Wednesday morning bobcat

[Huntsman27]

keep them coming!

[Northcountry]

Nothing picture-worthy since the Wednesday morning bobcat.

Thursday caught a coon and a possum.

Friday (this morning) its 19-degrees and the wet soil has my sets frozen solid. This is the first morning all season, where I have not had at least some kind of action. No matter, I'm pulling this line tomorrow and moving to another area as previously planned.

-NC

[hunter5054]

hey NC could you post those pics of the coon and opossums please.....thanks ~mike

[chuckinduck]

Maybe this is a dumb question but I am not familiar with trapping, I just assumed the traps would break their foot when they went off, is this incorrect. Cool picture of the cat too.

[David G Duncan]

chuckinduck,

This is probably the biggest misconcept about trapping by non-trappers, that the trap is so powerful that it does significant damage to the animals foot. This is the farest from the true.

A good example of how a trap does not do serious damage was demonstrated to us by our 13 lb. Silky Terrier by the name of Tanner. A few years back our daughter took him for a walk on our property during trapping season. We had forget to tell her that I had some coyote traps set out back.

You quessed it, he got caught in one of my very strong #3 double longspring traps. By the end of the day he had stopped favoring his leg and was pretty much back to normal. Unfortunately our daughter took several weeks to heal up from the bites on her hands, that she received while she was trying to get him out of the trap.

I have demonstrated this fact to many friends by simply springing a trap intentional on my hand. It really don't hurt, unless you snap it directly on your finger nail .

A trap is designed to hold the target animal and not do serious damage to their foot. If the trap were to break bones in the foot then the effectiveness of the trap to hold the animal until the trapper arrives would be lost. This is just common sense.

Another misconception is that a trapped animal will chew it's foot off to get out the trap. This is definitely not true!!! Raccoons and skunk will sometimes chew on their foot below the trap jaws, because there is no feeling in them. But they will never chew on their foot above the trap jaws.

I hope this will help in a small way to explain the way a foothold trap actually works. I have come up on many Red Fox curled up asleep in my trap over the years, will indicated to me that they were not in any serious discomfort, having their foot in my properly sized trap.

[Northcountry]

Good job explaining, Dave.

I just wanted to add a couple of other things...

As trappers using foot hold traps, we strive for "pad catches". This means that we catch the animal at, or above the pads of the feet. This provides a very good hold of the animal, without the need for high power. When gripped above the pads, the foot simply cant be pulled out.

I would also like to say that as a second-year trapper, soaking-in all the info I could possibly digest over the last 2 years, I have found that animal comfort and welfare is a great concern of all trappers. First, we select the proper sized trap for the animal to be harvested...being careful to not use something too big. Then, we sand the sharp edges off the jaws of traps to make them smooth, we modify our chains with numerous swivels so that the animal cant bind and hurt itself, and some people even use jaw "laminations" to increase the contact area of the jaw. Greater contact area means less PSI on the animals foot at the contact point. Taking this even further, some people use "soft catch" traps with rubber-surfaced jaws.

Really, I have found that trappers are very concerned with animal welfare and comfort. If we dont want to harvest the animal we caught, for whatever reason, we want to be able to release it with zero effect or damage to it. I personally take great pride in this. Wildlife managers use foothold traps to capture animals and relocate them, either because they are a nuisance or because they want to start a population elsewhere. They wouldnt use foothold traps if they hurt the animal.

Finally, I would like people to remember that animals' feet are not like ours, in respect to "pain" and sensation. Animals can run through icy water in winter, then up on the bare ice, through snow, back in the water, over gravel, broken sticks, etc etc....never once stopping to complain that their feet are cold, they dont warm them up at a fire or put socks on Why? Because they have evolved with tougher feet than use, very little blood or nerves, just tendons. When we catch them, they just know they are stuck...thats all. I doubt they feel any pain whatsoever.

If you have a broadband connection, please feel free to go to my server and watch a 10-minute video on foothold traps.

http://www.parlin.com/huntfish/Destr...the%20Myth.wmv

-NC

[FIJI]

not a trapper here ...(although I've tagged along with others to check traps) The video does a good job of explaining things.

[POLARBEAR]

north country, very nice video clip and informative no doubt. thanks for sharing and doing what you guys do.

David duncan and north country thank you for sharing your pics and expertise.

btw, my mom could give you guys a run for your money. lol. she has trapped dozens of animals in livonia on her .5acre. her favorite trap is the have a heart live trap. lol

[David G Duncan]

Originally Posted by Northcountry

Wildlife managers use foothold traps to capture animals and relocate them, either because they are a nuisance or because they want to start a population elsewhere.

NC,

This quote reminded me of this extra thing. Many years ago during mink trapping I caught an otter and released it. On my next visit to the DNR office to find out when the beaver season would be opening, I talked to the wildlife biologist. This name was Bob Huff, as I recall. Anyway, I told him about releasing an otter from my mink trap.

He then proceeded to explain that the state of Michigan had recently received wild turkeys from Pennsylvania and we had agreed to supply them with some river otter in exchange for the turkey. At this time there were only a few wild turkeys in Michigan, but we had a lot more river otters than Penn.

So Bob asked me to bring in the next otter I might accidently catch in my mink traps.

About a week later, I had a young female otter in one of my mink traps. I was canoeing the river and used two plastic milk crates wired together to create a cage. Got the otter in the cage and then released the #1 1/2 coilspring trap. Placed the caged otter in the front of the canoe and proceeded down river.

Within a matter of minutes the otter curled up and when to sleep. Later I feed her some crayfish that I caught by hand and she was content to go back to sleep.

Then the next day I delivered the otter to the DNR office and it was flown to Rose Lake experimental station, given some shots and flown to Penn. and released.

This clearly demonstrates know humane and effective foothold traps can be in assisting with wildlife conservation!!!

Now I really enjoy hunting those Tom Turkeys and I guess I can look back and take a little credit for the fine population of turkeys that we have in the state today. I hope that Penn. has many more river otter than they had back then, also .