. They would buy jsut about all of my fur, and they did not care if it was even skinned, let alone finished. This made the selling process very easy for a young kid. I can’t imagine that I received the best prices for my furs, like I would have received if I had shopped around some more. I did not haggle over the prices, and as a youngster, I sold most of my fur in the “round” (entire animal). I looked forward to the trip with my father every year to sell my season’s catch and the money I received. But as I…

Crock-Pot Fox INGREDIENTS: 4 red fox hind legs 4 cups chicken broth 1 medium onion, chopped 6 potatoes, chopped 2 cups carrots 1 cup flour 2 cups milk Salt and pepper to taste 1 teaspoon garlic powder 1 cup oil DIRECTIONS: 1. Heat oil in frying pan to 375 degrees. 2. Dip legs in milk, coating the entire pieces. Roll in flour. 3. Fry until brown on both sides. 4. Place chicken broth, fried legs, potatoes, carrots, garlic powder and onion into the crock-pot. Set to high. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook until meat is tender and loose on the bone, about 3 hours. 5. De-bone meat. Add it back to the pot. 6. Enjoy! This recipe is excerpted from The Mountain Man Cookbook, SKU U9370, available for sale…

One thing that is as certain as death and taxes, is that you can expect to have trouble with squirrels at one time or another in your life. A really tough, frustrating problem that homeowners have is when squirrels enter their attics. The biggest complaint from homeowners is the scratching sound made by the squirrels, which happens as they prepare to have babies. There are several ways to prevent squirrels from entering your attic, but first you must make sure that there are no squirrels still inside the house. A call to a professional animal damage control trapper to come and take care of the problem could cost several hundred dollars. Instead, taking care of it yourself is simple and much, much less expensive. I recommend purchasing squirrel-size cage traps…

An old male coyote has a simple agenda. He just wants to eat, propagate and survive. As far as being adaptable in his environment, he is at the top of the list. If he has to, he can learn how to survive in urban areas by preying on pets and getting his water out of swimming pools. Give him an inch and he will take a mile. The coyote is constantly aware of what is going on in his world. And he’s always ready to take advantage of a good meal. What makes this coyote a challenge to trap is the ability to learn from its mistakes. When I instruct and coach young coyote trappers, the first words out of my mouth will be, “Develop good habits and learn all…

Most winter coyote callers focus their efforts on the wide-open spaces of the West or the dense forests of the East and South. Somewhere in the middle, however, we find a vast area that is dominated not by woods or prairie grass, but by great expanses of 6-foot-tall grasses, weeds and saplings. These are renowned as “CRP fields” or, specifically, Conservation Reserve Program fields famed for the concept of paying farmers for not growing standard crops. In a nutshell, according the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the CRP Program is a land conservation program administered by the Farm Service Agency (FSA). In exchange for a yearly rental payment, farmers enrolled in the program agree to remove environmentally sensitive land from agricultural production and plant species that will improve environmental health and…

Burr ... Nope, I don’t mean burrrr as in cold, I mean burr as in cockle, or any of its kindred flora. And for cryin’ out loud don’t make a set in the middle of them. The chaff pile set goes back a long way, back to the days of the early mechanical harvesters. Combines (combination reaper/thresher) would often get plugged up as they harvested the fields. Then they would spit out the discarded material in a clump, leaving it as a pile in the field. This pile included primarily chaff from the threshing process, along with plant stems, weed seeds and some leftover grain. The grain and the weed seeds made these chaff piles a haven for the mice that had been displaced in the harvesting. And as a…

Do you remember your earliest trapping successes? How about the first failures? I was recently reminded about my tender early years as a trapper. As a youngster I was fascinated by the little things like the web between beaver toes, and muskrat dens hidden along the banks of the river that flowed through town. Finding the places to set traps was just as exciting as catching a furbearer. Looking at a finished beaver pelt that took me just under 80 minutes to complete filled me with excitement for the next day’s check. Recently, my young son came along with me on the trapline like he has since he was just a few months old, but this time was different. This time he carried a pack basket that his Papa handcrafted…

September 15, 2018, was a day that I will never forget. My wife and I had been having diffi culties all summer, and I was struggling with undiagnosed depression. On that day, she decided that she couldn’t live with it anymore, and we separated. My heart was broken, and my life was changed forever. Normally autumn is my favorite time of the year. The crisp air, the leaves turning a dizzying array of colors, and the hunting and trapping seasons in full swing. However, with my life in turmoil, I was not in the mood to hunt or trap. My depression worsened to the point that my estranged wife enrolled me in an outpatient program for anxiety and depression. Regardless of the fact that our relationship was ending, her taking…

I was talking to a trapping buddy on the phone one day. He had been shopping for a new trapping truck. Of course, any conversation about a truck between two trappers will undoubtedly include the make, model and drivetrain. You’ve got your plain old two-wheel drive, and your four-wheel drive. There is an in between option. A limited-slip differential that supplies power to the opposite wheel if one wheel starts to spin. I didn’t think any more about that conversation, until a couple of days later I came home and found Miz in a huff — a very large huff. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I think you know,” Miz stomped. She was right. I probably knew what it was, I just didn’t know it was wrong. We have these conversations…