I grew up in hunting, fishing, and trapping the Catskill Mountains of New York state. Some of my fondest memories of the 80’s were checking raccoon traps by flashlight before boarding the school bus. Back then I had often dreamt of trapping the big woods of the Adirondack Mountains in the northeastern part of the state.

In 2019 I was able to relocate to Hamilton County in the central Adirondacks, the most rural county east of the Mississippi (there are only a few plowed roads in the entire county and not a single traffic light). My work schedule prevented me from trapping that season but I got out into the woods every weekend and scouted for the next 14 months. I carried topo maps into promising areas and noted locations of scat and tracks. I vowed to run a trapline the following season. And I did.

In 40 years of trapping I’d never seen a marten as they don’t exist in the Catskills. But there’s a 30-day season for them in the Adirondacks, from November 1st - 30th, and during November 2020 I managed to catch six marten - the season limit. I found that they weren’t anymore difficult to capture than the long-tailed weasel or fisher of the Catskills, it was just locating them that was the hard part.

The deer rifle season in the Adirondacks is much longer than in the Catskills. It runs for six weeks from 10/24-12/6. Hamilton County was relatively devoid of people after that. I focused my efforts on grey fox and coyote. These species weren’t new to me but I knew that due to the harsh winters of the Adirondacks they were much larger than in the Catskills. I was eager to trap them. And I did.

December was an enjoyable and successful month, up until the last week that is.

On Tuesday, 12/29/20, I was returning to my vehicle in a parking area near a popular lake on Route 30, which is the only plowed road to run the north/south length of the county. An ECO (Environmental Conservation Officer) drove up beside me, exited his vehicle, and asked me if I was trapping. I nodded affirmatively. (In retrospect I realize that this was Mistake #1, I should have just said no and driven off.) He then proceeded to ask me where I had set traps. I pointed in the direction of my sets (Mistake #2). He then pointed to a back window of my vehicle and requested that I take out a rifle and show him that it was unloaded, which I did. And then he asked to see my trapping license, which I showed him. He proceeded to ask me what I had been catching. I replied, “fox mostly,” (Strike #3 - I should have said, “Not a darn thing.”) and he launched into a lecture on how fox, especially females, should be released, that they were having a hard enough time dealing with the coyotes. I drove away, kicking myself for answering his questions.

There had been approximately a foot of snow on the ground, and the next day while checking my Route 30 line I noticed somebody else’s bootprints on top of mine. This was not good. Upon arriving at my first two sets I discovered that they had been stolen. I always set doubles, about 10’ apart, and these two were both gone. I found this card affixed to a nearby branch:






The "meeting" would have to to wait. There's no cell phone reception on that stretch of Route 30 and I had two more traps to check several miles south. That double had also been taken, with the same bootprints and calling card left behind. An ermine had been stealing my bait at this particular double and so the previous day I had put an Ouell trap where its tracks had entered my clearing. That trap was also missing. This is a photo of an Ouell trap (the entrance of this trap measures 3.5”):





I had not mentioned to the ECO that I had traps in this location. This ECO ostensibly drove up and down the 150 mile stretch of Route 30 in the Adirondack Park, stopped at every parking area, and walked along both sides of the road searching for my footprints in hopes of discovering more of my traps to dig up.

All in all a total of five traps had been taken from my trapline. None of those traps should have been touched. At the very most they could have been fired, with his card between the jaws, but left in place. I'm no attorney but their removal sure seems that it would fit the definition of "unlawful search and seizure" in the world of trapping. This was NY DEC that did this to me.

(I’m aware that there are sportsman reading this who do not trap. So, imagine if you will a favorite deer stand. One planned months in advance, that required preparation, e.g. scouting, topo maps, anticipated wind direction, time off from work, etc. While you’re in your stand a game warden decides not just to trample through the ground below passing by obliviously but charges right at your stand led there by your footprints in the snow. Standing below he notes tree stand measurements, fastening mechanisms, rifle caliber, and other details. Not brought there by a hotline tip or any suspicion of wrong-doing whatsoever, just the mere audacity that he is above the law and so can disrupt your hunt in progress.)

