Belt Auction

Why do people think trapping is non-selective? Expierenced trappers are good at catching target animals only?

As a trapper it irritates me to read this over and over on this forum. Why do people with no experience assume things and consider it fact. Besides all the reading I have done I have first hand experience. Lets start with Research studies such as Guthery and Beasoms Texas study in 1978. They reported neck snares were about 12 times more selective than foothold traps for capturing predatory mammals. Look it up. Now someone is bound to site some other study but how experienced were the trappers? I have found that I can avoid most all unwanted catches. It is a measure of success. If every morning when I walk my trap line I had a bunch of skunks and possums I wouldn't have much to sell at auction come March. Here is a copy and paste from The National Agricultural Safety Database Snaring is a useful technique to capture animals that cause economic loss, such as coyotes that kill livestock and beavers that cut trees or plug irrigation ditches. Snaring also is popular for harvesting surplus furbearers, one of our renewable natural resources. Snares are effective for capturing target animals, but may capture non-target animals such as deer and dogs if used improperly. Heavy on the "if used improperly". The point is when I am Bass fishing I catch bass not trout. Due to the fact I am at a bass pond using bass lures. Is it possible to accidently catch a trout....yes. However not likley. If I do I let it go if possible, if not guess I am eating trout tonight. In closing just because you don't think it is selective or you lack the ability to be selective does not make it so. When I read things like this it concerns me to think about all the advice people recieve on this forum and its merit. Are you irritated by the arm chair experts? Whats your 2 cents?

Public Comments

1. yep, same as people coming here saying "hunters are evil, they only kill deer to cut off the horns and hang them on the wall!!!"...first, deer have ANTLERS NOT HORNS. 2ed its illegal to leave any meat on a eatable animal harvested. 3rd, if we hunters left the antlers in the woods, then the anti hunters would jump up can yell for waisting antlers! yeah, we hang them on the wall, or use them for rattling...you cant eat them..what else to do with them? its just a bunch of know nothings acting like they know something so they can throw it at us to try and make us look bad...when they are wrong! maggie- do you know what the cow goes through before you pick it up in drive thru at burgerking?
2. Yes Maddie I know exactly what an animal goes through I have personal knowledge, do you Traps are non selective It is the skill of the trapper that will determine how many non targets he gets No opinion on snares I don't use them in my line of work But what you sat is interesting enough to me to research them to see if I can
3. I am a long time Alaskan trapper. The problem is any stupid idiot can buy a trap and leave it where it should never be - and when some poor doggie gets caught they blame the 'professional trapper'. There is no other profession in the world with this problem. If an idiot buys a surgical knife and tries to do a home abortion - notice they do not blame surgeons, do they? Yet someone buys a trap at a hardware store and puts it in a bad place - bam! - it's those darn trappers who are at it again. 99% of the time the person doing it does not have a trapping license. go figure. If a person hops into a small plane with no training and crashes it - you would never read in the paper how pilots are poor fliers, would you?
4. Yes it irritates me. I trap nutria and have never gotten I didn't intent to trap. The uninformed don't understand the amount of knowledge of the prey that a trapper needs to be successful. It's just like hunting you can go sit in any tree and maybe even see a deer but a hunter knows where to sit to have the best chance of getting his game.
5. It is enjoying the outdoors to the fullest that a man can do. As a young man, working construction, had a @ss hole boss, I quit in dead winter, no job, no unemployment, no money, hungry kids, and bills to pay. A old trapper sold me about a year before 50 1 1/2 long spring traps for .25 cents apiece. Had a 12 ft. flat bottom boat, pickup, and wife that would drop me off at a bridge on the river, and pick me up that afternoon down river. The first night I took 25 muskrats, sold them to the old trapper, wife and kids and I went to town that night, bought a bucket of Kentucky fried chicken and we ate it before returning home. Things picked up, more traps, longer stretches of river, more money. Guess what I'm getting at is, be responsible where you put your traps, carry a dog release, run your traps every day, don't matter how cold, and all ways remember that God put all this here for our use, don't abuse it, and remember that this is the animals world also.
6. I don't care how "properly" you use a snare or leghold trap. Unless you put it underwater (trapping for beaver), you stand the chance of catching non-target species. A much, much higher chance than you stand of say....shooting a dog instead of a coyote. Here in Oklahoma, they just legalized otter trapping for one reason: Beaver trapper were accidentally catching them, and wardens were tired of ticketing the trappers, who didn't INTEND to catch them.
7. i haven't trapped myself, but my dad used to and he COULD trap just the animals he wanted. he used to live up in ohio, and he'd trap muskrats, coon, possums and a few mink- and that's all he wanted to trap. i was talking to him about it the other day and he told me that he wouldn't trap a animal that he wouldn't sell for the pelt (my dad's 52, it was a lot different) like back then, he got a mink and he got $160 for the pelt and like $60 for a huge possum pelt. he'd also only trap on fridays and saturdays and he'd set the traps off so that nothin would be caught during the week.