Along with cold temps what odd/unusual experiences have you had on the trapline?
In 80/81, the same season I had the 50 below day, I was trapping out of a cabin about 20 miles up the Nowitna. The cabin was on an oxbow lake that still had a connection to the river. I only had a dog team in those days. Some days I would leave the oxbow and head down the main river to check a line I had on the other side of the river. Each time I went this way and about 3 miles from the cabin, there would be fox tracks going to the same spot. The fox would dig a little in the snow at that spot. This went on into late Feb. or March when I decided to stop the team and see why this spot was so interesting to the fox.
I kicked snow away and found some moose hair sticking out of the ice. I got my axe out of the sled and kicked more snow away. After some chopping in the ice I found more moose hair and chopping into the hair was meat. I kept working at the ice with the axe and discovered there was a whole moose frozen in there. I went back to the cabin and got my chainsaw, an ice spud, and some rope. I figured I could get that whole moose out of there with enough chipping the ice and using the team to pull on it.
I'm not sure how long I worked at it but eventually I had to be satisfied with about half of the animal. Just couldn't get the whole moose up and onto the ice.So half the moose I think, floated under the ice somewhere downriver. I won't go into detail about what I did with the half I got out, but it didn't go to waste.
The only explanation I could come up with was the moose tried to swim across, or walk across, the river at the wrong time and ended up drowning. It's head was under water so I think it died up river somewhere and where I found it was where the ice it was floating with ended up.

Mike hard to beat your story.

I had been passing this tree all season but when the February sun hit this tree I stopped and still can't figure out what went on. The tree trunk was void of branches almost to the top and the branches were all on the ground at the base of the tree in a pile. There were claw marks that indicated that a bear had did the limbing.

I would have loved to be in visual distance to witness the sound of what went on.

That would have been something to see Larry ! I wonder if a brownie chased a blackie up that tree ?


Mike: i have had two experiences similar to yours. The first one was at a beaver house in a slough I had never been to previously. There was a live bull moose thrashing in an open lead near the slough mouth. He couldn't get out because the ice kept breaking. Eventually he tired and went under except for one antler sticking up. He remained like that all winter.

The second was a cow moose that had come off a cut bank onto glare ice and dislocated both shoulders. Her front legs were at right angles to her body but her back feet were still under her. She could push with her back legs and scoot around a little with her nose on the ice. She looked like a cow catcher on a locomotive. I put a 22 LR behind her ear and ate her.

Found a moose that went through the ice once and there was a small patch exposed where the animals tunneled down inside and were essentially hollowing it out under the ice. Caught a marten once by the hind foot and it was hanging dead/ frozen. A shrew tunneled in through its butthole, the fur was fine. Had a marten squeeze through a trap ring once and had a heck of a time getting him back through it. There was a spot on one of our traplines where there was a mound of rocks and the snow would always melt off it and it would sometimes steam. Just a few off the top of my head

One spring boating up an interior river I seen a marten hanging by its front foot on a pole set. Same thing.....shrews tunneled in through the butt and it was mostly hollow with some freeze drying.
Was a nice conversation piece in my house for several years!

After 45 years of trapping, either I must have just “normal” experiences or my memory isn’t what it used to be.. probably the latter. Only one I can think of is I used to use 40#ish pound test fishing line to hang my wings at lynx sets and one day while pulling up to a set I could see my wing moving and a small blob on the string. I shut the machine off and sat and watched a small vole shimming back up the fishing line from the wing like we used to do in gym class climbing the rope. Was pretty entertaining. I did catch a muskrat once in a cubby that was up on a ridge line, no where near water that I was aware of..

I too have seen that shrew procedure. They are vile creatures !

I had the same thing happen to a beaver under the ice. I set the snares and then the temperature dropped to 50 below for about 8-10 days. Needless to say there was a lot of ice on that hole when I got back to it.
BUT....I had a very large beaver in a snare but something......either little fish or some other small organism had eaten that beaver from the inside. It looked like an old suit coat on a hanger when I pulled that snare up. Whatever did it never heard of clean skinning ! The hide was perfect though.