Well, as it turns out I didn't even have to contact this Johnny-not-so-Sneakum to have a meeting. Back on Route 30 again I noticed flashing lights in my rear view mirror. I quickly looked at my speedometer before slowing down and pulling off to the side of the road. I hadn't been speeding or swerving and so was curious as to why I was being stopped. As I reached over to the glove compartment for the registration and insurance I peeked up into the rear view mirror again and realized that the vehicle behind me was not a police car, but the same ECO vehicle that pulled up alongside me the day before. The image of my vehicle and/or license plate must have been firmly imprinted on his mind for him to recognize me out there.

He did return my traps, but not until after lecturing me on why he felt justified to take them. He claimed that they weren’t tagged and that the ermine trap was illegal to use outside of marten season. I asked why my traps were disturbed in the first place, stating that he had no right to unearth my traps just to check for tags, that it was open season on fox whether he liked it or not, and that he should not have been following my tracks in the snow. I explained that I didn’t want to use tags in high risk areas, that I had a bad experience in the Catskills when one of my stolen trap tags wound up on a 330 set in a playground. I offered to show him tagged traps in my vehicle. I then explained that an Ouell trap was not capable of killing an ermine much less a marten, that an ermine would just be held in it alive and therefore free of shrew damage. I continued explaining that just that morning I had caught an ermine in an Ouell and showed my landlord and neighbor that it was very much alive.

The fact is that inquiries regarding trap size/model could have been addressed the previous day, roadside with unset traps. A request to show traps with tags affixed could also have been made. That could have happened. That’s how it should have transpired - the less invasive way. But that is not how it went down.

NY DEC clearly lists the "Rights of Trappers" in the trapping regs:






But this must be a case of "do as I say not as I do" because why else would the "No one" that they're talking about have pulled my foothold traps, which by all appearances were legally and lawfully set, out of the ground? I wonder what he would have done if they had been tagged. Would he have been so kind as to reset them for me, to re-bed them in waxed dirt with scentless gloves? And I very much wonder what would have happened if he would have come across a fox in my set, especially a female fox. Then what would this "No one" have done? Released it under the premise of checking for a trap tag?

Anyhow, I could see that my words to this ECO were falling on deaf ears, and the more I spoke the more my blood boiled. A little voice in the back of my head told me to calm down and to be careful so as not to act in a manner which I’d later come to regret. So I shut up and took a step back away from him.

He then had the gall to accuse me of trapping marten out of season and wanted to know how many I was “stockpiling” in my freezer. (Yes, that is the exact word he used, stockpiling. Ya just can’t make this stuff up - this is NY DEC.) I scoffed at the accusation and told him that I had only 6 marten pelts, all of them legally sealed by NY DEC, and that their carcasses had been surrendered to NY DEC as required by law. He then stated that he would like to have my freezer searched. I was taken aback by his audacity but realized that my silence could be perceived as guilt and so I exclaimed, “Then let’s do it!”

He followed me to my residence and once inside I opened my freezer and removed everything. I had quite a bit in there, a dozen different species all frozen whole to fill a recent taxidermy order. As I removed a large mink I could see in the corner of my eye that he was becoming aroused. I didn’t even bother to speak, I just plopped it right into his wide-open, eager hands. He said, “That’s a pale mink for a minute I thought…” I cut him off mid-sentence while removing a big bag of red squirrels and flying squirrels and said, “These are unprotected I can have as many as I want.” I showed him a bag of ermine and explained that I had to snap their necks after removing them from Ouell traps and that their pelts had no shrew damage. Then he saw a fox and asked if it was a male or female. I ignored the question and showed him the bag of six sealed marten pelts. I began to remove them from the bag but he interrupted while saying, “Let me do it.” (I guess he thought I was David Blaine and was going to slip an unsealed pelt up my sleeve.) I swear to God it took him three minutes to go through that bag. He went through them like you would go through a wad of wet dollar bills, carefully peeling each one apart to make sure that there was nothing else sticking to it.

