Trapping season coming up

The statewide trapping season for most furbearer species opens this coming weekend. The current trapping regulation booklet has been available for a couple of months now, so if you’re planning to participate, make sure you have a current trapping license and a copy of the regulations.

I haven’t done any trapping for decades, and then my meager efforts were directed toward some nuisance beaver trapping. When I lived remotely on Afognak Island back in the 1980’s, I was the only person who trapped the entire area around where I lived. With no competition, I didn’t have to worry about being the first one out on opening day to set the best sites. I also didn’t have to worry about trap thieves or “anti-types” interfering with my efforts.

There were a lot of river otters and foxes, some beavers, a few martens, and the occasional muskrat in the area. Since I was the only one doing any trapping, I was self-taught through experience and reading trapping literature. My favorite method of trapping was making water sets for beaver and otter. I tried using leghold traps and snares for certain types of bank sets but never had any luck on beaver. I learned to use the 330-size “Conibear killer trap” with good effect though.

This style of trap, rather than holding the animal by a toe or foot like a leghold, was designed to snap closed with significant force across the neck or lung area of the animal. If the shock of the trap snapping shut didn’t kill the animal, then the underwater set location assured a rapid death by drowning the stunned and often unconscious beaver.

Because everybody at my worksite owned dogs, I always set the big 330-size conibears underwater, usually in runways the beavers were actively using to gain access into their lodges. I would firmly stake the traps in place and wire them to a solid anchor on shore. When a beaver or otter swimming along the runway triggered the trap, the stakes holding the trap in place were usually knocked loose. I had the visual indication that a critter had been through and the wire back to shore allowed me to easily retrieve the trap and animal.

Once, I set a Conibear on a beaver trail far from the worksite without firmly anchoring it. When checking the set later, I found a beaver had been caught and carried the trap to the water’s edge and fell in. I recovered the trap and the largest beaver I ever caught after diligently searching the submerged brush along the edge.

I caught the occasional otter in these underwater beaver sets. I also targeted otters with leghold sets at specific sites they used in the area. These sets all had heavy weights attached to the traps. When an otter stepped into the leghold, it would immediately head for deep water as an escape mechanism. The theory was that the otter would pull the trap and the added weight out into the water and the combined weight would drown the animal.

This was a nice theory that worked most of the time. Once I found an otter in my trap treading water while holding an estimated 40+ pounds of weight up off the bottom. I quickly shot the animal and pulled the set. From then on, I only made otter sets using the big conibears where I could anchor them underwater.

I learned a similar lesson while trapping marten. When the animals were not dying in the leghold traps from freezing, like all the trapping literature said they would, I converted all my marten sets over to using a smaller size of the conibear trap. For marten, sets are made above ground so, like being underwater, the traps were not readily accessible to any animal other than the targeted species.

From that point on, any marten caught in my sets were dead from the impact of the snapping trap. However, one year I did have to contend with a trap thief along my marten line. Twice I found the remains of a nice marten in the trap hanging up in the tree. The cable anchoring the trap was so twisted and kinked up, I had to remove and replace it.

The patchy snow under the set site held the sign that told me who had stolen my marten. A brown bear looking for a snack between naps was the culprit both times. I pulled the set each time and nervously finished walking my trapline.