A couple more odd occurrences...... Early November one year i saw where a beaver was breaking ice at one of his slides and coming out for a few last bites of fresh bark. I set a 330 and the next morning I had a beaver..... he was pretty badly torn up. There was no snow to show tracks but i figured it was an otter since they used that same area.
I skinned what was left and staked the carcass in about three feet of water and reset that 330 just under ice edge ahead of the beaver.

Next morning I had a wolverine in that 330 completely submerged. Just the tip of his tail was floating.

Also had a beaver hit a 330 while I still had the springs in my hands.....setting it in front of his entrance.
That was like a lightning bolt going off in my hands !

I came upon a marten still soft 1/2 eaten so I remade the set and ran a side loop and when I came back I had the culprit bouncing around.

Couldn’t wait to check a pair of beaver sets that were a 15 minute snow shoe trip to. Arriving both sets were tore up it was dark and my thoughts were I had been robbed. No light but all of a sudden I heard something in the woods above the sets. I couldn’t see so the 15 minute walk back to the truck for a light. On arrival the light showed me 2 Blanket beaver alive all tangled in snare cables, visqueen and toggles. Oh no I left the pistol in the truck so back for it. Got the deed done and now 2 blanket beavers to the truck required a trip for each one! Mileage pay that night!

I apologize for the poor picture but taken years ago long before cell phones. It's a Lynx in a leaning pole set. By the back foot, LOL.



The fox is also in a leaning pole set. I had an employee and his son that were from Nebraska with me and he was a snare fox trapper and caught way into the hundreds of fox there. Him and his son kept standing looking with puzzled looks on their faces when a reply came out, " I guess we were trapping wrong" my reply was yah right! I have caught several in the leaning pile set though. Only 1 Lynx.



This picture of a wolf snare that I missed with. There was a big bait to the right in the picture and I think that the wolf was looking at the bait and the snare swiveled down the side of his head. Anyway I missed!

This wolf Sourdough and I caught in a trail set with a #9. As we came down the trail about a 1/2 mile from the catch site the pack had crossed our trail and headed to the river/creek where they often traveled staying off of the trail. This wolf had separated from the pack and traveled to where we caught it. When we arrived at the catch site the prettiest wolf was caught in trap.



Why this is an unusual story is that a trip later we caught these 3 black wolves. The melon head on the right had a collar. When we got back to town I hauled the collar to the fish and game office on College Road and met with a biologist (can't remember who) " That's not one of our collars" but as he looked it up on his computer "that's Gordon Haber Biol;ogist collar and he was hired by an animal rights group to track wolves. ( I believe that's correct) Long time ago. Anyway " I know that pack and they den a bunch of miles from the line and the pack is all black EXCEPT for the dominate wolf and it's a female and travels separate from the pack"



Over the 30 plus years I trapped that line I caught black wolves and I believe were dependents of the pack but not all wolves caught were black though. This wolf was pure black and I sold it for good money to someone that was waiting for a pure black. for a long time (right Al). The picture doesn't do the wolf justice though.

Thanks Mike for this thread. I have a life time of trapline pictures and they do no good just setting in my computer and phone so here is another oddity in the woods

There is an area that every winter it would heave up and I could drive over the humps. This year though something was different and it heaved up and broke the ice into chunks and deposited these ice chunks on the ice. This was the only time this happened. The force to break the ice into chunks is unbelievable and really odd.

Thanks for viewing.

I am tickled that you got one of "Gordon's wolves " ! Hope you kept the collar.

Your lynx on the pole reminds me of one of mine. The lynx had gone up the pole and got caught. then jumped down and started pulling. To get more leverage he grabbed the clump of alders nearby . He pulled out of the trap but his right front foot was wedged between three alder stems and he couldn't get it out !

Snap, those pop up ice cube flow colours are gorgeous. Glacial blues and turquoise are my favorite blue tones. I call those Ice cubes, just as they are popped out of a tray.

Decades ago, on a lake I lived on in North Idaho, the winter ice froze it almost solid. I was surprised to look down the slope into the lake away from shore a bit, to see a huge perfect triangled pie shaped slice of approx. three foot thick, ice sitting on the surface, next to the equally perfect shaped open water hole it popped out from. It was huge, a bit longer than a full sized truck . No person cut that . It was as if it was cut and popped straight up to land on the lake surface right next to the hole it came from.

