Yep, I'll make sure to spud the ice in front of me, I'm not a fan of cold baths.
We're about 2 months past the bubble run stage which really sucks but oh well.
Yeah, I already snapped my foot today but luckily it was just my boot and one spring.

Well didn't get any traps out yesterday. Also didn't have anything in traps. Just one set off with some white fur on it and then one of my pieces of bait obliterated to the bone. I don't know how much I like these rat traps compared to long springs. I came back home and my buddy texted me and said "hey, I just shot a beaver in the middle of a field. Do you want to skin it"? So I said yeah and he said its tail was all chewed up like they had been fighting. So now I have to learn how to skin a beaver. The only problem being is that I don't have a good fleshing knife or a stretching board for it. So I'm wondering if I should just freeze it till later this spring and put it up. My buddy wants to get it tanned so going to try not to butcher it. So came back home today and checked the line on the way back, but nothing again. Going to pull this line on Wednesday and focus on finding more rat huts since I feel I need to do that some more since I just bought a dozen Victor round pan stoplosses. Most of which have readable pans still.

Freeze the beaver pelt till you have a good fleshing knife. As for drying any piece of plywood will do. Doesn't matter if it's nailed perfectly circular or oval. If it's tanned for yourself and not selling to buyer. Most go for hatter market and are sold by weight anyways. Watch a few videos and read the archives you're on a good path young man. Keep it up your doing fine

Yeah, I just froze it, will bring it to the fur buyer's with me when I go to drop off my weasels since he can flesh it and send it to the tannery.

Well, got home from school and texted my buddy to come over. Got all set up in the garage and cut all the feet and tail off. My center line was a little crooked but looks fine still. We both worked on skinning it out, I worked on the harder areas like the tail and face. He helped by popping the legs and keeping the skin tight for me as I cut. It took us about 30 minutes and we didn't have any problems with cutting holes in the hide surprisingly. I went to go remove the castor and since I hadn't watched a video on it, I had no idea how to do it. I should have stopped and watched a video, I was just really excited since it was my first ever beaver and it had no holes. I ended up cutting into the castor glands and had to scrap them. Then I got the skin ready to freeze and threw it in the freezer. I then got a bag for the meat and started cutting it for weasel bait since I have heard it works a lot better. So yeah, 10/10 would skin one again. I just need a stencil, plywood, and a good fleshing knife to put them up myself. Will probably just buy them all at this fall convention or NTA if I have the funds saved up for it.

Don’t scrape the cut castors. Save for your own lure or bait.

Yeah, you always chop castor up fine to use in lure anyways. Just save for your own use.

Good job.

I sadly don't have any use for it. I have jars upon jars of commercial beaver lure already.

Thank you!

Well, today in school was rough. It was actually fine until art class, I'm a perfectionist, so art isn't my thing. We were drawing hands and I just can't for the life of me, just draw and be happy with the end result. So I was a little frustrated after that class being as I couldn't figure out how to draw a detailed hand. So anyways, after a short assembly for some random thing, I got out of school and headed out to the line. I was pulling the line today no matter what happened. I got to the first box and had nothing. The second box I walk up and hop over the fence (I have permission), and I saw a weasel butt sticking out! So this box had now taken two weasels in the span of a couple of weeks. Went through the rest of the line and had nothing else sadly. Got home and skinned out the weasel perfectly fine and even had the tail this time. As I was boarding, I was looking for the other leg and couldn't find it. Well somehow, I must have cut it or pulled too hard and it tore the fur all the way so it was only hanging out by a thread. So I figured that it would fall off during tanning anyway so I just cut it off. There's always a learning curve to this stuff. Now I just got done doing my Algebra homework and will hopefully be in bed by around 10:30 or 11 pm at the latest.

Idk about sewing weasels, but I've patched other things that otherwise wouldn't have been presentable.

Yeah, I figured it wasn't worth the time since it's a wall hanger anyway. I'll get better at skinning though. I still have to do spring rats and beaver this year.

Going to go set out my newly bought dozen stoplosses and some other traps tomorrow on the first slough I was trapping rats in the huts. Hoping that it will produce a little better this time since I did some quick numbers and the number of rats just isn't adding up. Ice is really thick, augered a hole in for a baited conibear and I struck right into the bottom of the slough. The blades are really dull so I need to get new ones. Also found about a dozen or more huts on a little .5 acre slough, hoping to get permission for that since most of the huts are trapping sized huts.

Got out 7 traps today. All of the easy to trap huts froze solid on the inside, had to go to the bigger ones where almost every time it went past your elbow. Almost got new blades for the auger but they were made for the newer model, not the older one like mine. Hoping these sets will catch a few more rats since they have been quite destructive in this slough. Will pull these in the first half of the week and hopefully set the new spot around Wednesday or so.

You might be able to sharpen the auger blade you have if that is the problem

Keep after those rats

Yeah, I was hoping to get new ones and then send these in directly to Ion to get them resharpened. I'm planning on hitting rats as hard as I can for the rest of the winter then it's floats in the spring. Didn't matter if I had them sharp now anyways, I can't find the fish.

Well, went out and checked traps today and I proved myself wrong. This slough doesn't have the numbers I was hoping for. Out of 7 sets, I only caught one rat. It might barely make medium, I have it stretched and drying right now. Used my new serrated pelting knife for it and the head was way better, just made one of the eye holes a little bit but went well. The stoploss didn't break the leg or even mess it up at all, I don't know if I got lucky this time or what, somehow the other leg was broken though. Going to pull these on Tuesday when I go to check and then set up the new spot on Wednesday. Hopefully, this week will go by a bit more chill since last week between all the homework was a bit chaotic.

Your rats are looking better all the time and shows your learning fast! Keep up the good work!