But it was all worth it, for now for the moment of truth had arrived. The moment I had been waiting for was finally upon us. He began his apology: Okay Joe I was wrong. I was wrong to harass you, I was wrong to disturb your traps, I was wrong to be pursuing you all over the Adirondacks, but most of all I was wrong to accuse you of illegally trapping marten and I'm sorry for acting so unprofessionally and… Only problem is that this is NY DEC that we're talking about here and there was no apology, none whatsoever. There was only me daydreaming. There was only me thinking of what he should have said. Me thinking of what an employee of a respectable organization would have said. But this is NY DEC, and instead of him doing the right thing while standing there in my kitchen, in my house where I had invited him, he handed me these two tickets:





As he was walking out of my house the last thing he said was, “Keep on trapping.” In my mind I was thinking that his remark had to be tongue in cheek. Why in the world should I continue trapping? So he could follow me around this rural county some more and pull up some more of my traps in hopes of finding some petty violation? In fact within the next 24 hours I pulled the rest of my lines before he could go disturb those too. NY DEC got what they wanted.

The citation for the “Body Gripping” trap I find particularly irksome. NY DEC, in typical blue-state government ineptitude, is grossly ambiguous when it comes to the usage of a “body-gripping” trap.

Page 66 of the NY DEC trapping manual reads, in part, that a “mouse trap is a body-gripping trap…”





So does this mean that we can't legally set mouse traps on land w/bait in NY outside of marten season? Because that's the way the regs are written.

The Ouell cannot kill a marten, it's that simple. An ermine (a female ermine is 1/10th the size of a male marten) caught in an Ouell is pinned down but can breathe, it is stabilized and therefore incurs less damage than an ermine with a leg in a #0 foothold or greater. Mustelids caught by a foot or leg fight like there's no tomorrow, and therefore the following foothold traps would eventually kill a marten: #0, #1, #1.5, #2, MB450, MB550, and MB650. NY DEC permits the use of every one of those trap sizes on land, from October 25 to February 15, which is a good 2.5 months after the close of marten season. (The irony, one of many within the NY DEC regs, is that my summons for using a lethal marten trap was for the wrong trap - it should have been for the footholds, not for the Ouell.) With all the taxpayer money funneled into NY DEC one would think that they'd have this figured out by now. If they'd simply listen to Trappers they'd have had this figured out long ago. But this is ny dec, and it would take a $987,000 multiyear taxpayer funded project chock full of data and graphs and charts and statistics all encased within a glossy binder to convince this omnipotent entity what deplorable Trappers already know.

The following weekend was New Year's weekend. I parked at the trailhead of a very popular hiking destination, at the end of 10 other parked vehicles. I hiked in a bit, walking atop snow packed down by dozens of hikers. How boring. Eventually I stopped that to follow fox tracks which crossed the human trail. I reset my pedometer and after 120 footsteps identified a bit of a flat clearing (as flat and clear as can be expected in the Adirondacks) and decided that the following day I would bring traps there and try once again to exercise my rights as a licensed Trapper.

As I was returning to the parking lot I saw the eco vehicle pulling away from my vehicle. Now what? I had already pulled all of my traps. What more did he want from me? I looked on my windshield for another invitation but there wasn't any. This was the 3rd time he targeted my vehicle in less than a week. I couldn't get off his radar. I was beginning to feel boxed in, realizing that the county with the lowest population density east of the Mississippi was not at all spacious for humans, that its limited road network resulted in an environment which was actually very confined.

But I greatly missed trapping. Fur is thick and prime this time of year and the next day I was excited to be back at the popular hiking trail with traps in pack. But that excitement was quickly replaced with dread: there were bootprints inside the tracks that I’d left the day before. Trappers constantly reading the snow know that each man’s bootprints are unique. I recognized those prints as the ones that removed my traps and left me business cards. This son of a (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) would not leave me be. He could have continued on the trail to the tourist destination to look for litter, illicit drug/alcohol use, COVID group violations, etc. But no, he had to follow the lone local Trapper. I was being hunted down, pursued, for no legitimate reason. I took three more steps then turned around in disgust and abandoned the area for good. As long as you follow the government's arrows you’ll be just fine, just don’t step off the beaten path. This is ny dec.

