Sorry bud. I give a little credit to a Canadian and then the end of the petr thred.I thought you where just getting warmed up. As for anti's, I have had conversations with a few.it is extremely hard to get someone to understand trappers with a phone conversation let alone on the internet.only anti trappers that do not respect what trappers do after they have run the line with me are the ones that have never been out with me. The ones that are a phone conversation only have never understood why I trap. Because they have never Eaven given it a chance and been on my line. My wifes sister is one of those. But I still think if she would fly down here and would just give it a chance to run traps with us I could get her to se how it really is. I have had several conversations with anti trappers that I could convince to atleast give it a chance and run traps with me.at the end of the day if they didn't ask me how to get started trapping they atleast had respect for it and walked away with an understanding.but I have never had the chalenge to try and get an anti as extreme as petr to understand. Someone like him face to face we prolly wouldn't Eaven get as far as talking about trapping. I would have taught him some manners way before that conversation.so let's hear some of yalls stories about converting anti trappers IN REAL LIFE.

It's true: Boco kicked that anti's butt!

Jim

I have spent years talking to the public and educating them about trapping and the benefits of sound wildlife management.The rabid antis you can never get them to see the truth-they just get po'd and leave in a huff.
I like to engage the antis in front of a crowd of general public who have no allegiance one way or the other-those are the people who listen and benefit greatly from information on why it is necessary to manage wildlife.
Once you lay out the facts the anti has no intellegent answers and the general public sees the anti for what he is-a brainwashed person with absolutely no knowledge of the subject.
When they are made to look foolish in front of a lot of people they get mad,and this is exactly what I want-to smoke them out in front of a lot of people who generally leave with a good impression of trapping or at least they wont listen to the anti BS as gospel when they hear it again.Many have told me just that.I have had countless people tell me this and even buy fur articles right there.I always try to remain polite and calm,unless its a one on one,then I give it to them,often scaring them.
I always have a picture album of all the activities on the trapline with the kids when they were small,and growing up,all times of year wearing fur in winter-most city folk are amazed at the lifestyle and have no idea of the amount of people that trap and that all of Canada is divided up into traplines that families work yearly sometimes for generations.

That is the strategy of public debate- the benefit is primarily for the audience, not the opponent. It's a good strategy and one utilized by many influential people in history.
I used to engage in some pretty heavy debates on Facebook (not anymore). I always kept that goal in mind: the objective is not to change the opponent, but to influence the audience. That makes it very important to remain civil and rational. You could always tell when the tide was turning when they'd say "let's talk about this in private." Even they can sometimes recognize when they start to look like a fool. They probably still won't change, they just don't want to look foolish.

Most of the anti trappers I have talked to and got them to understand are hunters that bad mouth trappers just because they are ignorant to it. They just don't know how it really is. One guy in particular would just go on and on about how cruel trapping was. But he had no problem gut shooting a deer with an arrow, looking for it for half a day and not being able to find it and just say oh well.I have made more than one of those kind of guys look really stupid. I still talk to some of them. Usually they have a question about a particular set or just questions about trapping in general.once they got out and seen how trapping really is now they really enjoy it.se to me it is more important to educate those types of people than a petr. Because hunters and outdoorsman who are anti trapping have far more influence than any type of petr. Most petr types are so loony no one pays them much mind. But it is awful fun to make one look really stupid face to face.haha it usually don't take much

Boco, That was a great post. Straight to the point and 100% accurate. It should have its own page on this site explaining the benefits of wildlife management. You are a True ambassador to the trapping trade. My hats off to you. Well done. Thank You

Much Appreciated,cwtrapper.