Ok, so I figured out how to reduce some of my newer pictures even more than before, but there are still some that I can't get smaller, and they still won't load, but I'll keep working on it.
In the mean time, I'll post a few more "stuck" pictures, then move onto other things.

I'll stick with some more snowmachine stuff,... but with "odd/unusual" situations, conditions, scenery, etc,...

Starting with some frozen waterfalls along the trail,...







But sometimes they block your pathway,...

Always waiting each winter for shelf ice so I can keep going,...






Sometimes you have to make your own trail across smaller avalanches,...







And when you get to your cabin, and the snow is deeper than you thought,.... just park on top,...

Sometimes in late winter, the trails start caving in on their own,....





In other places, the road signs might almost be covered over,...




But what's not good, is if you suddenly have fresh grizzly tracks along your trail in February,...

Since I have been on the ice for the majority of my trapping endeavors, I have avoided dragging around cargo sleds as much as possible, which I know would have made many of my "bad ice" issues much worse. But, then not having one makes trying to carry everything I might need an issue. And worse, is trying to haul everything home if you've had a good day on the line. But, with careful measurments when making a cargo box on the back, it's surprising how much a person can haul with no cargo sled, if you have to,...




But no matter what, watch what you're doing so you don't run over things like this and get them jammed up in your track,.. like I kinda did here, since it was 99% buried in the trail.

Test for Wolverinebait.

[quote=white17]Test for Wolverinebait.

Thanks White17,... I think I have my re-sizing issues figured out.

A couple short-story situations,...

I'll start with one kinda like martentrapper began this thread with. 10-15 years ago, I spotted something frozen in the ice of a fairly big lake that I trap on. Went over and saw what looked like a bull moose dead and frozen in the ice.



Came back a couple days later w/a good friend of mine, and some tools, and we tried to cut him out and see if we could flip him up onto the ice, so at least something could feed on it during the winter.



But try as we might, with both snowmachines, and come-alongs, we could only get it about ½-way out of the hole,... but not enough to flip it up on the ice. It was 2x3 on brow tines, with a 46" spread. Don't know what happened to it after break-up that next spring,.. whether it eventually sank, or maybe drifted to shore and then the bears could have had access to it.

Another unusual moose situation along a local river was this one that had fallen thru the ice with only it's hind legs down in the hole, with it's head and front legs on top of the ice. It couldn't move or get out, so it was eaten head-first, with the back-half untouched.





Another time I was riding up one of the rivers I trap, when as I came around the corner, I ran right into a pack of 5 wolves trying to take this moose down. They all scattered in different directions (I didn't get any of them, and they never came back here), but the moose was standing in water, and was torn up pretty well in the back of it's hind legs. I thought about just putting it out of it's misery,... but I also thought it might survive, so I left it be,... and a few weeks later I found it dead about ¼-mile away, with a few things already chewing on it.

Sometimes animals make really bad decisions, when they didn't have to do what they did. Take for instance, this coyote. I had stopped to fix up a wolverine set along the side of this big river that has been my main trapline for many years, when I noticed this coyote trotting towards me on my trail I was currently breaking out. I was watching it for maybe 30 seconds, when it suddenly stopped and saw me. It looked around like it didn't know what to do next,... and this river had an open lead for maybe ¼-mile long. I just figured this coyote would turn around and run back the way it came. My .22 mag rifle had a stuck casing in the receiver at the time, or I would have shot it. But it almost seemed like it was having a panic-attack,... and then it turned and ran out to the middle of the river,.. out to the open lead,... and jumped into the water!! I couldn't believe what I just saw!! I had not moved at all the whole time,... so I ran out towards the open water lead too,.. with only my camera! I wanted to see what was going to happen to this coyote,... if it could get out, or what. It was at least 100 yards above me, so the current was bringing it closer to me as I started snapping pictures,... there was nothing else I could do,.. and I wasn't going to get too closer to the edge of the water either. It managed to swim across to the other side of the open water,... but it could not pull itself up on the ice along the edge,... the water current kept pulling it along,.. and there was a lot of slush in the water too.





It didn't take long at all, before this coyote couldn't even try to climb out anymore,... and was now sort-of stuck in the slush, and just floating right down the middle of the water,.. not really even trying to swim anymore,... going right past me,... my last picture was taken maybe 2-3 seconds before it went under the ice,... and gone,... never to be seen again. A rather sobering reminder that the same thing would happen to me if I fell in that water too.





