Wolverine Video

 

Here is a short clip of a wolverine in a foot trap. 

It's not great quality and he was far away from me, but I sure wasn't getting too close to him!

New sweater

And messy hair.

I wish you could see more of my boots

Panda :)

Slightly more boot

Oh yes, I'm looking sideways like I know what I'm supposed to do in a picture

Boots: Pink Coach Boots <3
Jeans: Thrifted and then modified to skinny
Sweater: Alloy, love it
Top: Tank from Costco.  My favorite

Underarmour

I love this style of shirt.  I love it so much I now have two: the one pictured below and a camo one with green sleeves.  The shirt is smooth and soft on the outside and warm and fuzzy on the inside.  It's meant to be a base layer, so it's fantastic for keeping me warm in this -40 degree weather.  Again my favorite jeans end up in a picture.  This time there is a pair of purple tights underneath as an added layer of insulation against the cold in my office.

My body always looks so awkward.

Slightly less awkward

Shirt: Under Armour
Jeans: Arizona (my favorite old patched boot cut pair)
Purple Tights: Forever 21

Sweet memories

This was his favorite picture of us.

I'd like to write something.  But I'm not entirely certain what that something is.  It feels unnecessary.  Or too dramatic.  Maybe too personal.  If you know me, you know what happened.  And I'll leave it at that.

Edit: The memories that I have are sweet and amazing, I wouldn't trade them for anything.  I learned how to shoot and spent hours in the country.  :)  He has become someone else though, which is sad.  Maybe his true colors have finally come out.

Skinning

I haven't been able to skin anything since the fox.  The weather has been horribly cold, dipping down below -40 at its lowest.  I was going pretty stir crazy for a while.  Even laid down on the kitchen floor and had a good scream.  Of course the floor was cold though, so I had to get my butt up and put my big girl pants on and deal with the suffocation of being trapped inside.  So needless to say the critters weren't moving around too much during the freezing ass weather.  Then one day it was only -20 and mom got the car started.  She had a bunch of errands to run and the light was awful that day so I offered to chauffeur her around.  I should have said you can drive yourself (and she was willing to) and gone to check traps with Gregg.  The one day that I decide to be a good, helpful kid and Gregg finds a lynx in a foot trap!  Here's the critter.

The stupid lynx that had to get caught when I was running around with mom.

Well since I couldn't be there on the trap line, I definitely wasn't missing the skinning.  I'd seen Gregg skin a paw once before but not a whole lynx. Gregg waited till after dinner to start skinning so I could take a look at the whole kitty.  I thought skinning a lynx would be very similar to a fox, but it wasn't quite as similar as I imagined.  You start at the pads of the feet and work the back legs the same as a fox.

Starting from the back legs working towards the head.

The lynx certainly had a lot more muscle than the foxes.  Gregg pulled a little on the lynx when skinning but not nearly as much as on a fox.  He skinned it more, I guess the lynx hide is a bit tougher than a foxes. You can see the cut marks in the meat in the picture above from skinning as opposed to just pulling the hide down.  Gregg starts with the back legs, skins to the butt and a little ways down, does the front legs and cuts the legs off at the wrist to finish the paws later (front and back), skins to the head and then goes back and skins the ears and paws.  Gregg is so fast at skinning and makes it look easy.  I felt like I was fumbling around when I skinned the fox.  We recently caught two lynx, and I was going to try to skin one but they stayed frozen for a long time and I was busy catching 7 fish and 11 ptarmigan.

*snicker*

Okay so I'm juvenile.  But at least I'm smiling and laughing and amused.

Skinning a paw

Gregg uses a razor to skin the paw after skinning the rest of the big old cat.  He hangs them by the wrist and the weight of the hide helps in skinning the long creepy fingers.  After skinning the paws (the back looked slightly easier than the front), he skins the ears and around the nose a little.  The whole kitty gets scraped and then stretched.

Skinning the right ear

I think this last picture is my favorite.  The hide is such a brilliant red from blood, which is a little disturbing, but the ear is so perfectly inside out.  When Gregg was skinning the head he nicked a vein or an artery and this steady stream of blood dripped everywhere and smeared all over the hide when it was wiped up.  A little gruesome but neat all the same.

Inside out ear

Artistic Endeavours

I haven't picked up charcoal in ages.  I picked it up yesterday and this was the result.  I like it.  :)  Not only because of the memory that it holds but it just looks right to me.  I don't like charcoal pencils.  I need to get some actual charcoal.

Water peeking through on little north.

