Hey Lt Grey. I was going to send you a PM but it tells me your box is full.

Sorry, cleared out now. I've had as many as 95 in one day...hard to keep up with it all.

Any one else or is this going away?

Next time let's run a line together....LOL

Death threats,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

LOL

i dont think theres any place id rather be after seeing those pics of alaska and all that fur. sure does make a guy dream...

Yep, he's got it!

Well here's one that is actually scattered over a few days with Scott Balts, AKA 330Trapper, of Minnesota.



Being in ADC full time, I often get PM’s from trappers across the country wanting to know how to “break into the biz,” so to speak. Many fur trappers have thought, at least once, they would like to do control work full time and have wondered what that would be like on a daily basis.

I confess, growing up, I wanted to be a full time coyote and/or beaver trapper like so many of the “western trappers” I had read about . . . then I learned it didn’t pay as much as I wanted to make, although an ideal life style, no doubt for many. Today I run an ADC business covering five counties for larger animals such as squirrels, raccoons, coyotes, beaver, muskrats, skunks, groundhogs, bats etc. and up to nine counties on moles.
Each year I take on a number of students to train them fully in the ADC business. Some of them have fur trapping experience, and some have never even set a trap. Many however, want to make the progression from fur trapping to ADC work.

This year I celebrated 10 years of training, by heading first, up to central Minnesota. I was met by Scott Balts of Pine City, Mn. who was of course, my student. Over the next two weeks we went over everything from mice to moles and ground squirrels to bat exclusion, snaring beaver, making lures and snares.

Scott I found out, was a fairly good beaver trapper in his own right with a 330-kill trap. He also had been working, prior to my arrival on the trap designs I had sent him and had made some six or seven dozen cage traps, some of the best ones I have ever seen.
His traps were so good, I ordered several dozen of each, despite the cost of shipping. He also makes a fine cage trap “divider” and the best 660 I have ever seen.

The weather was not on our side, as it rained more days than not.
Even one day it ended up snowing. Odd I thought for May, but then, this is Minnesota!


In Minnesota, they have lots of mosquitoes and I mean BIG mosquitoes and they’ve got lots of friends. They also have way too many ticks and they have lots of friends too . . . All in all it was an enjoyable experience. I got to meet and spend an afternoon with Merlin Ladd, who I understand is a bit of a legend in those parts and had dinner with a trapper ( who goes by Lundy on T-Man) . . . never laughed so hard in my life.
Scott passed my course with flying colors, of course and I look forward to hearing good things from him in the future.

I have long left Minnesota of course and returned back to work here in Ohio.

Below are ( but a few) pictures from my time with Scott. I will try to post more of them in the next few days.
All animals trapped by Scott . . . of course!









































I highly reccomend any of Scott's traps, as his are the best in the business. LT

If I had the $$ I'd like to go a day on the line with Slim Pedersen.

One day I'm going to shanghai Swamp Wolf into a trip to south Ga with him, but I'm gonna make HIM pay ME!! LOL


JBR

I was up at 5 this morning stopped at the local quick stop at 6 and got a cup of coffee, and some snack food for lunch. I was in the woods at 6:30. I planted 25 traps mostly dirt holes and a few flat sets and had to leave at 3:30 this afternoon. I'm trapping 2.5 miles of main road on a local hunting club. I set on sign and hit all the intersections of other roads. I'm targeting coyotes and fox for the live market. I'm expecting to catch my 1st coyote and 1st red fox on this line. Wish me luck.

I wake up at 6:30 and look at the temperature on my bed side. It read 24 degrees. Last night it had read 20 degrees. I hopped that the coons were moving last night because it usually gets in the single digits at night. So I through on my coat and hunting boots and head down to check the bucket sets I had at the base of dens trees in our pasture. I saw the first bucket and it didn't have my 220 in it so my heart starts a pumping. My 220 held a nice boar coon, still warm even. I must've made the catch just this mourning yet. The second bucket was untouched but that is okay, Because carrying one flee infested coon a half mile in 2 foot deep snow is enough for me. I went to school and on the way home I checked the traps I had in the barns to remove some nuisance raccoon that the land owner was complaining about and to not much suprise I caught another grinner. Not a raccoon but Oh Well, its better than his barn cats that keep messin' up my sets. I then go out to the creek a mile down the road to check the bobcat snares but nothing. There's good sign up on top of the hill beside the creek, and I keep seeing rabits up there, Maybe I'll put a cubbie in there tomorrow. I head home to skin my catches. Grinners are always so easy to process and this coon streched just short of 4XL. A rewarding day for me.

Teg

Love these.As soon as our season gets going I'll post a day or two on my line.Nov 6th here we come!

2.5 miles of road and you put in 25 sets????

ATL Trapper, looking forward to it!

Ohio's raccoon season opener caught me sitting home still working on snare orders and of course also working on my own snares, which I would be setting in about 30 days...right after Ohio's gun season( deer), which was the first week of December.
Besides it was hot, almost 70 degrees, which is NOT my ideal trapping weather.
When you trapped raccoons all year in town like I do, going out and catching them in the 70 degrees is not what you have in mind for fur season !

Still, Forrest London and I had a personal bet to go out and catch 20 'coons the first day.
I had told him to go on without me that as soon as it cooled off a bit, I would set some traps.
Having a good many cage traps, I desided to just go out and set a 'few' of them and after a few days it did cool off to about 50 degrees, so I headed over to Miami county and set 38 cage traps out using either my fish paste bait or one of my my fruit paste bait inside them.
Nothing too fancy, just set on location.
My first check was well over 20 raccoons but I did have some small 'coons, which would not be worth harvesting, so they were released on site.
I did keep 18 of the best ones and stopped by Forrest's house to see how his season was going... and perhaps to make good on 'our promise' of 20 on a first day check.
After that, I went back to work on my snares and my ADC jobs that I had out.
December would be here before I knew it and I was way behind on snare making.

those pictures are awsome im just starting out and i lost to snares due to a struggling animal !!!!! hope to b as good as you some day !!!!!!

Hey LT I've got a question for you. Of the coons in the top picture which ones are of the perfered colour?

Best ones here are #2 and #5...not perfect but, it's Ohio!