Rambing about trapping and work

Trapping season is almost over for me. For most critters the end of the season is April 15th. You can still trap beaver (and muskrats) up through June, but I have so much travel coming up that I'm going to pretty much miss the end of the season. Which blows but at the same time I think the travel is much needed.

Mink I caught and skinned while Gregg was gone.

I need some space and time away from work. I stepped into the General Manager position to help out the organization that I work for. My intent on stepping into the position was that it was going to be a temporary deal. However, I feel as though I was bullied into considering applying for the position. And I did seriously consider it. In the end I know that it's not me. It hurts me emotionally and mentally to deal with people that much. Mentally, I was prepared to fight fires and handle neglected paperwork. I was not prepared to manage people. After being in this position for 3 months, I realize that I am not meant for it.

Lynx and a mink

Back to trapping. From March 2nd through March 15th my trapping partner was traveling. Previous to this two weeks I had run the line by myself on occasion. He'd been running lines solo for years before he started teaching me. When we're both here in Unalakleet, we both go, we both love to trap. This season I knew I would have to step back from being on the line because of work (I stepped up to skinning after work). Last season I was able to finish my work in 6 hours. I worked through lunch, and took off to trap in the afternoon. Not so this year. I committed to an 8 to 5 day. Miserable.

Meet Penny, the neediest dog on the planet.

So when he was traveling, I was working a full time job and running the line by myself after work. I also volunteered to take care of his really need little dog and another friend's dog, who incidentally enough lived about 2 miles out of town. Now 2 miles isn't far but when you've gone 30 miles on a trap line on a rough trail, 2 extra miles to let a dog out is a long ways. Whine, whine, I know my life is so tough.

On the way back from Egavik. Mom always worries about me most when I head north.

That all being said, those two weeks on the line all by lonesome made me so proud of myself. Last year I remember saying, "I don't think I'll ever be able to run a line by myself." Now I know with certainty that I can run a line by myself. Sure I made mistakes, some really stupid ones like sticking my left hand in a set 330 conibear, but I did it. Not many young men in my village can say that, let alone any other young woman.

Sunday Trapping Report

I went to Egavik on Sunday. My trapping partner decided to defect and head into Anchorage for the week so I was rolling solo. I got past Powers Creek and everything was going just fine when the sled ripped off the hitch from my snow machine. I guess it was kind of rusty and old and definitely hadn't been used in a good long while. You can see I used the useless green rope in the sled (suddenly not so useless) to tie the sled to my rig. I made it to Egavik, looking back over my shoulder every three seconds or so. Made for a long ride.

Oh yeah, I'm that good at fixing stuff.

The wind was blowing West so the ice started heading out to sea. Also because of the stupid wind the hills on the way to Egavik were bumpy as heck. The wind was blowing around 30-35 mph, it was about 20 without the wind so around 0 with the wind chill. But it was warm enough that the snow was packing in nice and tight into it's drifts. What a jarring experience.

Bye bye ice. Take a look at that lead.

There was no sign of anything moving around at Egavik. Not even the wolverine that we've missed three times. I got up to the last set and couldn't see the trap but didn't see anything big either. I walked over and a mink had tried to pull the bunny bait out of the trap. He sprung it on himself and the bunny. I reset everything and went back down past Egavik and started heading back through the hills when I realized I didn't remove the hooks from resetting the trap... I cursed about a million times in my head. I didn't want to miss the wolverine because of my dumb ass so YES I DROVE BACK. I unhooked the latches and headed home. Bumpy ride.

At least I didn't get skunked. I got minked.

Short lynx video

We caught this guy today up Rabbit Creek. I was super excited to see him especially because we got skunked on Thursday on the Egavik line.

The fox I fell in love with

Yesterday was perfect. Or as near to perfect as a day on the trap line can be. It was around 0, the sun was out, and most importantly there was no wind. We met up at noon (which incidentally enough is when garage opens). I gassed up my rig and we took off. Gregg brought his .17 HMR and I brought my 20 gauge. I'm always on the hunt for ptarmigan and rabbits, so I lead the way to Egavik.

We pulled the close fox snare set when we passed it. Nothing had been crawling around there since we put it in. We passed over Power's Creek and were cruising up towards blueberry when I saw movement on the next hill over. I practically jumped up and down on my snow machine, it was a wolf! I pointed frantically and motioned for Greg to haul ass in front of me. I sped off after him just as the wolf disappeared over the next hill. We dipped down into the brush and came up on the other side and the wolf was nowhere to be seen. Even just the glimpse of the wolf was so exhilarating. I'd seen ptarmigan in the brush when we sped through it so I turned around and went back and ended up with three ptarmigan. The day was already off to a great start.

