End of the day, we trap a bunch of critters, can manage our areas effectively, and we have a ball of fun doing it!

That's what it's all about Hutchy!

Loved the area when i was up there. I was in northern Manitoba and could live in that area. Not many places i say that about that don't have mountains! lol.

We were going back in and stopped for lunch. The owner said about hunting theses ridges. I started looking for one? After not seeing what we call a ridge, i asked where these ridges were.

his answer.....Your on one because your not standing in water! lol.

Evidently you are as you can't picture how a trapper can catch several hundred critters on the back of a snowmobile. There are many of us who do it down here. I say down here tongue in cheek as the Elliot Lake area Boco mention is south of me lol.

When beaver were worth trapping I used to spend all day on the seat. 30 to 50 miles on the sled, 10 to 20 a beaver a day many days. If we had marten, lynx, fisher, unlimited otter quotas a guy could add a lot more to that total. Personally I'd take this type of trapping vs road trapping most days. Weather can be tough but one usually has the woods to himself.

The hard part of a RTL would be accessibility. That is why lines with expansive trails and line cabins can be so expensive.

In the James Bay area if you look at a map there are hundreds of thousands of rivers and creeks.The creeks are the highways in winter and the rivers are highways in summer-has always been that way here.The acess into the interior of traplines here is easy in winter.Especially late winter-February and march you can go everywhere with snowshoes or a snowmachine.
People here say "UP" South and "DOWN" North because that's the way you travel the creeks and rivers-downhill or downstream to go north and upstream to go south.
Logging roads are OK until they wash out or get grown in,eskers are the same-too hard to brush open-it would be easier to cut a totally new trail thru the black spruce.

Steven,is Jim R still hammering the beaver in winter or has he slacked off a bit because of his age and the market for smaller beaver?

I always thought that the refugia system of management assumed untrapped areas provided the migrants to repopulate trapped areas. Hard to believe untrapped areas are devoid of wildlife because they are not properly managed by trapping?

Refugia method works for some animals like marten,but not all the time.Does not work those years when there is a widespread prey base crash and the adults abandon their home range en masse.
It will not work for beaver very well especially if the untrapped refugia is large.Beaver are too destructive of their own habitat when left untrapped,and prone to contagious disease like tularemia which can spread to managed populations and decimate them also.
They wont be devoid of animals but the habitat doesn't sustain anywhere near the same numbers.
I have been on lines in the past where beaver had not been trapped in 15 years.All of the creeks had dead houses and dead ponds in series for miles with none or 1 live house.
I find what works well for beaver on a registered line is a rotational harvest of about 3 years.In other words trap a part of your line hard for one season then leave it alone for 2 years,and trap another area,sticking close to your overall survey numbers of total beavers removed each year.

Robert, I haven't spoken with Jim in a couple years. He was still putting up some pretty impressive numbers on the seat of a snowmobile then and he is in his 70s.

I did say it looks like it would be hard doing their way. I still think it would be hard compared to the way guys here do it, but that's an opinion. I did say i can't see hundreds when the quota's shown for the line didn't add up to hundreds.

Reason I asked is here in PA I go into each season not having a clue as to the furbearer population- wouldn't have a clue as to how to manage it. Rats are slim to none, mink are OK, Beaver have vanished, coon are in pockets it seems, and as far as canines go, could be reds, greys or coyotes. Its a different world here from east to west PA for canines I might add.

i can check a 100 bridges mostly gangset in 8 hrs with the heater fan on low. .apples to oranges though.

walkin line here=truck broke down.

That's what i was thinking PCR, but i guess it's easier than i think up there.

or we don't realize how good we have it.probably 50-50

When I was up there I ran some of the line with the F150. When we got snow we ran the line with the bike or the snow go.
But when I was doing the land line Jim was running most of the marten line by boat. WE even ran some of the line by dog team. Jims buddy came over and took us around by dog team.

Boco Ontario beaver in the James Bay area may be self destructive of their own habitat leading to low densities of beaver, but I'm not sure that is a problem everywhere. Sounds like in a lot of areas they stay at super high levels unless they are trapped. Here they seem to die of enough other causes they can be easily overtrapped. Probably why most of Alaska had a seasonal trapper limit back when beaver were valuable enough to trap and sell to a furbuyer.

You know this subject of RTL's comes up here. We basically have gentlemen's agreements that are similar in much of Alaska that work in the same manner without all the bureaucracy and "good ole boy" stuff. From a technical stand point it would be interesting to know how the original boundaries of RTL's were created?

It is being managed for you by the State. Actually, much of the lower 48 where there is mostly private property relies on rufugia.( Being untrapped private property.)

i'm the mayor of refugia.

Yes you are. A road line is just like a trail line, just smoother, and without the construction and maintenance costs.

Actually the seasons are set by the state but they are almost identical seasons each year. They never change anything. I know of no way they could get an idea of furbearer numbers.