Trapping Adventures

So I've begun to follow Greg when he goes and checks his trap line.  I've gone with him 3 times now, however the most recent was the first time that I'd brought my ipod and I was able to snap some pictures.

This is Greg.  He traps.

Yesterday was amazing.  We left around 12:30.  It was snowing a little but it was warm out.  As the day progressed it stopped snowing and blue sky even peeked through the clouds.  On our way up and over a hill we ran into a flock of ptarmigan.  All I could think was I wish I had my shotgun!  Sadly I don't have a way to carry it with me yet.  (I just ordered a strap for it though.)  We kept cruising and there was a dead rabbit and land otter tracks by the side of the road by the gravel pit.  Greg stopped and picked up the half a bunny carcass and tossed it in his sled.  The first part of the trap line is through Christmas tree trail.  There was only one marten that had got eaten by mice.  Greg had been gone for a week so he had to rebait and reset almost all of the traps.  We finished that part of the line and then drove towards the river to check the traps by the bank.  There was a fox!  He was tangled up in trees with his foot in a trap.

Fox caught with a foot trap.

This was the hard part for me.  I'd never seen an animal die before.  I've caught fish and cut them up, but fish are different than furry, live creatures.  Greg strangled the fox.  :(  And then reset the snares.  I carried the poor critter back to the sled and Greg put him in the bag.

We tried going on the river up to Ayyu's but the river had some overflow.  So we turned around and went back along Christmas tree trail and up over land to Ayyu's after we turned off the road and were cruising on the tundra when Greg spotted something off to our right.  We stopped our snowmachines and he pulled out his gun and took a look through the scope.  There was another fox!  We moved a little closer and he took aim and fired off some shots while the fox zigged and zagged off in the distance.  Greg reloaded and we moved closer to the fox, shot some more and we repeated the process moving again, this time cutting the fox off from the treeline.  Greg hit him this time and had to reload one more time.  We waited a few minutes to let the fox tire himself out and then went to look for him.  We drove up and saw tracks headed up the hill so we went that direction and never saw the fox.  We looked for a good bit and then moved on to the snares by Ayyu's.

There had been a ton of snow the last week and a lot of wind, so all traces of Greg's tracks were gone and we parked where he thought he set the snares and then walked into the willows to look for the snares.  Greg went right and I went left, I spotted two snares in the trees and yelled out that I'd found them.  Greg trudged through the snow towards me and then I spotted a taught line going down into the snow.  I made my way over to the line and pulled on it, it didn't budge.  So I started digging and then Greg came over and started digging as well and uncovered a big white paw.  He said, "It's a lynx."  Then he kept digging and eventually pulled up a long tail, "That's no lynx."  And then I pulled up on it and flipped it over and it was a wolf!  I tossed my hands up in the air and said, "I helped!"  We both laughed, giddy with the find.  Greg cut the snare off the tree and I lugged the wolf back to the sled.

He's a small wolf but he's pretty.

While I was waiting for Greg to come out of the willows Joe pulled up on his sled.  I pointed out the wolf and smiled super big.  We chatted a little till Greg came out of the willows.  Joe helped us dump the snow out of the sled, then we parted ways.  Greg led the way up to little north by the old White Alice pump house and we pulled the snares and traps from there.  The snow was at least knee deep in most places if not deeper.  We were both huffing and puffing and sweating after the trek to and from the traps.

Water peeking through on little north.

Super happy Panda.

We started the long trek home, but Greg decided to cruise back to the last place that we saw the fox.  We drove right up and the fox was there, he had nestled down in a little hollow and we could see him from where we drove up before.  Greg pulled out his gun and shot him.  When I drove over he was snarling and baring his teeth and he was dying.

Beautiful little fox.

That concluded the adventures on the trap line for the day.  The next part of the adventure was in Greg and Maggie's garage.  The ride home was uneventful and fairly smooth.  We got back around 4:30, ate dinner and had a few beers.  I watched Greg skin the fox that he shot.

Skinning, part II of trapping.

Then it was my turn.  Sadly I didn't get any pictures of me skinning the fox from the trap, so I have no proof.  But I didn't mess up at all!  I didn't cut any holes in the hide and got the eyes, mouth and nose off without too much difficulty.  The fox that I skinned was a boy and I wasn't a big fan of skinning his bits and then cutting that part of him but I suppose that's a part of trapping as well.  I can't wait to go back out and see what's in the traps next time.  We put up two little ermine traps.  :)  I'm most excited about those, even though mom says she has a bunch of ermine.