I wish I had a photo of that. It was perfect triangle pie shape dimension. I would have loved to witness that in sight and sound .

Your photos reminded me of enjoying the textures and colours of the overflows with JR when we were traveling his line. After I was helped to overcome my fright of hearing overflows under me, I was quite transfixed by their amazing colours . Each has its own personality.

Thank you , Snap. Any more of those you capture, I would sure love seeing them.

Awesome story Oh Snap, love it! Great pics too.

caught this cat many years ago in a cubby. I made the traditional cubby with a no. 4 ls. But i had a wolverine in that area also. So i set a pair of 14 jumps 3 feet from the cubby in the shuffled trail. What i think happened was the cat came in just walked over the 14's and then sat down on a 14 and tom leaped into the air and over a branch and died there. Was not a good day to be a male.

Larry and all, how did a private citizen, Gordon Haber, get legal authority to capture wolves and put collars on them? Must have been during Tony Knowles days, eh? Oh, the Park Service?

isnarewolves, that is incredible!
martentrapper, yes to both, if I remember correctly. Gordon was not a friend of the trapping community in the North at all, and a particular nuisance for a well-known trapper just outside the park perimeter.

In spring of 81, same year I found the moose, I set up a spring camp on a slough off the Nowitna. Using the dog team, sled, and my 19 ft. Grumman, I hauled all the necessities to a high spot on this slough. A couple springs ago I had learned that spring camps need to be on high ground. (That might be another story). There were a good number of rat push ups in the lake/slough and no shortage of beaver. My goal was to acquire enough furs to be profitable.
I didn't go all the way to the top on the high spot. Set up the tent on some slightly slanted ground but it worked. The dogs, 8 I think, were tied on a gangline parallel to my tent. Had commercial dog food and of course the rat/beaver carcasses would go the dogs.
Once the ice melted enough to get around with the canoe, which I had a 15 HP motor for, I cruised around with the canoe. One day I spied a beaver on the edge of the long slough and shot it. Motored over and picked it up, put it in the canoe. Turned the canoe away from the bank and as I did I heard something up on the bank which was about 10 ft. above the water. Looked back and there is a small Blackie clinging to a tree not far above the ground. Bears were hide money, food for me, and food for the dogs. I had my dog food cooker at the camp so certain meas were cooked for the dogs. Turned the canoe around with the motor and shot the bear. Dragged it to the canoe and drove back to camp.
Once at camp I started in on the bear. My 30-06, which was the bear gun, was above me in the tent. In short time the whole gang of dogs started barking, even screaming. Looked up and at the top of this small hill I'm camped on and there is a very large black bear. No sign of fear in this one and he started to mosey down the hill parallel to the dogs and no more than 10 ft. from them. All 8 dogs were screaming with some pulling on their cable to get to the bear and some pulling to get away from the bear. The bear showed no interest in me or the dogs.
My Savage 110 30-06 had ocaisional problems with the firing pin not striking the primer hard enough. This was one of those times. I think I pulled the trigger 3 times with only getting a "click" each time. The bear was heading for the water it appeared. Ran to the tent and got 3 more rounds I think. Finally got one to go off and the bear collapsed at the waters edge. No sign of movement. I wasn't completely convinced it was dead but did not want to put more 06 holes in it either. I grabbed my Nylon 66 .22 and walked down to the bear. Still no movement so I walked up and put 2 shots into the top of it's skull. I was satisfied it was dead after that.
Got busy skinning the big guy. While skinning out the head I found that 2 .22 rounds fired point blank at the top of the skull didn't penetrate the grissel of the skull. That was surprising.
No more excitement that spring. Took me a couple trips to get all the stuff back to the river. I used the canoe as a sled to get the camp over the land areas. The big bear was around 7 ft. squared. Unfortunately I didn't keep the skull. Oh, I also learned that a 30-06 doesn't make a good beaver shooting gun!!

Great experiences .Now I might therapy as I never had 5% of this excitenent in my time . thanks

It was always fun talking to Coke about his experiences with Haber. I haven't talked with him in years: anyone know how he is doing?