Awwwww. You're so modest..

Garold Weiland i read his books cover to cover to many times to count.

O’Gorman, Hershberger, and Milligan were my inspiration.

Bud Hall was a well rounded trapper,
He told me he had a check day once that he had 40 consecutive fox sets that connected.
One of several. Bud was a pleasure to speak to.

Lots of great trappers to learn from but I've always admired JC Conner and Gary Jepson in particular.

Phil Brown

He's not famous, but I wanted to be like my uncle David. David was my hero when I was little. He trapped, hunted, fished and did taxidermy.

Keith

Tom Miranda has done pretty well for himself. Never really thought about it but I'd choose him. Or Asa or his dad. Always thought highly of them. Bud Hall....cause he lived 10 miles from me. Lots of great men from the past!

I liked Leo Hoeft, soft spoken, knowledgeble, willing to share his knowledge. Caught all species and handled all of his fur and was a lure and bait maker and made excelllent packbaskets as well.

Bryce

Hawbaker and Daily when I was pretty young then Carman and Leo Hoeft.

Shields or Colter

Lt Gray.....dude is still killing it......

I did admire some old time trappers like EJ Dailey, O.L. Butcher, V.E. “Wildcat” Lynch, Pat Sedlak and Walter Arnold. True woodsmen. However, I do my own thing with some advice from trappers that are on this forum.

Why does that not surprise me...

I'm 75 now. I'd rather be like ME when I was 20!

Pete

not technically a trapper but Del Cameron

Fill your own tool box with what works the best for your style of trapping that sounds simple but folks get stuck with one idea someone had to give them or everyone’s flavor of the month shooting star ideas. Articles or books have a lot of filler often new ideas are fluff often but if you told folks they should go out a punch in simple variations of the 3 basic sets that would be rather boring. Not that some info is not golden you just need to figure what nuggets in that litter box is a good one to add to your daily trapping. One trap adjustment idea could be worth the price of a book.

Ran into a guy at a convention years back that was following the old Hawbakers trapping book religiously. I chuckled and said you didn’t build that chicken coop did you joking not being serious but the look on his face said yes he did. I told him that so much other trapping related stuff could have been done in that time. I did feel bad the way that came about but who builds a chicken coop when dirt holes would have caught that fox and many more in that time he wasted.

I’ve seen some bizarre sets impossible to even consider making that people were sucked into thinking they were a good idea. In the last 50 years I’ve seen 1000s of ideas but few that actually changed trapping as we know it.

When I think of originals, innovators/pioneers I think of Arthur "Art" Crane...Pete Rickard was influenced by him, and then Johnny Thorpe was influenced by Rickard.

Ardell Grawe was the one I looked up to while young....Who I think was a Bill Nelson disciple.

Any of them except the ones who are certain that they know everything.

That’s a fact sir.