I had right at 1000 lb in my cross fox last year. They are impressive.

Some good firestarters are cotton balls coated in Vaseline. Can keep in ziplocks, Germex or Purel due to their high alcohol content, pinecones and birch bark due to their oils are great, too.

The 100 % pure cotton balls with Vaseline massaged into them is my go to fire starter. You can drop it in a glass of water, wring it out, and a spark from a fire striker will ignite it. You need to make sure you use 100 % cotton, the synthetic ones will not work.

Just got back tonight from a couple cold days on the line. -38 this morning plus a bit of wind chill. I'm dedicating January to trapping so cold weather or not I'm hitting the trail. I spent the last couple days reactivating and adding some more wolf footholds. I also got a few dozen lynx sets out.

Today, my son was out with me, and we saw some fresh tracks where a lynx was hunting bunnies. I put one of my lucky red #3's out with a rabbit hanging over it. When we came back a few hours later I had a nice sized tom waiting.

Nice !!! He must have liked them red bracelets!!!! Congrats Brian ....

Saw two fresh cougar tracks as well jimmy.

Bushman do you trap till the Kakwa Falls. Went quading up there once. My mom came from east of Grand Prairie(Debolt area).

That was pretty fast!

What WMU is your line in ??? Have you ever ran with the hounds Brian ???

That is fast! I put out 2 foot holds for 5 days for Lynx but no takers. One place was under a marten box where a Lynx had been very recently, so I set there with some beaver, but no go. He walked by about 50 yards away.

It was quick! I'm with you guys though...It's much more typical to have walk by's or half committed lynx walking part way in to the set this time of year. I find that the last 3 weeks of lynx season are when your efforts are best served here in Alberta.

My Kakwa line only goes as far west as the Redrock, coyot. Spent quite a bit of time horse riding out by the falls.

Jimmy- on my bucket list. 442-444, lots of cats. I meet guys with hounds pretty much every year.

My hounds are pretty young but , we are always up for a challenge I'm game if you are ....
And now I got a sled that can handle the kind of country to get to play in all the time !!! LOL

And if you need a trigger man to shoot the kitty I'm in lol

A friend of mine filmed a 3 part documentary showing on CBC and PBS this year. Part of the production was filmed on my trapline. If there's an owl in the scene it's my line! This looks to be a fascinating look back at man's journey through time.


http://vimeo.com/114444991

a look at the series itself


http://vimeo.com/112519197

And while I'm on vimeo this is a previous sheep hunt I went on that also took place on my trapline.


http://vimeo.com/36151942

Very well made videos.

The producer Niobi Thompson is also an anthropologist who loves indigenous cultures throughout the world. There will be lots of traditional hunting and fishing sequences in the documentary.

Man it's good to be back trapping again. But the weather has been warm and windy ( chinooking) My wolf traps were all exposed after 18" of snow melted in three days. It also left a layer of ice on the trails so I have to pin it to get up the hills but going down can be dangerous.

I was packing a moose, deer, and two beavers in big blue, my beautiful 10'er so I had some weight behind me. After one close call where I had to race down a hill to prevent the load from pushing me I decided to "chain up" I wired a couple 120 belilse under my ski's right where the pogo's come down. It worked unbelievably well.




By the way Dukes or Savigeau's won't work lol

Even got to spend the morning skinning. I added a bucket of 22 bullets to the pic to make you drool. I understand they can be hard to come by these days. No shortage so far here