Consider all of the above!

If you live in a small town with cheap housing and had very little fixed costs or debts AND were an extremely prolific trapper, you might be able to make comparable money (after your trapping expenses) to do it during the fall and winter. Someone mentioned health insurance and in a lot of rural SD, its hard to find such without working for a larger, more capitalized company. Families can get on Medicaid but its almost impossible for a single guy to get on it-- not that I'm endorsing welfare health insurance just stating what's out there. If you're a single guy, you could forego paying for health insurance and roll the dice that nothing happens to you. Not that I'm recommending that but lots of young guys have rolled that dice for a long time. Sometimes the gamble worked out, sometimes not. As for putting away for retirement, there are some very successful and most likely frugal people on this forum that have built up nice retirement nest eggs without high paying jobs. It takes sustained discipline to live modestly and save up but it can be done.

A couple of stories of "making a living from trapping"

I have a cousin who's husband was a trapper during the season--mostly mrats and mink, don't really know if he upland critter trapped-- and did steel "junking" during the warm season. She didn't work at that time, being a full-time mom of about 5 kid-- this was the mid-1970s through probably early 1990s. They lived in a very small town. I never asked about their finances but I suspect they didn't have much. Her parents were farming at the time and this family probably got meat for cheap from the family. My counsin's husband died at a young age (early 50s). She could surely skin mrats fast!!

Another story happened when I was selling some finished mrat skins to a "local" buyer back when rats were high. This buyer is located outside of a small town that doesn't have much but a handful of jobs and about 20+ miles from a larger town that actually had jobs. Before the buyer looked at my hides, he was sorting through a bunch of carcass rats that had been brought in by a local younger guy. Of course, carcass rats were only bringing about half of what finished rats were so this young guy was probably getting somewhere between $2-2.50 on average for his critters. During the banter going on, the young guy stated that he had just been laid-off from a job in the larger ("larger" is relative term here) town and now he could rat trap full-time for the rest of the winter. When I asked him why he wasn't finishing his rats, the young guy said, he "wanted to spend more time with his very young children". I thought to myself, if I was in his position, I'd surely be finishing rats but maybe living in this small town, between catching 2-3 dozen rats a day through the ice and collecting x number of weeks of unemployment, and maybe his family on Title 19 for health care, he really "didn't need the money". Don't know the whole situation or the outcome. I sure hope he got re-hired come the spring because I'm sure there wasn't any cushion in the family income to go much longer than 3-4 months without daddy having a larger and more dependent pay check. Then again, perhaps I was just judging him too quickly.

Everybody has their own choices to make...

Stay single and no kids, get a good seasonal job and collect unemployment in the winter.