LOL I AM serious about the books )) I like to keep records on the conditions each year and the harvests.

Ok cool! I’m thinking about starting to keep notes next trapping season.

I encourage you to do that. It can be interesting to look back and try to draw comparisons with current conditions and populations.

I had way more close calls working the Railroad,than I ever did trapping.
Falling thru the ice the first time or two made me a little panicky,but always had a safety pole to get out.
Getting lost in the wilderness for a while will test your constitution.

Like White says, daily notes at camp are great to look back on and sometimes important if you need an exact date for something. Ken I’m with you on the bad tooth at camp thing. Took me 4 days to get a plane in and by then the pain had subsided

I use to take mental notes until I ran out of paper.

I was at the point that I was considering putting my 22 pistol in my mouth and trying to shoot the tooth out. But I finally realized I'd have to use my left hand. I decided against it.

Gulo had been trying to get me for almost a week but it was just too cold to fly. Finally it warmed up to -47 and he came and saved my bacon !! Probably saved my life too !!

Your supposed to keep a jug of whiskey at camp for medicinal purposes like that White.

I used it up when I broke my leg

That definitely qualifies as a close call on the trapline

You need to download some of those notes into book form !!

My stock gets low sometimes if I get a blister or sliver.

That's Terrible !! Prayers sent !!

Going through the ice is undoubtedly the worst. When I was a teenager trapping muskrats through the ice I would walk on the newly-frozen clear ice looking for bank dens. The ice was only 2" or so thick, sometimes less. When I broke through I rarely went above my waist, but was it cold. Being young and full of vinegar, I'd empty out my hippers and keep going.
Beaver trapping through the ice is a different matter though, and I once had my life flash before my eyes. Normally I can tell if the ice is shakey and I'll stay off the deep channels, that time the ice just gave out with absolutely no warning. Fortunately for me I was able to lunge forward and grab a stump as I was going through, my feet never touched the bottom of the channel until they hit the side of it under the stump. Once the shock of hitting that cold water wore off I was mad at myself for getting into a situation like this and took my packbasket off and tossed it onto the ice. I managed to bob, squirm and kick my way out of the water now soaked to the skin, gather up my beaver and gear and head back towards the truck. That happened in December of 1989 and while there's been other "incidents" I can still remember this one like it happened yesterday.

Like Hutchy says, there's no adventure without risk.

Had a bank den collapse under me once. Was so deep, I had to chop steps in the side to get out.

Dangers on the Trapline

I have been running trap for over forty years and in that time I have had some close calls, and near misses that could have ended very badly if certain circumstances had been different.

The first near miss that I can recall when I was about twelve years old and running muskrat traps down in Marianne’s Pond about a mile and a half from my Grandparents house. After getting home from school, I put on my hipboots and went to check my sets. I had big hopes for some float sets I had put out on the southern end of the pond. I had made the V shaped floats from an article I saw in FFG, and had them attached to 8 foot long ash saplings I had cut.

When I got to the pond I could see the trap was missing from the float, and waded out to check it not paying attention to the increasing depth. I grabbed the float and pulled up the trap but it was empty! I turned to head back to shore and found I couldn’t turn; my feet had sunk in the stinking black muck at the bottom of the pond! The more I struggled the deeper my feet sank; I tried to pull my right foot up, but only drove my left foot deeper. I can say now I started to panic, as no help was available, and no one would hear me yelling where I was. Lucking I recalled reading a story about a trapper in a similar situation.
I took a deep breath and leaned toward shore feeling the shock of the cold water seeping into my clothes. I leaned over further and wriggle my legs back and forth and felt he mud slacken its grip. I held on to the tops of my boots so my feet didn’t slide out and leave the boots in the mud, I had to almost sit on the bottom and pull my left legs free before I could scramble out on to the bank. I was soaked, cold muddy and stinky from the black muck. It was darn cold and getting dark and Pops was a long way away and all up hill. Then I remember my Dad’s Friend Davy Jones lived just up the street from the pond. I emptied my boots and wrung out my shirt and jacket and started jogging towards Jones’ house. Even though it was only about a ½ mile by the time I got there my clothes were covered in ice. I started banging son the door and Davy opened it and said “What the devil happened to you boy?!!” I quickly explained my adventure to which he laughed and said mhmm a lot. Then he had me take off my jacket and gave me a blanket to wrap up in and drove me up to Pops. My grandmother made me strip out of the wet clothes and take a warm not hot shower to warm up, and then gave me dry clothes and a cup of hot homemade cocoa. To this day if I feel the bottom sucking my feet at all I move toward the bank as swiftly as I can. Lesson – if you feel yourself sinking get out of the spot as soon as possible!