I never again set traps on public land aka ny dec's land. They got what they wanted, again.

In Hamilton County 82% of the homes are seasonal. The county ranks 1st in USA for percentage of 2nd homes. Basically what we have here are financially rich residents from the NYC Metro Area (primarily from New Jersey) who own Summer homes on small parcels of land strategically located between the public road and thousands of acres of public land (thereby effectively sealing off public access).

Had I been a man of means, like one of these financially rich 2nd homeowners, or one of the financially wealthy that arrive on remote lakes via light aircraft, then my footprints would not have, could not have, been followed. But because I am financially poor I am harassed. Prey on the Poor. This is ny dec.

I was born in this country, a lifelong, tax paying resident of NY state. I’m here legally (unlike the 1,000,000+ in NY that are not). I have no criminal record whatsoever. I served my country, an Infantryman. Just how many taxpayer funded hours should the government allocate towards searching for my vehicle and footprints?

This eco is not a private investigator being paid by a private citizen, he is a civil servant whose hefty salary is paid by the NY taxpayer. He acted on his own biases, not on any hotline tip; he had no cause for suspicion. He had no probable cause to follow my footprints, THREE TIMES. Apparently any of my traps can be disturbed on his whim, by his arbitrary discretion alone. This public employee can’t find anything better, anything more cost-efficient to do with his time? With the taxpayers' time? This is ny dec.

I pled "not guilty" last night, but the judge let the eco decide that I should be fined $100. After I paid the eco again said "Keep on trapping," and was as jolly as Fredo Cuomo. Driving home it dawned on me that being a warden wasn't his livelihood, it was his life. It was all he had. I imagine he keeps citation duplicates on the wall of his man cave in much the same way that a real sportsman would hang a deer rack, a bobcat, or a largemouth bass. I'd bet the 1st one of his career is framed.

It's quite plausible that in such a rural county as Hamilton, in the dead of Winter after deer season and before ice fishing, ny dec would be unable to fulfill citation quotas while fully respecting the rights of sportsmen. For them to catch anybody breaking the law they themselves must first break the law. The ends justifies their means, and if it the rights and freedoms of Trappers need to be trampled upon then so be it.

There is no doubt in my mind that ny dec has infringed upon the rights of many others. What sets me apart from other victims is that I've got the balls go public.

A warning to my fellow NY sportsman: This man has jurisdiction throughout the entire state of NY (not just ADK) and there are sure to be others out there like him. What happened to me could happen to you. To my NY Trapper brothers, and to all Trappers in blue states across this nation, I admonish you: Watch your back, today's Johnny Sneakum wears a badge and carries handcuffs and a loaded pistol.

I end this with a message to you ny dec people: We know that you people have moles on this forum which is why I waited two months to write this, fearing retribution if the eco and/or judge had read this prior to the court date. Your attempts at damage control during the past few years have failed miserably, and have not nearly compensated for the decades that you people have been treating us Trappers condescendingly. Your continued requests for beaver carcasses and female fisher carcasses in exchange for boy scout badges are pathetic and demeaning. The way you people establish seasons for fisher and marten and other trapping regs is utterly devoid of logic and common sense and only serves to disadvantage us Trappers. For years now there has been a steadily growing coalition of Trappers that have decided to give you people nothing; no more requested beaver carcasses, no more marten carcasses, no more fisher carcasses, no more fisher jaw bones, no more Trapper activity logs, no more cooperation, nothing. A growing coalition of Trappers who once granted you people the privilege of handling our marten, fisher, bobcat, and otter but have since revoked that privilege. I now understand these Trappers. And after experiencing what your eco did to me I now join their ranks.

If the season is open and does not say that who is he to set any policies other then the ones in the handbook? Id get a hold of his supervisor the guy is way out of his own lane if there is a problem that’s why they make rules in the first place is not a make it up as you go thing.

