Beaver Trapping by TrapperGord

Posted on February 20, 2011 by gordy

This last two weeks I have been setting beaver traps under the ice in northern Alberta, Canada.  Weather conditions up here have been especially rough this year with very cold temperatures, deep heavy snows, flood ice and strong winds.

It certainly could be a lot worse but since I started setting traps the temperature has bounced between -22 to -32 Celsius.  With a constant wind that brings the overall chill factor closer to -35-45C.  Under these conditions if a person isn’t careful it doesn’t take very long at all to freeze any exposed skin.  I always want to laugh when I hear a radio announcer say it is -25 but with the wind it feels like -35.  The truth is if you are outside and it feels like -35 and you are not properly prepared for the cold it will only feel like -35 for a short while and then it won’t feel like anything at all.  Until you start to thaw out and then that frostbitten flesh is going to hurt like hell.

Most of the beaver ponds I’m trapping are fairly shallow with about four to six feet of water in them, and because of the three to four feet of insulating snow on top the ice thickness around the beaver houses ranges from a just few inches to about a foot thick.  Most of these ponds are grassy sloughs so each winter the grass decays and it creates Hydrogen Sulphide Gas (H2S).  Over winter the water turns very black, brackish, and smelly.  The gas often creates open spots in the ice that are not readily visible under the snow until you’re almost on top of them.

The snow is so deep this year that while I can find beaver houses it is hard to tell if they are active.  My procedure at each new spot is to run my sled in a big circle near each house and then stop on my track the second time around. If i didn’t do this I couldn’t get going again due to the deep, heavy powdery snow.  Once I have a beaten down trail I take my needle bar, a six foot long piece of cold roll steel with a forged triangular chisel on one end and a ring welded on the other and I cautiously approach the beaver house probing the ice every step until I get to the house.  I then go around the house feeling with my feet and needle bar until I locate the beaver’s food raft.  I usually kick or shovel enough snow away to uncover part of the food raft and determine if it is vegetation from this past fall.  Once I know that the beaver house is occupied I shovel a trail around the house or clear snow away from a few points near the food raft.

Using my trusty needle bar I chisel openings through the ice large enough to set a trap through.  Nearly always the first time I open up the ice the water gushes out due to the immense weight of the snow pressing down on the ice.  I often wonder if reducing the pressure on the water makes it easier for the beaver down there to get around.  It’s just an amusing thought that often comes to mind while I’m standing up top in a few inches of black smelly water. If the ice is thin the warm water quite often enlarges the hole very rapidly and under a few inches of dark water any hole gets harder to see and a lot of care has to be taken to make sure that I don’t accidentally go through.

This last week I have mostly been making sets around the food rafts.  I am hanging Belisle Super X 330’s and Sauvageau 2001-12’s for traps with various fresh baits down in close to the food rafts. I have sales for the castor, pelts and carcasses which all together should give me a pretty good price for each beaver. Like everything with trying to make a living trapping it comes down to numbers.

The Beaver population has exploded in this area and have flooded hundreds of square miles with their activity. By mid March I should be running about 150 traps under the ice. Between chopping holes in the ice, skinning beaver and setting a few wolf traps I’m going to be pretty busy for the next couple of months. It’s a good thing that the days are beginning to get longer up here.

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And a Tom Lynx in a Spruce Tree by AJ Callbeck

Posted on February 1, 2011 by gordy

As I pull up to the next cubby on my snow machine I’m really hoping I have a lynx waiting for me. This isn’t anything out of the ordinary; I usually have that feeling of anticipation and excitement whenever I pull up to a set but in this case the excitement was even greater. I’d been trapping several traplines that are all more or less within snowmobiling distance of each other for almost two months at this point. I suppose that technically so long as you keep driving anything is snowmobiling distance but after you spend ten hours a day on one of those machines it starts to wear you out. I’d been setting traps for everything but I focused mostly on lynx. The lynx cycle was at it’s peak and they were everywhere. The reason I was really hoping I could just get one more lynx that day was because next lynx would be an important one to me. It would be the one hundredth lynx I caught that season.

