You call trappers sportsmen?

Yet your primary goal, stated many times by yourself, is to make money?

Bob made it so in Minnesota in court. Look at your MTA and MFzTA websites. They proclaim it to the world.

Judges have been wrong before and will be wrong again.
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Anyhow I hate to steer Goldy's post too far off course.

Not sure what you're talking about. Nothing we did created a definition about fur trapping as being recreational.
This is an often repeated statement that is factually wrong.

Post the judge's findings.

If you knew you'd already have it.

A pissing match ? The Associations are both supposed to represent their respective Members.

As a voting member of the FTA I voted in favor of supporting the New Mexico lawsuit. I can’t trap in New Mexico on either Public or Private land in that State because of MN law. But I was elected to represent all trappers and protect trapping as a whole. I certainly have no desire to pick and choose what trappers I want to turn my back on. I want all trappers to retain their rights in their respective State and sincerely fight for every one of them. Actually I want to support every trapper actually gain opportunity.

The assumption is often made that supporters of NR trapping just hope to benefit themselves with more opportunity. Personally I have more interest in giving others opportunities. I have trapping friends in near every State in this Union. Not a single one of those individuals who work tirelessly to support trapping are allowed here in MN.
I don’t see where it is selfish to fight for those individuals. I wont turn my back on the Grandpas , the grandmas, the Youth , and certainly not the Veterans of this country. Gene Purdy was a Military Veteran, a grandpa, and a volunteer who spent his entire life promoting and protecting Trappers. You’re terribly misguided to call that a pissing match Dirt.

Getting legislation passed is a money game. Here is how to play the money game with non-res trapping:
PR funds are paid to the states on a 3-1 ratio I believe. For every dollar a state takes in for license, tags, fees associated with hunting/trapping, the state gets 3 dollars in PR funds. In hunting, non res income is often more than resident income, thus non res matching is TREMENDOUSLY more than res. Usually I think. In Alaska, non residents pay the majority of money, thru the PR match, for wildlife management.
Pretty common for state legislatures to ALWAYS be looking for more money. A non res trapping license, maybe associated with species tags, or other sources of charging non res that the state doesn't charge the res would noticeably INCREASE revenue to a states wildlife management money.
You can play this out to democrat legislators by pointing out that more money to the state means higher pay for state employees and more state employees. Since most or all your state employees are union members, more money for the employee and more employees means more money to the union. Where do democrat legislators get a lot of their campaign money from? UNIONS!

If bob would have won his lawsuit and trapping would have been found primarily to be a commercial enterprise, things could have got reaaaaal interesting on public land in Minnesota.

Straw man argument.

"Most commercial uses require additional information with the application. You may need business plans, operating plans, liability insurance, licenses/registrations, or other documents. A commercial use is when an applicant intends to make use of NFS lands for business or financial gain."

Source: USFS

I'm somewhat familiar with operating commercial operations on Federal land, if it is even allowed. Hopefully, they don't ask for a piece of the action.

Good luck, Goldy!

Laughable that you use the"current house and senate" makeup to justify doing nothing. The MTA was instrumental in making sure NR couldn't trap in Minnesota long before this current political climate. That's a dead argument, and a poor excuse.

Somebody better tell South Carolina and Georgia to stop selling Commercial fur trapping licenses. Lol
More of the same old sky is falling nonsense. Fear mongering.

Less than 1/2% of all little league baseball (recreational)players make it to the professional (commercial ) level. The fact that 99.5% of ballplayers play ball recreationally does not make all of baseball recreational.

NR will never happen in MN and Trapping as we know it will be gone soon, too.

Years ago the MN DNR asked the MTA what they thought about going forward with NR trapping. Wasn't there a letter leaked from the then MTA prez about that? The MTA said NOPE so the DNR dug in their heels against it. It'll never be asked again, and like said, the legislature in this state isn't going to go along with it.

Now we have the DNR admin openly admitting they are going after a new resource of people: "School groups, bird watchers and recreational types". The DNR knows these groups have LOTS of money behind them. How many of those people in these groups want to see poor defenseless animals die a horrible death in steel jawed traps (their words). NONE, that's how many. As a govt employee of 22 years I can tell you money dictates policy and law, and we have no money compared to these new groups of people. So the DNR is out and also the Legislature. We are on a tiny island and the water is a rising. Each year we lose more. Now we lost turtle trapping (by the DNR) and I fish a section of the Cannon river where the DNR bought both sides of the river for a 6 mile stretch and deemed it a "turtle sanctuary". Anyone guess how much 6 miles of river will cost you? You can't even stop your canoe on a sandbar there. We can't even make this stuff up anymore.

As far a the MTA goes, I've brought up the issue many times in the past that most every city around the metro banning trapping 100% with city ordinances. Now, we have a couple states (Mississippi and Illinois) that has fought this in court and won, so there is case law regarding cities not having authority over wildlife. Rob Erickson from Illinois has said he would help us here as he got the law (ordinances) changed in IL. where city ordinances related to wildlife are null and void. But seems nobody in the MTA gives a rip about us metro guys who lose more and more ground every year due to an unchallenged (and clearly illegal) law. But hey, you can still use a #220 in northern MN (well in places) so who cares?

Just the way I see it guys. Right or wrong. And I'm not saying I'm right. Just my viewpoint at this point in the game.

Goldy, I am sincerely happy to hear you are still in there giving it heck. I know there's a couple other guys, too, so I'm not bashing you one bit. I wish you the best, I truly do.