Another crazy coyote story happened on the Copper River just above Woods Canyon,... something that only a coyote would do. I make most of my sets using drags,.. that way I can make a set anywhere I want,... and on trails that might have other people on them, it gives the opportunity for something caught to get off the trail farther, so most people won't know it's there. But one drawback, is that something could just take off and go where it normally won't go,.. like a coyote going more than a mile right up the middle of the Copper river. So, I caught this coyote along the edge of the river,... and it took off heading out into the midle of the river, and into the narliest ice area there was at that time, pulling a drag behind him. After at least a mile of climbing thru some very unstable ice areas, I finally spotted my drag, but no coyote. I had to be quite careful, as there were hollow spots in the ice all over. I carry a stout pole with me when going thru ice like that, so I have something to catch myself with, or a tool to use to help get myself out of some situation. Anyway, as I approached my drag, I could see that the coyote had done just that,... he broke thru the ice and into a hole, and had not gotten himslef back out. Well, I had to be very careful myself now, because i wasn't sure if I could get close enough to look down into the hole and see what had happened. After constantly testing the ice all around the hole,.. I got close enough to see that when the coyote broke thru, he was about half submerged in water while hanging from the trap chain. And now it's all frozen up. But, I was able to use my pole and pound the ice back open all around him, and get him pulled back out. Only a coyote does stuff like this,...

CRAZY!

Odd/unusual catches. I suppose we all have some of these,... these are a few of mine.
Starting with the smaller things:

I have only ever caught 2 of these speicies of weasel,... the least weasel. The bottom one is an adult male least weasel,... they have no black tipped tail.




This regular short-tail has a couple arrows shot thru his feet,... that must have hurt running around like that,...





Caught this 3-legged marten on a line that I know I never lost one in this manner,... but he was as healthy as one with all his running gear.


Didn't catch this one, found it as road-kill one night. Not the slightest bruise anywhere,... must have died from a heart attack when a semi-truck straddled him,...




This is the closest thing to an albino that I have caught,... white feet & head, bright yellow body, and a mostly white-pinkish nose. I had him life-sized



Caught thses 2 guys in 2003. Have had 2 rats in a trap at least twice that I can remember,



I believe this was in the mid-80's. I caught a pregnant female wolverine in late February that had 5 pups in her, fully furred and ready to be born at any time. I took them up to Glennallen ADF&G to show them, and the area biologist told me later that he did some checking, and as best as he could tell, this was the first documented case of a wolverine in Alaska that had 5 pups. I don't know if that is still true or not,... but I think they are still there on display.

Oh my you are hi mileage ! Thank you for the ride

But there are two special individual things I have caught that are at the top of my personal list of rare things, and they are both lynx. The first is a blue lynx. The local area biologist for the Glennallen ADF&G 30+ years ago, told me that the blue color-phase in cats is actually a type of albinoism. It was a very cloudy socked-in day when I caught him,... so my pictures aren't the best.




The main thing is that there is not a single white hair, or black hair or brown hair on a blue lynx,... only different shades of grey. Even their eyes, instead of being yellow, had a greenish tint. Compare to a regular lynx,....





I had caught a regular lynx on that same day, so it made for a good comparison,...




The other special lynx was an individual that had 3 ears. It had 2 ears on the right side that were grown together side x side, with 2 ear tuffs, but only one ear canal going into the skull. I had some other pictures that were a lot better than these, but I cannot figure out what I did with them.




I've also caught 3 lynx that were tagged or had radio colllars. The first one was caught in the mid '80's, and came from the Kenai Peninsula and went from Skilak Lake to Chitina in about 10 months, well over 400 miles. The lynx season was closed here at that time, so after taking a bunch of pictures, I turned it loose. When I showed ADF&G what I had, we spent several days tracking it from the air, trying to find it, but apparently the collar had gone dead. Again, I can't find my best pictures of this.



The next one was a monster,... it was the only cat I've ever caught that hit 50" on the stretcher. It had lost it's collar, but it's neck was clearly ringed, and he might have damaged his right ear it ripping it off. Also had white toes on all 4 feet. Never could find out who collared it or where it came from, but this cat would be easily known by whoever collared it.




The 3rd tagged lynx was only ear tagged with no collar. And the ear tags had no numbers or info of any kind,.... light blue plastic tags on the left, and dark gray on the right ear,... 2 tags per ear. It came from the middle of the Yukon,... and after tracking down where it came, I asked the folks why they had no info printed on the tags, so a person could call them if it went AWOL, like this one did. And they said they only tagged them so they could ID each lynx on their trail cams, to see which lynx they were looking at. They said if it leaves, they don't really care where it goes, they only wanted to study the local lynx. You can see the dark gray tags in the right ear in the first picture.