The cubby is disturbed. That’s a good sign I figure. There’s only one problem. The lynx is nowhere to be found. I set all my lynx snares on vertical drags and wire one end to a solid anchor. The theory is that when the lynx gets caught it will pull the drag away from the cubby and won’t wreak the cubby as much. Once in a blue moon though the wire comes undone or breaks and the lynx takes off until the drag gets caught up on something. That’s when your tracking skills come into play. It’s not hard to track a lynx caught with a drag. I use at least an eight foot drag and the track it makes when drug in the snow is almost impossible to overlook. However, at this cubby no tracks lead away from the tree. I do a few circles around the tree looking for any sign of which way it went but still find nothing.

I walk back to my skidoo awfully confused and a little peeved. I turn around for one last look when I see it. Hanging from a branch thirty feet up the tree is the lynx. In an instant I go from joy back to being confused and peeved. Just how does one get a lynx out of a tree without a chainsaw or a ladder or something? After walking around looking at lynx and trying to come up with a solution I get an idea. I grab my .22 an try shooting one of the branches the lynx is caught on in half. After a few well placed shots the branch breaks and the lynx falls to the next branch. I repeat this until finally the lynx is low enough to grab. I’ve gotten my one hundredth lynx. It seems kinda fitting that it wasn’t the easiest to get. After the lynx is loaded onto my sleigh and the cubby rebuilt I chuckle to myself thinking about all the “wasted ammunition” I’ve shot over the years, and I once again start down the trail.

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Wild Boar Trapping

Posted on January 23, 2011 by gordy

What are Wild Boars?

The European Wild Boar is a lot different than a feral hog which is just a domestic pig gone wild. European Wild Boars have been around forever and many portraits of memorable boar hunts from prehistoric times decorate the walls of cave dwellings in Europe. They are survivors and certainly they are a formidable prey. They are intelligent with their combined senses serving them very well to find food as well as to warn them of danger. Their bodies are well armored with fat, muscle and a thick hide. In a fight they are probably as dangerous as anything around. Their size, speed and tusks make them pretty darn formidable. They move silently and can camouflage themselves in almost any terrain. They are flighty and will run most of the time. However I have found that Wild Boars are cool customers and are not given to panic. They can get huge and are intimidating to look at. They also can be quite aggressive at times with no discernible provocation. Experience has taught me to respect them and to never trust them. For the most part they are not a problem but every now and then a wild boar scares the pants off of someone.

Wild Boars mostly eat plants but they are omnivorous and will take time out from making a huge mess out of a planted crop to clean up small animals and any nests that come into their path. It’s because of this that Wild Boars are getting quite a bit of attention these days. In some areas of Alberta European Wild Boars have found their freedom and are now running at large. In some counties and municipal districts their populations have reached a point where they are a being viewed as a threat and bounties have been set up for them. A few hunters are going after them and turning in the ears for cash. Trappers should also be getting into the game. It’s another way for trappers to show our knowledge and value to our modern society. Besides that it’s a lot of fun.

How to make a trap for Wild Boars

Wild Boars are really easy to trap and if everything is done right a whole herd of them can be caught in a single trap. Commercial traps are available but if you are handy with a welder and have a couple of hours a very effective trap can be built. Another couple of hours setting it up on location and you can have a permanent trap that with a little maintenance will work for you for years. The first trick is to make a drop gate with a trigger of some kind that the wild Boars themselves will trip. The ones that I use are very simple affairs featuring a guillotine style gate and a trip wire running to the back of the pen. My trigger is very short and sits on BB’s to speed things up. When a boar rubs his back on the trip wire that is tied to the trigger and a solid point in the pen the gate comes crashing down and locks swing into place to hold it solidly in place.

