Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2020 i The Trapper

I lost a good friend on a hot summer Sunday in 2019, just short of his 82nd birthday. Jill and I were leaving the NTA convention in Spring field, Missouri, heading for Russellville, Arkansas, to tell Tommy Aycock goodbye. He’d been sick for some time, and he was failing fast. We’d just cleared the city limits when my phone chirped. fie message was from Tommy’s daughter-in-law Elizabeth, telling us we were too late. My amigo had trapped his last beaver. Tommy and I were friends 40 years. We had much in common: reading, baseball, good eats. But mostly we loved the outdoors, and over those four decades we spent a lot of time there together, usually either turkey hunting or trapping. Until he was nearly 70, Tommy was hard to…

It is extremely hard to believe what is happening worldwide right now, and just as hard to believe how our very own trade is paralyzed. We are now about to enter the trapping season of 2020 and the fur from 2019 is still, for the most part, unsold. Sure, some trappers may have been paid when they sold locally, but in the big picture, most of the fur of 2019 is “in transit,” somewhere between the producers (the trappers) and the manufacturers. Many of the local buyers have the fur stored somewhere, waiting either for prices to recover or waiting for calls from manufacturers. A lot of the wild fur also sits in cold storage at Fur Harvesters Auction in North Bay, Ontario, and everyone awaits patiently for the next…

Email reports to Chris.Berens@Media360LLC.com Arizona Trappers Association arizonatrappersassociation.com President — Wayne Boring, traparizona@gmail.com 928-243-0973 Vice President — Rick Van Horn, Kingman, 928-757-3860 Secretary — Grace Van Horn, Kingman, 928-757-3860 Treasurer — Mike Huffer, Scottsdale, 480-970-5904 Membership — Carrie Crouther, Flagstaff, 928-699-4305 Directors: Apache County — Scott Trowbridge, Chinle, 928-349-0405 Cochise County — Bob Lackner, Willcox, 520-384-3279 Coconino County — Lance Crowther, Flagstaff, 928-607-9380 Gila County Vacant Graham County Park — Romney, Thatcher, 928-428-6952 Greenlee County — Vacant Lapaz County — Vacant Maricopa County — Vacant Mohave County — Rick Van Horn, Kingman, 928-757-3860 Navajo County — Jim Manard, Heber, 928-535-9029 Pima County — Atom Hatley, Arivaca, 520-444-7116 Pinal County — Jeff Serdy, Apache Jct., 602-820-4429 Santa Cruz County — Vacant Yavapai County — Vacant Yuma County — Ryan Trousdale, Tacna,…

SEPT 18-19: West Virginia Trappers Association 52nd Annual Convention at the Gilmer County Recreation Center in Glenville, WV. Board meeting Friday at 7:00 p.m. Registration for Free Trappers Education Class Saturday at 8:30 a.m. Demos and supply vendors both days. General membership meeting at 12:30 p.m. Saturday. Awards ceremony and benefit auction will be Saturday at 1 p.m. Meet, Eat and Greet at 6 p.m. Something for everyone! All events are free and open to the public. For more information contact Briana Frederick at 304-997-1863 or log on to www.wvtrappers.com. SEPT 25-26: Northern Great Lakes Fur Harvesters Annual Convention at Chippewa County Fair Grounds in Kinross, MI. Contact Mark Spencer at (906) 292-4779, Spenfurs@lighthouse.net; or Dan Johnson at (906) 643-7992, beaversecretaryno1@gmail.com. OCT 4: New Jersey Trappers Association Convention at Space…

There is an old adage that says: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.” This does not apply to trappers. If you don’t speak around trappers, they’ll think you are hard of hearing and will start talking at you in very loud voices. I do recognize that many beginning trappers may feel awed in the presence of some of the wizened wizards, who have many years on the line. But don’t be shy. Here are some pointers to let you join in on the conversation. In the first place, have some confidence in yourself. Maybe you’re not a longliner, like those other fellows — but maybe you are. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you ran a…

As we travel the trapline, it seems like there is always some need for cutting roots. Especially when it comes to making a trap bed where woody vegetation abounds. The first line of defense in this arena is to sharpen the edge of the tool with which you dig your trap beds. We don’t think a wit about sharpening a skinning knife, but what about the edge of your digging tool? Sharpen your shovel, or trowel as the case may be. A file or a grinding wheel will do nicely. If it gets dull, and it will, sharpen it again. That is the first line of defense in cutting through a root, and will suffice in the case of most smaller specimens. There are other options. From the beginning, one…

Originally created by a lifelong coyote trapper to help fool a canine’s powerful sense of smell around his sets, Scent Thief Field Spray has been in development for more than 20 years, with five years of extensive field testing. It works equally well for trappers, predator callers and deer hunters. Scent Thief works by temporarily relaxing the olfactory epithelium in both humans and animals. The olfactory epithelium is a specialized epithelial tissue inside the nasal cavity that is involved in smell. It lies on the roof of the nasal cavity above and behind the nostrils. The olfactory epithelium is the part of the olfactory system directly responsible for detecting odors. With the olfactory epithelium relaxed, an animal can no longer detect odors of any kind. This product is all-natural and…