We kept our eyes peeled but didn't see any more critters on the way to Egavik. A wolverine had been by one of our sets twice so we were hoping he came back and stomped around, getting caught in the process. No such luck. There was a beautiful red fox in one my snares though. He had a black bushy tail, perfect fur, and nice tall black socks. I'm going to keep him. (He also peed on me while I was taking the pictures below, so you know, we've bonded.)

He's beautiful!

I think it was during this picture that the peeing occurred. He looks like he's smiling.

Wolverine tracks!

After the fox, we moseyed to our last set. The wolverine had been back there again so we took the time to set up a nice baited wolverine cubby. We're gonna get that guy. You better believe it. We paused by the river at Egavik and snacked on a cinnamon roll courtesy of my momma. On the way home we kept our eyes peeled for ptarmigan and the wolf but didn't see either. I'd kinda settled into the last stretch home when my eyes spotted a fox up by the connexes towards the end of the runway. This naturally let to chasing him around quite a bit, never quite into a position for a good shot. He shot off onto the ice and got away from us. But it was a perfectly exciting way to end the day.

By the time we got to the shop, the fox was pretty frozen. so I skinned the lynx we'd gotten on Friday while Gregg putzed around the shop (he mostly drank beer and visited with me). Dang it was a nice kitty with super long fur. I managed to get a pretty clean skin on her.

Sad Trapper, Happy Bunny Hunter

This winter has been brutal on trappers here in Unalakleet. We've been battling lack of snow, an unstable and really rough frozen river, winds gusting to 50 mph and 30 below weather. As soon as we get the line up and running some type of abominable weather takes it down again.

Last year we had 4 to 6 weeks of weather that ranged from -20 to -40 without a break. Even that was better than this because we had snow and were able to get around. Granted it wasn't the best trapping season but it was a slight improvement over this year. I think another factor in me longing for last year was time. I was working as the Environmental Specialist for my tribe, work considerably slowed down over the winter time and I was able to take off from work at 2 and 3 p.m. to go and run the trap line with my partner. This year I'm working as the Interim General Manager and Environmental Specialist and it's really just sucking all my time and all the life out of me. I don't even reliably get off work at 5 pm. Wahhh. Whine. Whine. Whine.

I'm not out on the line as much as I'd like but I'm still doing my share of skinning. It's kind of a weird thing to like doing but I'm a natural at it and it feels good to do something that comes so naturally. I am proud of the fact that I can skin a hide so clean it doesn't even need to be scraped.

This is a fox that we got today in a snare that I set. I didn't get to pull him out but I was able to skin him during my lunch break.

Bahaha.. My trapping partner looks sleepy.

I was down and out with some sort of plague from Wednesday through Friday last week. I finally started feeling human on Saturday, so I was able to check the snare set we have up the road. There were fox tracks but he sneakily avoided our snares. Rude. While I was cruising to check the traps I spotted two bunnies. They were delicious.

I've really got my bunny cooking down. I always use my crock pot because it gets them just super duper tender. I brined them in salt water over night for flava and to draw the blood out of the meat. Then I put them in my crock pot layered with onions. I mixed a can of chicken stock, a can of cream of celery soup, a can of water, a can of mushrooms (with the juice) and a can of diced tomatoes all together and poured it over the bunny. I cooked it on high all night and most of the morning until I was able to pick up a bone and have the meat just fell off. Oh! And I seasoned it with garlic powder, lawry's season salt, oregano, and basil. I didn't feel like gravy so I grabbed some noodles and tossed 'em in to soak up the broth and made it into a delicious hot dish instead of a soup. Yum. I ate two bowls after being out in the cold and it was perfect.

Snaring beaver

This year when we started trapping, it got cold and things started freezing (including people's water pipes) but we didn't really get a lot of snow. We trapped with four wheelers through mid to late December. It was cold, miserable and slow. But at least we were trapping. This is a series of pictures of our beaver snare sets. I think we did just over a half dozen of them.

Find a nice tasty branch that a beaver will like.

Attach snares where they're be just under the ice.

Chop a hole (I mostly chopped holes)

Two snares better the odds of catching a beaver.  Makes sense, right?

Stick the bait pole down into the bottom of the pond. Wire a pole so the beaver can't escape.

