Trapping is a very old tradition

[h2ofwlr]

Scott Rall, Daily Globe outdoors columnist
Posted on Apr 9, 2015 at 3:19 p.m.

Trying for a win-win in every instance is a great goal, but we all know that 100 percent success every time is not possible.

I was talking to a trapper the other day who had some questions regarding Pheasants Forever’s position on some new trapping regulations that are trying to make their way through the 2015 Minnesota Legislature.

I told him that I did not know of any position taken by the local, state or national office of Pheasants Forever on trapping matters in the state of Minnesota. There are several items in the mix, but the most well-known and the most controversial is the use of a trap called a conibear body gripping trap. This trap is very, very effective in fulfilling its intended purpose.

The trap is used to catch a wide variety of animals but is most known for raccoons, beavers and other fur bearers. It is operated differently than the leg hold traps that I used as a kid to trap gophers in McPherson County, S.D. A leg hold trap is just what it says. It catches the intended prey by the leg and holds it there until the trapper comes back to release it or dispatch it for harvest.

These kinds of traps need to be checked every day to ensure that the animal that is caught does not suffer very long. They have been used for literally hundreds of years. Grizzly bears used to be trapped with a leg hold trap. I am sure it took quite an individual to approach that trap and make the kill. In the old movies, if a man got caught in this kind of trap they could not release themselves without help.

A body gripping trap, on the other hand, is very different. This trap, when set properly and used as intended, will catch and dispatch the animal by cutting off its airway and the animal dies within a very short time. These traps do not need to be checked as often, and as long as the trapper gets around his trap line every 48 hours they are operating within the regulations.

Trapping is probably the oldest profession, second only to the oldest profession of human kind (you might know what I mean even if it cannot be printed here.) Early explorers of North America were trappers. The lands were full of game to be caught and traded for all kinds of other goods.

The trapping tradition is as least as deep in American history as hunting. As with hunting there are fewer folks as a percentage of the population that hunt, and this decline has been followed even more so by trappers.

There are not very many trappers left in our area. I don’t know about other states, but I think the decline is a nationwide phenomenon. The smaller the group gets the less influence they have over the masses. This is one reason that hunters are working so hard to get more kids into the outdoors. Conservationists need the power of numbers to ensure that important wildlife conservation work can continue to be done in the decades to come. Trappers consider themselves as under the gun right now with some of the new proposed regulations.

The reason for the new restrictions on body gripping traps is they will, on a rare occasion, catch and kill a hunting dog. Rare is rare — about 25 in the entire state over the past several years — but if the dog that died was your dog, even one dog is one dog too many. After some research in our area, I found out that there has only been one reported instance in the past 15 years of a dog dying in a body gripping trap. It was a German Shorthaired Pointer and it died in a legally set trap in a ditch adjacent to a public WMA not located in Nobles County.

Trappers like to use the trap because it is the most humane, in that the animal dies almost right away. This has always been the battle cry of those who oppose trapping. In a leg hold trap the animal might wait as long as 24 hours for the trapper to return to terminate the animal. I know of no dog that has ever died in a leg hold trap.

Trapping has been a very important part of wildlife management for as far back as wildlife management goes. Controlling the populations of animals that eat the eggs of ground nesting birds has been a huge effort for decades. I wrote last week that in some cases almost no ground nesting birds like pheasants and ducks have their eggs survive to be able to hatch and then to raise a brood. All of the eggs are eaten by raccoons, skunks, opossums and other nest predators like mink and weasels.

Trapping these animals controls their populations, provides a way of supplementing a living for the trapper and keeps the desire of those who do it to pass this very specialized talent on to others who follow behind. Trappers are an important and necessary piece of the puzzle for our outdoor resources. I support trapping and think that others who care about the outdoors should to.

At question are the restrictions that would be placed on the use of body gripping traps as to leave them (in the opinion of most trappers) almost useless in a trapper’s arsenal for trapping techniques. They would either need to be completely under water for a beaver set, five feet off the ground for other sets or not for any use on public lands.

I understand the proponents of the new laws. They want to make sure that no dog ever dies in a trap again. This would be great if it could happen. I don’t think this 100 percent desired solution is possible. I would love it if a dog was never again hit and killed by a car or truck.

Do you believe that every dog owner is that responsible as to meet this goal? I don’t think so. I think that there are some changes that could be put in place to reduce the number of trapper/dog interactions. This might also mean different rules on state lands versus what a land owner might do on his own property.

I don’t know what the answer is but I do feel that the world needs trappers, and that hunters and trappers need to work together to get to the point where all of the parties can be satisfied. If trapping is made so difficult that trappers give up the tradition, then many other kinds of hunting will be affected in a negative way.

One of the possible solutions is for the traps to be set in an enclosure that is constructed in a manner that the intended animal can still be trapped but a hunting dog could not enter and thus be saved. A dog caught in a body gripping trap can be saved if the owner sees and responds right away. The trap can be removed before the animal suffocates. At issue again is that not all hunters have the hand strength to compress the traps’ strong springs. There are kits available from the trapping associations, and they help, but you need to be there to apply them.

Dogs running on the loose and unattended over public and private property are certainly not monitored well enough to keep this a 100 percent effective solution. I think that a compromise can be found.

All I can say is that there are many facets to this problem. Some are dog owner problems, other are bad trapper problems and a very small few are as a result of an ethical trapper and an ethical hunter getting in the wrong place at the place at the wrong time and where nobody is really at fault.

These are the most important problems to try to solve. I know that wildlife management and wildlife habitat management requires a whole host of different users all doing different things on the land at the same time. We need to find a way to make space for every user and do so in a manner that eliminates, if possible, and reduces at a minimum the negative interaction between them.