Yes it is

Mr Jim if you have the gumption to tell more
we are all ears. Thanks.

Great Story!!!

Love the traps, I have several dozen + a few 750s I wouldnt part with. You cant use them for mink rats or weasels but they are fine for everything else.

Thanks for the stories Jim. Good to hear from you.

bhugo,

I loved the Blake and Lamb no one for coon. The victor no 1 did not have the rounded spring and therefore did not have the power or longevity of the B&L. You can take a victor LS and put the bend of the spring over a pipe and hit it with a hammer and round it increasing the strength and revitalizing it. That said the Victor no 1 1/2 was a wonderful muskrat trap. big so catching them high on the leg and heavy to drown them fast! Still my favorite rat trap...yup even over the 110.

When i was a kid, i purchased Blake and Lamb no 1's through the mail from Ace Hardware in layette Indiana for $5.60 per dozen. If we had only known!

Glad you enjoyed the book.

e bay has them often. I have bought plenty of my own traps back

Well...I have caught a bunch of mink and rats in 450's and one time I wanted to trap prairie dogs...don't ask! I took one set of springs off 550's and they worked fine except for the dang hawks! You can use them for most anything with a little imagination and ingenuity.

I really appreciate all the wonderful complements and thanks guys. It means a lot to positively affect people, help them achieve what they can and do things others think impossible. Trappers are a breed of their own. Remnants of the real mountain men. And no you don't have to be a pro to be in that group. I'm not just saying this to make feel good talk. Think about it. There are many good outdoors men, hunters, fishermen but they are separate from trappers. A trapper tends his line every day no matter the weather and in my case that was from early fall to spring with a half day off on Christmas.

We brave thin and rotten ice, high water in the rivers and streams, blizzards, ice storms what ever comes our way. We have to understand and adapt to all of those conditions to outwit the animals we trap. We don't stand there and help the trap we set it and walk away confident it will do its job. It makes us different. Not better, just different in that we stand alone. I always loved reading and thinking about the early mountain men and what they had to endure just to survive. i trapped on the Green river in Wyoming where some of the early rendezvous were held. I have trapped the mountains, the plains and the farms and streams across this country. I met many very good trappers and yes they were good men as well. Each had their own set of challenges to deal with and often in our talks I learned a thing or too. It always made me respect the men who strung steel no mater where or how much.

To help others learn about, enjoy, improve their trapping skills is an honor gentlemen, I thank ALL of you for allowing me that honor.

I wrote about this set some years ago in the VOICE, but I wanted to share it again. As a trapper, I use almost every tool in the book, which includes snares. I often thought about ways to take more than one animal at a snare set, much like a gang set. The problem was a snare caught animal usually screws up the set area for at least a time.
I trapped a lot of sheep (woven fence) fence country at one time, which made for many great snare locations. Coyotes especially are big about digging under fences and creating the perfect place for the set I am about to describe.

So, I will assume (never a good thing) that you have made a snare set under a fence. Most do it by fastening the end of the snare as far away from the loop on a stake or good bottom fence wire. Using a bobby pin or a little u clip I make (see Photo). The snare is positioned using the short clip to hold the snare's top to the bottom fence wire. When the coyote goes through, the clip releases with a little tug, and he is in the snare.

I do the same except I do not fasten the snare end to the fence wire or a stake. Instead, I attach it to a grapple or a slide wire. This allows the animal to leave the set site. But there are a few more twists to my set. The grapple has some heavy fishing line attached to it, of which the other end is holding a second snare above the first one. If you are looking at it from the front, you will see one snare in the hole as customarily done. But then there is a second snare that is also attached to the bottom fence wire with a clip that is folded up towards the top of the fence, and the other end of that fishing line is keeping it there. I make a knot like a bow on a shoelace, so when the grapple exits the area with the first critter in it…it releases the second snare by tugging the fishing line bow loose, and it swings down into place, and you now have a second snare ready to go. I have done it with as many as three. I suppose you could do more, but that is pretty complicated.

The trick is to make sure you set the last snare to fall into place first and make sure that your drags are clear of each other, or you get entangled and tear it all up. Look at the photos, and you will see what I am talking about.