It's important to take a break and lay down on the ice when you're starting to sweat from chopping holes.

This is the beaver house.

This is their feed pile.

That's my trapping partner and Penny, the trapping dog.

We didn't do as good as we would have liked. :/ The lack of snow meant that the ice was not insulated so while the temperatures stayed low it meant that the ice got thick fast. Too thick to chop through the dang ice without breaking your arms off. And thus beaver trapping is over until spring because those darn things ain't worth the back breaking work, even if they're awesome for sewing.

Saturday Egavik trip

This was our second trip to Egavik this season. I for sure thought we'd have some critters in the two sets that we did on the first trip. But alas, no critters were even moving around! They have to be getting hungry soon. It's been warm so our bait will be all smelly, too. We're going to have something in the traps when we get back to Egavik. I just know it. On the way out of town I saw some ptarmigan over by some spruce trees. So I drove over and dropped three of them with two shots. Silly birdies didn't even fly away after the first shot!

The trail was considerably rougher than the first ride. The warm weather wreaked havoc on what snow had been packed down. So much tundra and even rock. At the end of December. Ridiculous. We still had daylight after checking the traps so we went off in search of places to do some new sets on the North side of the Egavik River. We found an old trail that might have been my dad's and took it back towards a little slough that led to the main river. There was a beaver house so Gregg chopped down a tree and did a marten set while I took the spruce branches and made a little wolverine cubby. It's perfect to do either a lynx set or a wolverine set when we do a marten set because we have all these beautiful branches for cubbying it up.

Wolverine cubby. See the chunk of beaver in there? Hopefully a critter will too.

It was so warm out I didn't even need goggles and the only time I used my face mask was on the ride to and from Egavik.

My tracks along side lynx tracks. Good spot for a lynx cubby.

I like pole sets for marten so much more than box sets. There's no chance of little assface mice getting their grubby little teeth into the fur and ruining it. Also this is the only trap that I can set without assistance from my trapping partner. I really should lift weights or something. He did get me a pliers type tool for big conibears and foot traps. I don't ever think to set it in the box with all our gear though. He also taught me how to set a conibear trap using a piece of rope. Really handy to know, because you can set it one handed using a hand and a foot. So if you accidentally catch your hand in a trap you can get out.

And of course a marten set.

Wolverine

This is one type of wolverine set that my trapping partner taught me. All you need is a conibear  trap. Pretty nifty if you ask me. We also did some box sets for wolverine, but those are cumbersome to carry around on the trap line. Gregg is tough enough to set conibears with his hands. However, I am a wimp and need to carry a tool around to set them or a rope so I generally leave that to him and I break twigs and sticks and build the little cubby. I'm helpful that way. The trap is braced by three main sticks, you can kind of see them in the triangle formation at the front of the cubby stabilizing the trap.

Cubby set on the river.

We didn't catch a wolverine in the cubby set last year. Boo. We did catch one in a lynx set though! Lucky we checked traps that day. The wolverine was caught by two toes in the lynx foot trap. He tore that area up. We had to rebuild the little lynx set completely. Catching this wolverine really showed me how tough those animals are. I watched Gregg skin the wolverine through to the head and then I had to get home and get some sleep because I had work the next day. I should have said screw work and stayed. He had some difficultly getting around the neck and couldn't figure out why. Turns out there was a snare around his neck from a previous season. His hide had completely regrown over the snare and it was embedded in his skin. Tough!

Mr. tough guy. I didn't want to get too close to him. He was hissing and it was scary.

Gregg dispatched him with his .17HMR. Then I lugged him to the sled. Wolverine are heavy and STINKY! This was a super dark male. I hope the weather improves a bit for trapping. It's been 35 below or colder and the winds have been gusting up to 40 below when it's been around zero. Not ideal. Good news: we're getting snow.

My lynx

This first kitty cat isn't my lynx.  But all of the pictures that follow are.  This little gal was caught by a snare around her middle off the Unalakleet River.  Gregg skinned her while I skinned the lynx I caught.  I'm spoiled.  I got to use the hook hanging thing while he made do with rope.

Gregg's cat.  Not as big as my cat.

Hi ho kitty away!

Mom was laughing at me because I was holding the cat and taking lots of pictures.

I picked where to put the snare and set it up all by myself.  Clearly I have a good teacher because this bad boy walked himself into my snare!  Gregg called me last Wednesday all super excited.  He had decided to check the traps on the way to town and found this guy in my snare.  The only way it could have been more perfect is if I had been there with him checking traps.

