Tim, good story! Around here the 'rats take a beating in the marshes, ponds and lakes from hawks and now eagles. We are seeing more eagles showing up.
The creeks still have rats but limited numbers. Everything wants to eat muskrat...snapping turtles, mink, otter and raptors. I'm surprised we still have 'rats...lol

Muskrats are very good food for humans too. Just get a fresh rat and fry like a rabbit. Serve with gravy.

YouthTrapper. Your stretched muskrat put up is looking much better. Good job. The way it sounds. You are about the only guy in the country with water and muskrats. I am jealous

mchewk,,same thing here. too many eagles and other raptors, and otters. ive seen otters clean out a slough in a matter of days. almost no rats in our creeks anymore either. we'll need 2 good wet years to bring back any numbers of rats at this point.

Well luckily I do otherwise I wouldn't be catching anything. Rats are my favorite thing to trap no matter the day. I have also really enjoyed putting the fur up, I just wish I had a bigger space to do it in since that little shed gets a little crammed.

I figured I was getting too many. I clean out most of everything I can reach and always clear the plunge hole. I'm using 1.5 longs right now since my 1.5 coils are still getting the new pans on them. I've been a little lazy about getting them fixed. I would use my #1 coils but I stole the chain off of them to put on my 1.5s since they were really short. This summer though I'm going to get all my traps fixed and chained appropriately.

Well, I came home from school yesterday right after 7th period and slept for a solid 6 hours. Stayed home today all day and slept until around 12:30. Had to check traps today so I went out and checked around 2. Got 2 rats today, made my conibear holes bigger, and fixed up some of the huts a little better. Put up both rats and made a video about it but I can't get them to merge so I'll try again tomorrow to get them fixed otherwise I'll just have to upload 4 different parts. Had another two wring outs. One was caught by the toe and the other by the whole foot. So yeah, stay tuned for a muskrat put up video tomorrow or so, I'll make sure I put a post in here about it.

today was a 50% loss in wring outs. sounds like your 1 1/2 longsprings arent fitting down the plunge holes, and theyre holding the rat inside the huts. those traps are over powered for a rats front foot. the weight is nice for drowning in open water, but a poor choice for inside a hut. youll be setting new huts soon, so just use a few of your 1 1/2 coils for now.

Yeah, I need to fit those pans tomorrow night. I'm going to scout farther to the south of this slough but it's still connected to see if I can find any more settable huts otherwise I'll switch to one of my other spots.

Here's the put up video, hadn't skinned a rat in a little bit so cut me a little slack. Also I just realized the knife scraping the skull so that's my bad, didn't realize I was doing it till I watched.

Only 1 rat today and I didn't feel like getting the wood stove running for only 1 rat so I froze him. Going to pull traps tomorrow until Friday since we have snow moving it quickly. Going to work on some projects for the time being. Need to put up some more firewood since I still have a couple of months of needing it and I'm getting quite low.

Once you get your opening cut done place the rat on the table and you can hold the belly while pulling the pelt off and you won’t rip the belly open as often.

I read your whole thread young man and your doing a fine job, I like trapping muskrats almost as much as I like trapping beaver. Keep up the good work, I like your positive attitude, and your work ethic, this country would be better off if we had more young people like you.

I need to clean my table first, it's full of slough grass and mud from brushing the rats. Will try it when I have some more rats.

I love trapping them too, sucks that there isn't a little bit more money in them. I wish we had more people like me but I'll take what I can get at this point.

Well forgot to post yesterday. Caught 2 rats and pulled all my traps, and started skinning them. Skinned out the smaller one first and did fine, got to the bigger one, and got to the head. I messed it up badly and didn't finish the cut on the one eye so it got all messed up and I had to scrap it. It was just one of those nights yesterday. The bigger one was alive when I go to the hut too and he was feisty and tried taking off with the trap and fiberglass stake. I don't think he realized that there was a 6' drag behind him while I dug out my axe handle. Then today I went to a family friend's house who fixed my knife and cut some firewood. We have a local arborist who drops all the wood off at this guy's house since he has a wood boiler but it's hundreds and hundreds of cords of wood so he lets me snag a couple of dozen logs every now and then. Got most of it split tonight but will have to split the rest tomorrow and cover it with a tarp since we're already looking at getting some snow tomorrow. This load of wood should last me a couple of months hopefully.

Well put up and stacked/piled the rest of the firewood today. It should last me a couple of months and now I already have people messaging me for snow removal jobs so I'll be busy even without traps out.

https://youtube.com/shorts/nRuegt2NWAk?feature=share

No school today and no school tomorrow. Will still be holed up for a while though. Still looking crappy out, just been working on mink pans on the 1.5 coils these last few days. Only have about a dozen left and then I have to fine tune everything. Once I'm done with that, I'm going to see what I need for parts for my broken traps and then start seeing what I need to sell to make my trapline a little more organized.

All this snow is making me go a little bit crazy. I feel like I have eaten more food in the last week than I have in the last month. I shoveled the sidewalk about 50% tonight while the dog decided to take her sweet time running around. I wore my Sitka Traverse hoody and Duck Oven jacket and I was sweating by the end with the wind whipping and snow everywhere. Hopefully going to get traps out Saturday if the roads aren't terrible still. Got all of my 1.5 coilsprings with the new pans checked over to make sure they still set and everything. Now it's time to put tags on them and put hagz brackets on the ends. Been thinking of ways to streamline my traps and I have found out the best way so cataloging traps that I want to sell/keep. Been a busy few days, haven't even started fixing my traps in the broken bucket yet.

12-17-22: Well got tags and brackets put on all the 1.5 coils yesterday. Those finally went back out to the garage after months of being in the house. Been cataloging and collecting traps that I want to sell/trade. Went through my bucket of broken traps and only had 2 that were actually broken. One of which I'm selling anyways, so I'm just going to sell it as a parts trap. The other is a 1.5 longspring I broke while unloading the truck after pulling traps. I threw it on the ground to get rid of the ice on it and it bent the jaw enough that it popped off entirely. Probably going to end up being a parts trap too.

12-18-22: Went out today scouting around 10 am. Found a good spot where I have permission but it was right off a highway so couldn't find anywhere to park where I wouldn't get stuck. So I abandoned that spot against my better judgment. Headed back to the house, went up north to where I have been trapping and decided to check out the road that has the slough I have been trapping for the last couple of weeks. Well ended up busting through two drifts and decided that was enough so I was going to turn around at the next wind tower road (the guy had wind towers in the middle of his field). So I was braking to turn and of course, I'm at the top of a hill when I start braking it was pretty slick out and I ended up sliding down the top of the hill about 20 feet into a big drift that buried the truck up to the frame. Started shoveling for about 20 minutes and tried everything. I was just getting ready to call my dad to come to pull me out and the landowner pops up over the hill and luckily stopped in time. I had a chain with me so we got me all pulled out and that wrecked the day for me. Went and drove around and couldn't find any tracks really. Went out and scouted with my dad after I got home and we couldn't find any either. Found one slough with a good couple of huts and some random tracks so I'm going to go set that tomorrow. Plan to set out a dozen weasel boxes so I can maybe catch a few before the season closes at the end of January. So yeah, it has been an eventful day, plan to go to bed in the next hour or so, and hopefully going to get up around 10 am again and get some traps out after being stuck at home for a week with no skinning to do.