Alaska Board of game meeting coming up for South Central area. I was told there is a proposal to create a 50 ft, or is it yards, no trapping set back on some trails. Was also told ATA is supporting this set back. Was also told Resident Hunters of Alaska will support it.
Who has better info than I do?

My understanding is that the trails in question are places that obviously should not be trapped. ATA made a decision to support the proposal as a gesture of goodwill, reasonableness and willingness to compromise.

I have no idea why RHAK took the position they did.

Pete

I was at the Fairbanks Advisory committee meeting. Wildlife trooper there. Visited with him and he said he/they would be quite happy if the Fairbanks management area was closed to trapping. Dog in trap is one of AWT most numerous calls.
The RHAK, guy was speaking for himself. Not for RHAK. Fbks AC took no action on that set back proposal.

I can assure you it will be a "Give an inch, they will take a mile". After Juneau instituted a 1/4 MIILE setback on a handful of trails, it then became a dozen. Then 15, then 18. Every cycle another few "favorite trails" would pop up, always with the municipalities' blessing.
It took ingenuity, 6 years of my participation as the Trapper Seat on the local A.C., and the blessing of a couple of key members of the BOG, (Ted Spraker was key), to figure a way of un-doing the damage done. With certain trap-size limits and elevated sets, we were allowed to reduce setbacks to a more reasonable distance of 50 yards. Then, 3 years later, with no calamities, we were able to include larger traps that were submerged.
Personally, from experience, I would probably be for such setbacks but would offer a list of acceptable trails and be vigilant that the list doesn't grow on the next cycle.

I think dog owners and trappers alike should exercise responsibility and good judgement so this doesn't have to be a problem. People shouldn't be letting their dogs run amok, and we should recognize that people will probably turn their untrained dogs loose and let them stick their head in a 330 on most any heavy use trail system

I agree with AK Viking the fact is a loose dog will still find a set even 50 yards off a trail. The ATA sounds like RINO's in Congress caving to the left and to be completely honest I haven't been overly impressed with some of the decisions coming out of the ATA.

This is how they work. I've seen it lots of times, in lots of places. Now it's not my state, and not really any of my business, but I would personally not go along with this without fighting it. Try and impress on local trappers the importance of being responsible and not setting traps where they are going to be an issue with the public (particularly large conibears and snares) but at the same time try and prevent this becoming law. If you can't prevent it altogether, try to minimize the damage and make sure it only applies to specific traps on specific trails.

If this goes through without a fight, guarantee it will only be a few years and the antitrappers will try and expand it to the entire state.

If you trap a heavily used trail, don't people just steal your stuff?

Just saw this today.

It is for specific heavily used trails in the South Central area.

Yes Dirt people do steal traps and animals in traps off of well used trails. They also unset traps if they are anti trapping.

bearcat2 we can impress the importance of being ethical to our fellow trappers all we want but there are always those out there that think its their given right to put whatever style and size of trap wherever they please and blame it on the dog owner for breaking Alaska law and allowing their dog to run off leash. Not to mention non trappers and antis get offended seeing dead or caught animals in traps and snares.

What's interesting is that after reading through the comments from the Facebook post is that non trappers overwhelmingly were supportive of the trappers being there and people keeping their dogs on a leash.

You seem to understand why a trapper would want to hide his sets well off a heavily used trail.

Dirt, as usual you have an un-canny understanding of the situation. And also as usual, the understanding that for some people, the obvious escapes them. Not setting traps where dogs are likely to get caught, recreational users are probably going to encounter things that revolt them and are going to reflect negatively on trappers as a whole, should be a no-brainer, and yet without laws stipulating such, they will continue doing it. Yes, some will do it, regardless. However, the laws against it are what we use to separate ethical trappers from un-ethical scofflaws. Without that critical piece, we are all lumped together. Think about that.

It’s unfortunate to have to self police. However ethical law abiding trappers aren’t catching ethical law abiding dog owners dogs. More laws and restrictions won’t solve the problems. However since most conservatives don’t go to meetings, vote, or participate in these public discussions, and liberal whack jobs are very good at all of those things. Most likely restrictions will be unavoidable. I don’t have a problem with these setbacks as no one is getting wealthy trapping the ditch, it only gives trappers a black eye. Years ago I would be against it, but since COVID outdoor consumer numbers have exploded it seems. More people hunting, fishing, trapping, and that doesn’t necessarily make them a responsible users.

All the responsible guys are already abiding by this even though it's not in writing. And the ones who aren't, are the sort that never will. A guy down the road was catching a bunch of the neighbors dogs last year in his wolverine sets at a big bait pile he had on his property, he got tired of the dogs, so he started dispatching them. A guy like that is gonna make us all look terrible regardless of where he is or what he's doing, inbreeding takes a toll after a couple generations it seems. No reason to write laws for those of us who don't need them to tell us right from wrong or what makes sense and what doesn't.

You can't enforce ethics, but you can enforce regulations. Meaning, the troopers can tell the trapper to move his potemtial problem causing sets. They can't enforce ethics.

Sure he can if those sets are found before the dog finds them….

BINGO!

I would suggest that people read the proposal, Footholds, large coni's set on the ground, and snares need to be set back 50ft from the trail. Elevated, enclosed, and submerged sets can be set within that 50 yds, The 13 trails listed in that proposal are HIGH use areas for multi users that walk their dogs. For you guys up in FBX would you set a trap in Creamers Field? Times the traffic there by 10 on the trail systems down here. And remember we have the 2 largest population hubs in the state between Anchorage and Wasilla.
To me it is a common sense approach, we as trappers are not losing our ability to trap, we are being asked to be smarter about it. And I am sorry if you cant walk 50 yds off a trail that you KNOW has dog owners walking it then your part of the problem.

AV I understand what your saying and the actions taken in Juneau, Anchorage, and Valdez were all taken into consideration. When ATA / SCCATA sat down and spoke to the new director of AWA we made it very clear that any future requests for set backs there had better be documented cases of incidents. There are alot of other factors that I am not going to disclose on a public forum and I will leave it at that. It is a compromise that I honestly feel will benefit us later.

I spoke about this proposal at our SCCATA October general meeting, and did a in-depth presentation on it at our November general meeting with no negative input/feedback from our
membership here.

The biggest problem and concern that I have is law enforcement does not enforce the leash laws that are emplace, and many incidents are not reported through law enforcement so any incident that does occur is automatically the trappers fault. An example would be 2 weeks ago a person lost a dog in a snare, The dog was off leash, on a side trail, and that person lost sight of it resulting in it getting caught in a snare and becoming deceased, The trapper set on a side trail that he made with his snogo set it and didn't do a dang thing wrong. But that incident was not reported or investigated to law enforcement so it becomes he said she said. With that said I feel this is one that this concern will bite us in the butt later.

The best thing we can continue to do is community outreach and awareness through shared trails presentations, public education, and hanging signs at trail heads, There are always going to be stupid people on both sides of the fence.

They never give, they always take.