I have found this to be a great set earlier season for multiples and then later doubles. It certainly is not ideal for every location or situation but can be fun to make and reap the rewards where it is called for. Trapping is all about reading the sign, learning what it means and then applying it. It is a thinking man’s game. The more options you give yourself in the pursuit of your game, the better you will do.

Tight chains,

Jim

You went over my head with all that BUT i been out blowing up beaver dams and shooting nutria all day so im kind of idle minded at the moment, lol. I get the gist of the idea, interesting.

Sweet, a semi auto snare.

Wow, the self-releasing snare idea is ingenious. Thank you for sharing, Mr. Helfrich! And, you're definitely right - trapping is a thinking game.

I’ve not done Any snaring, but this sounds genius if you could put it to use

It Started Out as Trapping!

My trapping partner Roy and I had been trapping some game-rich ranch land. Our primary purpose was to reduce predators to help the game population. There were plenty of coyotes, a few foxes, and the best dang Bobcats I have ever trapped. Talk about spots and fur; They had it all, so cats were the big draw, and there were a bunch of them.
Oh, not like in west Texas, where I have taken five cats a day several times, but these were quality cats. Not huge, the biggest Tom tipped the scale at 28 pounds. So, when a cat set trap came up missing, it was a cause of concern.

The set was along a creek, a pretty good-sized creek with only a few places a guy could get across. My set was on the other side and was a 550C on a drag. Since the last check, about a foot of snow made it all that much more fun to try and find. Nothing! Just no sign at all. The sun was out, and snow was starting to go already, so came back the next day and still nothing. Only trap I had lost in many years, and it was not sitting well!

Ok, time to bring in the dogs! Roy and I also had to control Mt. Lions, and since you cannot legally trap lions in Montana, we got us some dogs. Good dogs. The thought was if we bring in the dogs, they may just stumble on whatever is in the trap, and we will have it then.

The next day brought the dogs, and the snow was pretty shallow, about an inch or two, and found the empty trap right away. Figure a deer got in it and if an eliminator is set to come up on the sides of a deer's hooves, they toss it first hang up. Not so much so if set to come up front and back.

SO short trip, well…except…there was a smoking fresh set of lion tracks heading east up the river.

Mw, "Let's turn the dogs loose; this ought to be a short run!"

Roy, "Ya, right, this will be an all-nighter, and we have no gear, no food, no water!"

It is true we have been on all-nighters; they are flat miserable. Lion country in Montana is WHY the call lions, Mountain, Lions. They do not believe in being in or going to flat land.

"Geese Roy, look how fresh it is, can't be that far ahead of us."

"Well…maybe we can turn one dog loose!"

You can't turn one dog loose. It is like saying maybe we send the avalanche only halfway down the mountain! But Ok!

"Ok, which one do you want to turn loose?"

"Bush."

Bush was a big male walker, and what a dog. We turned him loose, and he went to bawling and running at top speed in 3 seconds flat was out of sight and going up the creek toward the higher country.

By now, the blood was pumping in Roy's and my hearts, and he says, "turn Beauty loose."

Now we're talking. Beauty was a female Black and tan. Not a particularly big dog but a real lion hound. She had been grabbed by a lion she and Bush had at bay, and the Lion had almost killed her. She and Bush had a lion bayed when the Lion grabbed Beauty and tore up bad, and had I not been right there and able to run input three 41 magnums in that Lion's heart, he would have killed her. I had to pry the dead lions' jaws open to get her nose out of his mouth.

Ever since then, when a lion came out of a tree, she did not rush in bite like lion dogs typically do. She kept her distance. Thus, we stopped tying her up when we shot a lion out of a tree because we knew she was smart enough to stay back.

I have raised lions from 2 weeks old and trapped and hunted them. They are a most extraordinary creature. Very, very powerful, and lightning-fast. You will find out why I told you about the Lion grabbing her later.

Now we are running up the creek, and as we do, the snow gets much deeper real fast, but it is good we can walk on top of it. We get a mile and half up the creek, and the dogs go quiet. We can see them on a windblown ridge, and they have lost the trail.

Roy, "let's catch them; this trail is older than we thought."