Joe, some of us spent a great deal of effort (trips to Albany meeting with Legislators) making it possible for trappers to use their DEC Document number on trap tags rather than their name and address...We did that so you could still place traps in, as you say, high risk areas and still be legal...

Maybe punch a few tags with your Doc # for those traps...

I’d call the main office in your area for clarification. Might be time for a MEETING with him and his supervisor. Just so everyone is on the same page.



B

If all the wardens are sleeping together your just asking for more harassment.

Good advice all.

The vast majority of us Outdoorsman are honest people and so when an LEO starts the hundred and one questions game we want to comply because we really have nothing to hide. However, there are a good percentage of LEOs who will write up a bogus ticket based on their interpretation of the law. It is harassment. I heard an LEO say once "I just write tickets and let the judge sort it out". I think they just hope you will pay it and not take the day off work to fight it. They see it as a feather in their cap.
So, unfortunately the best thing to do is to be rather rude, and just say " if I am breaking the law you can arrest or cite me, I am not going to start the question and answer game".
If it's obvious that you are hunting, trapping, or fishing they can ask to see your license, that's fine. But other than that, that's about all they can do. There are some instances at roadside game checks where they can look in the back of your vehicle, but they can't just flag you down without probable cause.
If you politely let them know that you know your rights upfront most of them will back off.
Don't talk to the police. It's too bad it's that way, but that's the world we live in now.

Take videos of your interaction with them, keeps everyone honest. I caught some guys hunting on my property this weekend and the DNR officer asked if I had photos, which I don’t and so he said there was nothing they could do then. Which I find interesting because cell phone that can take videos haven’t been around for too long. Wonder what they did before phones?

I should have mentioned in my post just above; you should never lie to a law enforcement officer. There's no need to even start down that road, just don't talk.

You broke two laws-your attitude likely resulted in the tickets instead of a warning.

Such a well written piece. Thank you. It needs to go in a magazine.
Truly honestly written.

Stories like this make me very glad for the wardens that work my area. They are absolute professionals and pro-trapper!

I've never encountered anything like what was described here.

I had a buddy who beat a so called trapping violation In court. Then every warden In the force had eyes on him. They finally got him and you know what he was charged with? It was littering he had left a bunch of Q tips behind when he pulled his coon sets. They had taken pictures of his sets and his tagged traps at those sets so he couldn't get out of It. He had also left some flagging behind at those sets.

Won't get out of the ticket for traps without tags with name/address or DOC#. The other sounds debatable

Rumor has it that a long retired ENCON that worked around my area requested a transfer from up north because of credible threats to him. Not saying that threatening anyone is justified. Just saying that your CO might be smart not to screw with too many people. Sooner or later he'll mess with the wrong gang. The Adirondacks are big, remote, swampy and thick. Just saying

Crap runs downhill. It's no surprise that DEC is now nfested with all kinds of aholes. After all, Cuomo is their boss. Anyone that doesn't see the correlation is blind.

Some game wardens are arses and some are nice.

I work with the Game&Fish, IF they acted that way to me my wifes advice and mine would be do not talk to them. I learned this the hard way when I lived in NY. Do NOT talk to them!!

You probably could have fought the body gripper, but due to your guilt of untagged traps the judge probably trusted the dec officer above you. ALL traps must be tagged in NY. It's in the regs.

If Tags are a Legal Requirement and You chose not to have them on your set traps you have no defense or excuse for not having them on your trap. You earned that Ticket. Your past experiences/feelings have no impact on the Law.

If it is against the law to set baited body Grip traps and your weasel traps meet the definition of a body grip trap.
Which by your description they do....You earned that ticket too...

As far as the harassment part, (Which it sounds like he is doing to me) His defense will be I am checking on a trapper with multiple violations.

You should have made him get a Warrant to look at your stuff. Anything he finds will not help you and can only hurt you.

You could have been pinched for each trap that he found in the field untagged...How many did you have untagged?? And how many tickets for untagged traps did you get???

Never consent to a search of your home (or vehicle). Literally nothing good can come from it, only bad. Its not your job to prove you are inoccent.