Time to start preparing for winter outdoor activities

We are solidly into fall with the overnight freezing temperatures, shorter days, leaves falling or being blown off the trees, and the calendar identifying the time of year as the fall equinox. The moose season is over, and the lakes are chilling down and will soon start to freeze over. It’s time to start preparing for winter outdoor activities.

Things like icefishing, riding snowmachines, skiing, snowshoeing, and other outdoor activities that require snow and/or safe ice will have to wait a bit. We’re not quite that far along with the weather just yet. But one activity that can happen regardless of weather conditions is fast approaching. That activity is trapping.

For those who enjoy pursuing a trapping lifestyle (I was one), the time between now and Nov.10 (opening day for most of the trapping seasons in Alaska) can be used in getting gear cleaned and organized; repairing, boiling and blackening traps; getting scent lures arranged and updated; replacing depleted supplies like trap wire, swivels, drags, and other accessories; making sure snowmachines or ATVs are running properly; and a myriad of other tasks to get ready for the season.

Scouting out your trapping territories and securing landowner permission to trap can also be done preseason. Conscientious trappers will only make sets away from commonly used trails and general recreational areas to minimize conflicts with non-trappers and folks enjoying a day out with their pets.

Trapping is a controversial activity for many people who don’t understand the need to control wildlife populations. Almost all the species commonly trapped are predators and, left uncontrolled, can have a detrimental effect on prey species numbers and population stability. They can also cause damage to domestic animals, other wildlife species, and habitat. Being predatory animals, their numbers can be difficult or impossible to control by hunting alone. Some of the animals don’t have hunting seasons to begin with, and trapping is the only reasonable way to harvest them.

A good trapper will only make sets using a trap style appropriate to catching the species being targeted. For example, you wouldn’t use a No. 4 long spring trap for mink just as you wouldn’t use a No.110 Conibear for beaver or otter. Most sets can be tailored for the specific species and matching the correct size and style of trap is important in making these sets.

I did most of my trapping when I was living on Afognak Island, north of Kodiak. I had no one to show me how to make sets or what size and style of trap worked best for a particular situation. I did a lot of reading and bought several different “how-to” trapping books and learned most of the basics from them. As I accumulated my trap collection, I learned how to prepare the traps to catch animals, and how to best set them, using different tools for the different types of traps.

Most of my “more advanced” trapping knowledge came from working the line and trying various sets to see what worked. I learned some important lessons along the way. For instance, I learned that, when making a horizontal leg-hold set on an elevated log for marten, the trap and bait needed to be screened from an overhead view. If the birds flying over can see the set, they will get into it.

I learned that it never got cold enough in the Kodiak area to negate daily leg-hold trap checks for marten. Every book I read said marten froze to death easily. In hindsight, those books were written for trapping in Interior Alaska, not coastal areas. I eventually switched over to using only a bait box and No. 120 Conibear because it did kill the marten almost instantly.

I learned that when using any trap, even the largest No. 330 Conibear “killer” trap, the trap needs to be firmly anchored. I lost an otter in a leghold trap that wasn’t anchored firmly enough. I almost lost about a 40-pound beaver caught in a 330-size trap set thirty-feet from the nearest water. I thought the trap would kill the beaver outright, but it didn’t. Luckily, I found the beaver and the trap tangled in a log jam about 10-feet downstream from where the end on the trail met the river.

I also lost a marten in a ground set to a red fox who found it first. My favorite story is about the marten I lost to a brown bear. The bear took the marten out of a 120-conibear hanging five-feet off the ground!