The next thing you need is to make sure that you build a large enough pen for them. Pigs are pigs and they will resent being locked up. If the catch pen is large enough that it doesn’t sink in that they are trapped they will work a lot less hard to escape. A normal wire fence won’t cut it and you will only be educating your wild boars. You need to use ¼ inch wire livestock panels for your pen and they must be held on the outside with well anchored “T” bars. Four foot panels will work but if you can get five foot panels they work better. Wild boars can jump and they’ll do their best to clear the pen. A roof is a good idea even if it’s just a tarp that is well supported inside the pen with “T” bars. The wild boars won’t challenge it as quickly. I have found that by making the pen more circular in shape there is less stress in the corners. Wild boars will beat the hell out of the corners and do their best to root under them. I use heavy zip ties to hold my panels to my “T” bars. I use lots of them and make sure that they are tight and in good condition before I set my trap.

How to bate Wild Boars

Finally you need bait and like anything other animal that you want to successfully and consistently trap you need a good location that will appeal to Wild Boars. I usually prebait using peas, barley or wheat until I see confident activity in and around the pen. Pig tracks and deer tracks at a glance can look the same so make sure that you are setting on solid wild boar sign before cocking your trigger. Deer will find your bait but they will hop out of a pen as long as there is no roof. Get your trap set up and use lots of bait. If there are boars in the area they will find it. It takes some patience because boars like most wild animals travel the same area quite a bit and for the first while they will be skittish and unreliable. But once they get the idea that food is to be had in that same spot every day they will begin to pattern out much more predictably. After that it’s as easy as baking a cake. This wonderful survivor from prehistoric days who is so capable of making it on its own intelligence and hard work can always be caught with a free lunch. I guess in that respect they are pretty much like Liberals.

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Making Memories by Jasmine Boucher

Posted on January 13, 2011 by gordy

It was nearing the end of hunting season, the roads not as busy as they had been. The country was starting to go back to normal… peaceful. It was time to start trapping! So off we went trying to beat a trail, put a few sets and enjoy the day that otherwise would have been spent at school. I have to say that spending a day in the snow is better than spending the day at a desk. I suppose that the teachers will have to get used to it… first missing school for hunting season, then for trapping season… what’s next?

The first few days after getting the sets up we were out there every day seeing if we had caught anything. It was a Friday off and I was home on my own. Nearing mid-day I made my mind up that I was going to go skating – or more so try to clear some snow off the ice so I could skate. After spending a fair bit of time on the “fresh” ice I decided to head it back. On my way back I was debating whether or not I should check the line – I mean we checked it yesterday and my mom’s more of the outdoorsmen but what the heck I might as well. Heading through the now slightly packed snow, drift by drift getting closer, with three more sets left to check my hands were starting to get frosty. Pulling around the corner I began reducing my speed and, down shifting the quad then finally turning off the engine. No noise… silence, all you could hear was the slight breeze whispering by. Looking around at the surroundings I saw frosty trees, the crisp blue sky and, the new tracks in the fresh snow. Down the snowy hill, through the spruce trees, I stopped… looked… and ran the last few paces. It was our first marten of the year! I was so excited I nearly forgot to get it. With the critter being frozen solid there was no way I was going to get him out of the trap. So I grabbed ‘im checked the last two sets and headed on home. I couldn’t wait till my mom got home so I could show her.  A few hours passed and she showed up… I sent her to see what was in the corner and all the way there she was saying “WHAT could possibly be in the corner that I so need to see?”When she finally saw it her expression totally changed she was so excited it seemed she had just won a million dollar lottery! The smile on her face had definitely made the trip worthwhile.

The following day mom and I went out; low and behold there was another little guy in a different set. That glitter came back into her eyes and her smile got bigger. Our second one within twenty-four hours! Now the easy part was done and the work started. A couple hours left in the evening with both a marten to skin and homework to do it was definitely obvious which was more important… so I got out my handy little knife and started to work.

What I learned from this is that when you spend eight hours a day, five days a week and, ten months a year for twelve years in the same place you are not going to remember every single part of that it. But if you take a day off and do something you enjoy you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.

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