Lookit how big he is.  He's gonna go on my wall and stay on my wall.  FOREVER.

I skinned him, toes and ears and all.  I accidentally cut a hole in one of his front legs on the under side.  His head was still a bit frozen when I was skinning him, so one of his ears is a little messed up too.  Nothing that will affect him looking amazingly awesome on my wall though.  I forgot what a pain in the ass it is to skin lynx, not auction skin but wall skin.  I clean skinned him so well the he didn't even need to get scraped.  Whoop.

Back to my gruesome life

My trapping partner caught a marten the day before I got home.  So guess who got to skin him!  That's right, this lucky panda.  I did pretty good.  I'm a little out of practice though.  I nicked his belly.  about a 1/4 of an inch or so.  :(  Bummer, but you can't tell when you turn him or anything so it won't detract from his value.  He wasn't bloody at all and skinned really easily and nicely.

They're so scrawny under all that fur.  I think their front paws look funny still attached.

Sunday morning Aune accompanied me and Gregg on the trap line.  On our way to Gregg's cabin we checked the sets.  In the first bunch there was a little fox.  He was caught in a snare but wasn't dead yet.  To put him out of his misery I had to strangle and crush him.  Oh man, that's the tough part of trapping.  I hadn't actually done that part of it yet but I certainly wasn't going to leave the little fox suffering.  So I stepped up to the plate.

I skinned the fox that night.  His tail was a little frozen.  We learned our lesson there.  To make sure the tail is fully thawed before we skin it.  He had a old big wound on his side.  Even the muscular structure on that side of him was a lot smaller than his healthy side.  All of us wondered and pondered what had happened to this fox and if he would have survived the winter.  When Gregg was scrapping him, he opened up the healed wound.  It was really disgusting.  Aune took pictures.  I didn't.  It still kind of turns my stomach.  Gregg poked it with his finger.  Ew.

Muskrat Trapping

These pictures are from last year.  We were only able to trap muskrats for a week or two because it got really cold and then decided to dump snow on us when we started setting muskrat traps.  The weather really worked against us last year.  I'm hoping it cooperates a bit more with us this year.

This is where a muskrat pushes up foliage to make a little lunching and munching pad.

You can see them on the top of lakes.  Muskrats push up stuff from the lake and make a little mound.  When you chop the top of the little mound off you can reach down and feel a little shelf where they come up to eat.  That's where you set the teeny foot trap to catch them.

Chop the top of the house off.

Put the trap in and secure it to a cross piece stick with wire.

Put the chopped piece back on the hole, pour a cup of water over it and then pack it with snow.  Super fast and easy.  And it's just as easy to check the trap.  Chop of the top and carefully pull up the trap to see if there's a muskrat caught.

Chop it up again to 

Got him!

They're such a soft fur.  They're really easy to skin.  What a fun little creature to trap!

Turning skins

Catching the animal is the first part of the battle.  Skinning, stretching, and turning is the next part.  I find it all enjoyable.  Part of that enjoyment is the I'm kind of a natural at skinning.  It feels good to do something you're good at, you know?  I haven't yet turned any skins.  I'm sure this winter I'll get a lot of practice at it though.  This here is a lynx that Greg turned.  If you wait too long to turn the hides then it's really difficult and sometime impossible without ripping the skin.  If this happens you  have to wet the hide and let it set for a few hours.

Lynx hide.  Off the stretcher.  This is my trapping partner.  He normally doesn't look this grumpy.

Lynx hide.  Unturned and off the stretcher.

You start at the behind and begin to fold and roll it forward towards the head.  It takes some working and time.  However you get to see start to see the pretty fur that you've worked so hard for.

Keep working it.

Eventually you get a skin that has all the fur outside.  The paws are kinda of tricky with a lynx because their feet are so dang big.  When you're getting close to the arm holes, you just stick the feet through and then keep turning.  Once the lynx is fully turned then you grab the paws and pull the rest of the leg through.  It's much easier than waiting till the lynx is fully turned and sticking your hand all up in it.  Sneaky, sneaky.

Powder

Back in March we got dumped on with over 2 feet of snow.  Snow and cold don't stop me and my trapping partner from checking the trap line though.  We still had marten traps out this trip and were only able to go on half of the trap line because I had my short track.  (For those that don't know me I have a 2004 Polaris Supersport 550 that I use to get around on the trap line.) 

If I ever trap for a living, I want a snow machine like this.

It gets around in powder so easily.

The snow was deeper in the trees.  What a work out!