Then there's just weird things, like the right eye of this guy with a vertical pupil,...



And there must be some nasty fights amoung the toms when they're fighting over girlfriends,....

And some other weird stuff. Fox and lynx seem to think they are marten at times, on my lines too. Here's a few examples, but this is not all of them by any means,... fox first. My boxes were at least waist-high at the beginning of winter.









And some lynx,...








This one is actually sitting on the box





Isnarewolves' picture of his lynx caught by the trailer hitch reminded me of this one, caught on the opposite end,... not sure which one is better,... (not sure where all the green coloring came from)

Wolverinebait, not actually a trapline oddity, since I caught it with hounds. But back around 2000ish I caught a bobcat with only one ear, it had an ear canal on that side that looked perfectly functional but no external ear. And no scar, looked to be a birth defect, not the result of an injury. Possibly he donated it to your three eared lynx?

Oh man,... I almost about this. This was a nice day's run,... that came with something special that wouldn't happen again in a million years. It involves the grey wolf on the right, with the snare still on it. And when I walked up to the grey at the set,... I could not believe my eyes,...



Along with the wolf, I also had snared a salmon !!! The only thing I can think of, is that the wolf found this old, dead salmon somewhere along the river, and was carrying it down the trail where I had a snare set,... and when the wolf hit the snare, the cable must have pinched the salmon to his neck/chest and with the first couple lunges, the wolf spun the fish around to the top of his neck. Snaring a wolf and a salmon at the same time,... that's not gonna happen again anytime soon,..



But on the "bad luck" side of things,.. when wolves are on the verge of starvation,and you snare one of the pups in the pack,... and it starts yipping and whinning,... sometimes the rest of the pack might jump it, and kill it & eat it. This has happened to me several times over the years. I've also seen where a pack killed and ate one of their own out on a lake for no apparent reason.



And just 2-3 years ago, I had a single wolf kill and eat a wolverine that was caught in a trap. All that was left was the tail. I guess I've been pretty lucky with that, because with all the wolverines I've caught, that was the one & only time I've ever had anything kill & eat one. He could have left the skull rather than the tail tho!! And on top of that, the wolf wrecked the trap,.. he ripped that wolverine right out of the trap, and all that was there that I could find was the chain and 1 spring (#4 Victor DLS)

Wow,... that's pretty cool too! Genetic deformities happened sooner or later to everything I guess, even people. I didn't even notice the ears on that lynx until I was almost done skinning it.

One more thing that has happened a number of times, that falls under the banner of "Unusual/Odd",... is catching lynx, and if they can get the drag loose,... is having them then climb up a tree. One might think that this is just another liability of using drags, but the fact is, at least with me,... that they very seldom do this except when a wolf happens to come down the trail,... then it's a great asset, because if the trap was anchored solid, that wouyld be one less lynx I'd get to skin. But I have spent a lot of extra time trying to track a lynx, only to suddenly have the trail disappear. Sometimes, you just have to look up. But, to retreive your cat, you have to cut the tree down.









This lynx was snared and still managed to climb up some trees,... when he apparently tried to jump out, and that's when the snare worked.

Well, just a few more odds and ends. I keep finding more and more, but this has to end soon.

First we have a marten caught by 3 of his 4 feet in a #1LS



Have you ever spent all day on the trail... covered close to 100 miles by snowmachine, get in your warm truck to drive home,... feeling a little tired,... came around a bend in the road, and suddenly see something right in front of you running down the road, and said out loud,... "What in the world is that??"



A rare time when you can't take a frozen marten out of a foothold trap,...



Bait-stealers caught red-handed,....





Sometimes an animal in a trap is just not concerned about anything,.. not even it's captors. I took a good friend and his son on a run one day, and this lynx just sat there next to us, and didn't do anything,.. didn't fight, didn't growl, didn't even pull the chain tight,... just sat there looking around while we were talking back and forth. It was like you could just reach over and pet it (but we didn't)




Some years when I catch more than what I can keep up skinning it all, I have to keep it frozen, and so I hang stuff on my front porch,... the fuel truck driver called it "The tunnel of Death"




[img]https://trapperman.com/forum/attachments/usergals/2026/02/full-20421-285116-lynx_3_aa.jpg[/img



This is for AV, so he knows that he's not the only one who catches bob-tailed rats,.. but I've made some too. From heads to tails, you'll eventually catch them by anything & everything, even a chunk of hide on the side. (and no, that first picture is not staged, one came out by the head, the other by the tail from the same pushup)









Good night!

Wolverinebait, thanks for taking the time to post the photos!! So your picture about coming around the corner at night and going what is that?!? What was it?