I think they travel both down the Taku and can make their way down from Haines and Skagway. And even the ice fields are possible, but probably not likely for a cat. I knew a trapper that was flying over the ice fields one time and spotted a pack of I think 12 wolves coming from Canada. He followed them for some time, and eventually figured where they were headed. Being a very experienced trapper, he set about trying to trap them.
It wasn't long after that he collected all 12!
Also, a wolverine that was captured and collard in the area of my main trapline up there was tracked over the ice fields, then lost, (this was north of Juneau, about 40 miles). 2 years later, it was trapped by a trapper up Telegraph Creek!!!

Hand in the cookie jar, and paid for it.

Well, a few days ago I was looking thru some pictures trying to find a few things in particular, and couldn't find what I was looking for. But then later on I saw this thread on "Unusual/Odd things on the trapline",... and after looking thru what I just did, I thought,....."Man,... I could burn some bandwidth on this thread". And since there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of trapping going on this year on this site,... or maybe eveyone is out on the trail all the time, I don't know. But anyway, I thought that I could post a couple pictures of things I seen and done over the years that some people might find interesting. This might take awhile,... but here's a sampling of a few things I just went thru,...

I'll start with some stuff from years ago. This first picture is of a coyote I caught during or right after the pipeline construction (mid-70's,... man, that's 50 years ago!). When the pipeline was done, a lot of people who worked on it stayed in Alaska, at least for awhile, and there were people trapping everywhere. Anyway, I caught this coyote by one link in the middle of the chain of someone else's trap that was clamped on the coyote's foot. I have no idea how this actually happened,... it was a brand-new trap, no rust, so I got a coyote hide and a new #3 jump out of this deal,...




And here's the picture of that coyote with my trap, which caught the trap chain of someone else's trap, that was clamped on the foot of this coyote, (red arrows showing both traps)




So, I've always wanted to trap on rivers and creeks to deter people from following my trails, since there was so much fur/trap stealing going on in my area back then. But, there's alot more danger and risk in doing that, but I liked it! But it was expensive too,... when a person has to learn most everything the hard way. My first snowmachine was a used 1971 Elan, and here's what I did with it when I went out during a bad chinook one day,... it landed upside down in the water, and I lost the cowling,... but I got it out and even got it running again and drove it home (minus the cowling)

A person might think that I was a gluten for punishment with trapping on creeks and rivers, but the risks were much preferred by me than dealing with theives all the time. So, here's a few more. By the way,... is there a prize for creating the most different ways to get a snowmachine stuck?

and some more,....

This was a particularly bad one. The machine plowed into the ice right in front of me, shearing off both spark plugs on the engine, and it shaved off the throttle cable on the carburator, and I don't remember what else, but I drove it home too. But this was back in the good 'ole days when things like boot laces were some pretty valuable snowmachine parts,...

Well, this isn't going to work,... it won't download any of my newer pictures, even after reducing them to 10% of original size. maybe someone can tell me how to do this. They are JPG's, less than 400kb, but they won't load.

Amazing what we survive trapping. You are a tough man.

Wolverinebait: Dave, Those are impressive incidents. Clearly you are the "Winner!" Pete

I think we should start calling you "crash"

peatbogs are also fun to get stuck in. Everything is soft and gooey, there's no leverage and these peat pits never really freeze and can be deep

knew a guy who drowned by going to a spot with thin ice on the Malyy Yugan river and just riding there in circles, after a fight with his wife. Nothing left but a hole in the ice and black water. Fast, clean way to kill oneself....

I think we need a new event in Alaska.

Wolverine bait and AK Howler need to have a contest to see who can cross the thinnest ice over the fastest water !!

Dave, good seeing your posts again I always have enjoyed your sharing your real world experiences.

Now that my trapping is looking at photos and great memories and receiving phone calls from the trapper I gave my line to life is good!

Thanks Dave!

Wolverinebait , wow! guess it dose not matter what year or brand of snow-go you have had. they all get stuck equally.

Not exactly, the newer ones with bigger tracks may not get stuck as easily, but they make up for it by being heavier and harder to get unstuck.

Dave, create an account on vgy.com. You can open vgy on your phone then put pics on your phone into vgy. You can post them on here from that website.
Hi from Mike and Sherri.

Hi Mike,... thanks for the info, but there's only one problem,... I don't have a smartphone (I think a person has to be smart to operate one of those, so that takes me out of the equation). I think the software or whatever the Trapperman site uses now has changed, because I can't even re-post pictues that I have posted here in the past. The only ones that seem to work for me now, are older photos (prior to about 1990) that I converted to digital format. With anything newer, the whole reply box turns black, with the following entry:


"Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20480 bytes) in /home/trapman/public_html/forum/scripts/picupload.inc.php on line 275"


I found some pretty cool stuff while going thru my older pictures that I would have forgotten about, if I hadn't always taken pictures of everything thru the years, and I think most of you would find them interesting too,... but I just have to figure out how to post them. Maybe Paul or Ken might know what I can do..


When I was alot younger, I guess I never really thought that running creeks and rivers was all that dangerous, because the bigger ones almost never gave me trouble,... it was always the little creeks with hollow ice everywhere that were a pain. But I was also quite sure that no one had ever trapped up some of the creeks I was going up, just because of the unstable ice,... and no other access,... which made the whole thing even more appealing to me. (and when Dean Wilson would tell me that no one has ever gone up that creek before,.. that sealed the deal for me). That also was the only way I could establish enough area to trap full-time in the early '70's, with new trappers everywhere.

I think I can still post a couple more older things in the mean time,.... (I'm not even ½ done with the "getting stuck" pictures tho,...)

But I think it was in the early '80's that the Copper River Valley was having a bunch of hair issues, with fox and coyotes especially, that made them not even worth skinning,... and after it ran it's course, it didn't seem to come back, at least in my area. Either that, or maybe the "poodle look" was the hot fab at that time,...

It was around 1990 (I think) when I was thinking about the fact that the only established fur bearer in Alaska that I hadn't caught yet was an arctic fox (not counting weird things like fishers in SE, etc) A good friend of mine was a police officer with the Barrow police department at the time, and the city of Barrow was under it's 4th rabies quarrentine at the time as well, so my friend said come on up, I could stay with him, so I did. So we went a few miles out of town, and I noticed that there is absolutely nothing to tie a trap to anywhere, and even if there was, and a polar bear came by, it wouldn't matter anyway,.... so I just set the trap on the ground, thinking that a 330 should kill an arctic fox right on the spot. But what to use for bait? With nothing but rancid whale blubber here and there,... what would be more appetizing than a fresh slice of pepperoni pizza?





I shot a few too,.... but with the wind blowing 30-40mph, and the actual temps still running -30° to -40° in March (and wind chills pushing -100°), it was hard to shoot them. I think I ended up with 8.

Frozen pizza! That's great!! I have heard, (on this site, I think), of trappers in very cold country drilling a hole in the ice and putting the end of the trap chain in the hole and filling it with water, thus creating an "Earth Anchor". Pretty clever.

There are arctic around Nome in winter. If you catch one and don't get to it soon, the reds kill and tear them up. Caught an arctic near Unalakleet years ago.
Seems I hear Reds are taking over the north slope and driving the arctic out.