I avoided calamity on the trapline for many years after nearly losing my boots in Marianne’s pond. I had the occasional fall, trip, go over boots, getting smacked in face with branches, etc. that we all suffer but nothing dangerous until I moved to Iowa.

Iowa had an open beaver season unlike the restrictive season in PA, which allowed me to trap as many beaver as I wanted within the trapping season. Now I knew beaver fur is best and primest in Late December and January. Well here in Iowa that means ICE and thick ICE. I did get a few that way but decide to wait for spring break up to try and get some more. Well the breakup was late and I went and chopped a few holes in the ice and tried that. Then it warmed up, and the ice got rotten (never go out on rotten ice), I knew the ice was going rotten and went to retrieve my traps and poles. As I walked the 30 feet out on the ice to my pole my right leg disappeared! Odd I thought it was here just a second ago, and then my body tipped sideways due to my right leg going through a particularly rotten spot in the ice. The impact of my body (I weighed about 250 pounds then) on the ice caused it to break and drop me straight through into the inky depth below, I came up spluttering and spitting our water and various curses. Luckily the hole I made in the ice was easy enough to move around in, and I was only in chest deep water. Unluckily I did not have ice spikes (spikes/nails on a string around your neck to help you claw out of the ice). I put my hands on the edge of the ice and pushed up with my feet off the bottom. I was just about to lie on the ice and slither out when the ice broke dropping me back into the water. I stood up and grabbed the edge again and tried to push myself up and it broke again. I did this the entire way to shore. I was exhausted after being soaked lugging a heavy soaked jacket and pant and breaking my way through 30 feet of rotten 8 inch ice. And to add insult to injury, I still had to go pick up my daughter at day care, how no one noticed I was soaking wet in mid-March was beyond me. Lesson learned – don’t go out on rotten ice unless you have to and if you do make sure you have some ice spikes!
A few years later I was doing some beaver control work in a very upscale neighborhood. The job was at the base of a big bluff and it was so steep the trail ran sideways down the bluff for about a good eighty yards. From the bottom of the bluff to the river was about 40 yards so, then down a six to eight foot mostly sheer bank to the river itself. The ground still had between six and ten inches of icy snow, and the river in many places was still frozen across, but this area was open. The beaver were somehow climbing the bank to feed on the trees and the landowner wanted them gone. It was tricky because even right near the bank the water was almost over the top of my hip boots. I made some bottom edge sets for beaver and put in a castor mound as well and had removed some of them when we got a huge spring warm rain storm. I rained all day and night and melted most of the snow and ice and broke the river into a raging torrent of coffee colored water and icebergs. My traps were staked and wired but I still wanted to get them out if at all possible.

My wife and our new baby drove me out to the site, she and they baby parked at the road on top of the bluff, while I headed won to try and retrieve my traps. The river looked nasty with the water about 2-3 feet higher than normal and full of slabs and chunks of ice. I had made a grappling hook out of an old drag and 20 feet of 3/32” cable to try and snag the traps and drag them to where I could reach them. After fishing for a bit with my hook I dig manage to snag out two of my 330’s. The last 330 I had wired high on the bank just in case of high water, it also had 6 foot of 3/32” cable hooked to the spring, and it was all tie doff to a 24” rerod stake I had driven into the top of the bank.

After untying the wire and pulling the coni up I noticed a place where the beaver were still coming up the bank despite the high water. I thought if I was real careful I could lower the 330 into the river where the beaver seemed to be coming up the bank. I was trying to maneuver myself down the bank to a small edge to lower the 330 on a pole. I took on step and my feet shot out from under me (it was a 1/2” of md on a still frozen bank). And I slide down the bank and off the ledge like a ride at the water park. When I resurfaced I was chest deep in the river with slabs of 8 inch ice floating by me. I was also at eh bottom of a 6-8 foot tall sheer mud and ice slickened bank. I could not go down stream as the water was deeper there, and I could not go upstream against the current when up to my chest. Panic started to set in as no one would hear my cries for help, I could not hope to climb the bank and trying to swim down to a lower bank may lead to drowning and or hypothermia as well before I even got out of the river. I had to think, so I took stock of what I had on hand. I still had the 24 inch rerod stake in my right hand and the 330 conibear with the long cable in my left hand. Finally, I figured out what to do. I switched hands and set the 330 under water against my knee, then holding onto a loop at the end of the cable threw the 330 up on top of the bank and heard is SNAP onto the brush at the top of the bank. I said a very large prayer and pulled on the cable, it seemed to hold so I wrapped my right hands in the cable and pulled myself up at least to my waist out of the water and face first into the bank. Then I took my left hand and drove the stake in as hard and as high on the bank as I could. Then I I pulled myself up using the stake, and when I got to the stake I wrapped my hand in the cable again to hold me in place against the bank and withdrew the stake and slammed it into the bank again . I did this over and over slowly inching my way up the bank until I reached the top. I was soaked, covered in mud and starting to shake from the beginnings of hypothermia. The long slow hike up the bluff back to van warmed me up at least. My wife was shocked by my condition and got me home to a warm shower and dry clothes but alas no hot cocoa. Lesson – when stuck in a dangerous situation, do not lose you head, think out your problem, as panic can lead to death. Use what you have to your advantage.