Me. "Ok."

Just as we get close to them, they are off again with all the vigor they had earlier and up towards the highest peak they go.

On the southern slopes up here, almost no snow, and on the northern slopes…waist-deep! So, of course, the Lion crosses over to the Northern slope. Lion and dogs can walk on the snow, Roy, and I…not so much.

We get on top, and the Lion heads south, so we circle the top and are now on the south slope, and it's easier walking.

As we round the top, we can hear the dogs as if they are in the line of sight, and we then spot them on a ledge with a single tree and a lion in it. It is small, probably a cub. As we get closer, we cross a female lion's track headed toward us very fresh, so now we are sure it's a cub. Not what we wanted to find. Well, we have to go to the tree anyway. As we get real close, the Lion gets bigger and bigger and bigger.


It's 100 feet up to the ledge, and we have to crawl up hand over hand. Have no idea how the dogs got up here, but they did.


Now we are on the ledge and 20 feet from the Lion who has gone from a cub to maybe a record book lion. We guessed this by how small his ears looked against his head.



Things we heating up fast. The Lion looked at us like we were the cause of all his problems, and he wanted to settle the score. AT 15 feet, a lion could easily jump on one of us before we could move.

I had the only rifle., my nylon 66 .22. Ya, I know what your thinking. Why would you go Lion hunting with a 22? Well, that's what I hunt lions with. I triple tap them, and that's it. So while I kept the Lion in my sites, Roy tied up Bush. Remember, we don't have to tie up Beauty.

"Jim, you better hurry and take that Lion before he takes one of us."

I fire and pull the trigger two more times quickly; the only thing is the rifle only fires once. Guess the deep snow had a little something to do with that. The Lion makes the right decision and jumps over the cliff with one bullet in his heart. It is a hundred feet down and broken rocks at the bottom.

Then the unthinkable happens. Beauty thinks he's getting away and jumps over after him! I do not know that I have ever heard a more sicking sound than her body hitting the rocks below. And I don't know that I have ever been more stunned by an event as seeing her go after that Lion. Roy did not know exactly what happened because he was turning Bush loose as she went. I told him, and then I looked over.


I saw her laying down there, still alive but badly hurt, and then I saw Bush after the Lion, who was in much better shape than Beauty and about 30 yards past her. A wounded lion can kill a dog in a heartbeat, so I knew what I had to do, and that was get to the Lion and kill it. I climbed down with Roy right behind me. When I passed Beauty, she was still alive, I got to the Lion and killed it and turned around, and Roy was with Beauty, and she was dead.
We buried her near where she fell. We decided to keep the Lion whole and drag him out to weight this record book lion. No food, no water, not much for clothes, and it is almost dark. But that's ok we only have 5 miles to go, and it's all downhill.

Partway down, we came on a spring and filled up with water. Drinking as much as we could hold. It had been 10 hours without water and climbing a mountain, so yes, we were dehydrated. On the way down, the temperatures had and kept rising, and when we got to the creek and about two miles left, the 16" deep snow would not quite hold us. You know the kind; it waits to break till you get all your weight on it.

The further we went, the more often we had to stop and rest. At 100 feet from the truck, we stopped and rested! We got in the truck and had 7 miles of ranch roads to navigate to get to the county road, where we stopped to take off the four chains that made travel possible.

I got out the driver's door and Roy the Passenger side, and we both promptly fell I the road from severe leg cramps. Ya, if someone would have come along and seen two old guys rolling around in the road I the dark moaning, they may have just shot us and put us out of our misery.

It turns out the Lion was only a 120-pound male, and it had had its ear frostbitten when a kitten. Yes, I know what a record lion looks like. I have a Boone and Crockett Lion and the only one ever taken, at least when I took it, in Cascade county Montana, but that's another story.

Beautiful pictures and great write up. You have lived my dream

jim this "roy" you speak of is he royce??

Great story and beautiful pictures.You've lived a life most people only get to dream about

I agree great story and nice pics. This maybe my favorite thread of all time

Such a gifted writer, felt like I was along for the hunt (wish I was). Such an adventurous life! Always a rock star in my eye... Thanks Jim