The next time I did something that could of gotten me killed, I was trapping mink with coniboxes in some culverts coming out of a marsh. I had caught a mink in a box the week before, it snowed heavily the night before I checked it this time however. I usually walked to the edge of the concrete culvert and stepped down on the ice and walked over to the cat tails that held my box. This time though I was hurrying after work, and just want to uncover my box and relure it quickly. So I just jumped from the top of the culver to the ice (about 2-3 feet) , but the ice broke as soon as I made contact with my feet and my back SLAMMED into the edge of the culvert knocking the breath out of me. I lay half in and half out of the culvert in 10 inches of soft snow on top of the ice trying to catch my breath. It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. I realized I had been very lucky. I was wearing my big down parka as the temperature was about -10F and when my back hit the edge of the culvert the down had acted like a cushion to protect my back from the edge of the concrete. I was also lucky that I had not his my head on the concrete and been knocked out as no one would of looked for me for several hours, and by then I might of very well been a Trapper-Pop. Now I walk down and around to get to my sets no matter what, with age comes wisdom. Lesson – never hurry if you can help it and ALWAYS let someone know where you are and when you should be back, and watch your step!

Even though I have lived and learned from my mistakes, as I hope you will to if you read this I still got in s sticky spot this past season. I was setting up opening day in a small creek just down from my friends Les’ house. I looked like any other small creek I had been in around here sandy and pebbly. I made a quick set on the west side of the bridge and even though my feet sank below about 4 inches of the sand/pebbles I do not go any lower so thought nothing of if. The creek flowed about 2-8 inches over the sand/pebbles, I figured if I stayed to the shallower side while going under the bridge I would be ok. Well that did not work out so well. As I was trying to go under the bridge I went from ankles to mid-calf to knee to mid-thigh by the time I was on the other side. So here I am with about 2 inches of boot top showing above the water that looks only 4 inches deep, but is as close to quicksand as I ever want to be. Gee where have I had this feeling before? Same as Marianne’s if I try to work one leg free the other goes deeper. Now what?

Ok don’t panic, not that I was because I knew I could get out but wanted to do it and stay DRY. Use what you have available; coon bucket, pliers and lure bag. Ok pliers no good, lure bag, err nope, ahh bucket. Using the bucket I pushed it wide flat bottom into the sand in front of me and pushed down as hard as I could and felt my legs lifting free of the morass they were stuck in. I twisted the bucket free moved it about a foot and pushed down again feeling my legs get free enough to propel me toward the bank and freedom. I did not make any sets under or to the east of the bridge. Lesson – remember your previous lessons and don’t panic!

I've been through the ice more times than I can remember .

I once broke through some rotten ice by a beaver feed pile while I was wearing a backpack with traps and had a handgun on my hip. When I broke through I was able to catch myself on the ice with both hands but when I pushed down to get out the ice broke again and I went in up to my neck and the backpack started to roll me over. While kicking my feet I never felt bottom and then panic struck. Somehow I rolled back and got my hands on the edge of the ice and pulled myself up and this time the ice held and I was able to get myself out. I was gonna tell you all that I drowned but you would probably not have believed my story then. I have renewed respect around bad ice after that incident.

Another time I broke though wearing snowshoes when it was 31 below zero but the water was only about two feet deep. The problem was that the bindings were so tight that the shoes did not pull off and the heels of the snowshoes kept getting caught under the ice as I sat trying to pull them out. I finally had to get my arm wet as I reached in to turn the snowshoes under the ice so I could pull them out of the hole. The ice had been thick enough there two days earlier (4") but the heavy snow and current thinned it down to almost nothing under the new snow. The mile walk back home was made difficult since my pant legs were frozen like stovepipes.

Close call MnMan!

Been there Twice

White17, After being out of food for two weeks and caribou showed up, did you eat some raw when you reached the first dead one to regain some energy before you did anything else? I bet that was some mighty tasty food.