Prepping traps, packing everything, getting things ready to set my lines in a months or so. I came in tonight fingers smashed, just a few cuts, smelling of skunk from putting my lures up I logged into the forum to see what’s new. It hit me after reading a few things.

I MISS THE OLD DAYS.

Thinking about running lines with my dad when I was young and the things he taught me along with what got me trapping. I was around 5,6, or 7 dad helped me put a line out close to home so I could run it when I got home from school. It was a water line in a drainage ditch that he trapped when he was young full of muskrats. The first check we went together, I ended up with 2 nice large male mink and 6 muskrats! We set this ditch together caught quite a few muskrats in trails and slides. That got me hooked on trapping for the rest of my life. I am self taught on 90% of experience, had a fur buyer tech me a few things that following year and I was off to the races. Trapped every ditch I could which wasn’t many but it seemed like miles. The smile on my face is always there when I have a trap in my hand. I still set this ditch every year and catch a stray mink just to remember where I started. Muskrats haven’t been around here in a long time in any numbers so I switched to coyotes. I sure enjoy trapping them now. My son is coming with me this year I think just to make me happy but I hope he takes something away from it as he usually does.

What got everyone here started ?

…. I just found a couple traps in the shed and started for something to do after deer season was done

… a man at the church heard I was is catching coon and showed me how to make a dirt hole right there in the church house yard … gave me a bottle of pros choice and a rp outdoor catalog… it progressed from there

What got me started? Well, you see, I had this dad.....

Rat catcher

We had the garden, chickens, cows, rabbits, and dogs, so we had rats in the barn and around the place. Rat killing was one of the assigned tasks for us younguns. I liked it too much, lol.

I grew up listening to stories of my dad trapping during the 70s and my great uncle feeding his family with fur money during the depression.

The first critter I caught was a coon in a Victor 1.5 long spring in a makeshift cubby under the steers feed bunk. That pretty well got me hooked.

Fast-forward a few years and the family moved to northern Minnesota. We were in pretty good fur country, so dad taught me some basics and turned me loose. My first real trapline was about a two and a half mile walk round trip. I always set way to heavy, and it took awhile before I caught much. I pretty well fell in love with it. I've trapped to some extent every year since.

Now I'm teaching my kids what I know, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

I followed my dad and great grandad around from the time I could keep up.

They trapped to make a little extra money.
One of my earliest memories of trapping was finding a set of toes in a coon trap and them giving me the toes, I may have been 5.
Stuck them in my pocket and mom found them while doing the wash.
I still know where that trap was set and it is now less than 100yds from my parents house.

I can remember dad catching all kinds of critters in the 80's to make extra money.

Fast forward to around 2016 and kids had goats. Coyotes had been picking off chickens but then they got a baby goat and I started my education on trapping them.
Still no expert but I feel like I am getting better every year

Raised by a single mom living in an apartment most of my life I didnt have anyone to teach or show me anything about trapping when I was young. I could get a ride the t0 miles to my cousins most weekends to deer hunt and my cousin and I did put out a few traps once or twice but I got one check in and was back to town for me.

Now I was a fan of every moutian man book and early US history and always wanted to do most things thought as country. So I was maybe 22 had my first house in the country and found out about a fur buyer. I went and talked with him he discribed some basic sets and I bought 6 or 12 duke 1.5s and headed off behind the house. Sold the coons i caught in the round and always put the mone back down on more traps. I was pretty tight on cash back then.
About my 2nd or 3rd year my catch rate had gone up and I got offered in on a live coyote market. New target animal I was in. Some axcess i wanted for yotes the farmer had a beaver problem. Yes I can trap those for you if I can trap yotes and coon as well. Another new species and more new traps and animal behavior to learn.

Eventually I quit except for problem animals. Untill the kids showed intrest and we got back after it a few years. Now its taped off to just setting around the farm for predators to keep population in check

I had no immediate family that trapped. A older neighbor gentleman was a big snare guy and let me go along with him when I was a kid to check his line. That pretty much started the fire. So all of my first critters were snared. Then I started purchasing a few traps. That really got things going, to this day I still buy a lot of traps either to sell, collect or donate. I am prepping traps and lines all year long.

My Dad was not a sportsman, but was big on family history and it was those stories of the things my great grandfathers did that peaked my interest.

Like Paul, I had this Grandfather named Pop and My Dad was a trapper too

Enjoy being in the outdoors, hunting, fishing and enjoying wildlife however got discouraged and disappointed in the number of (what I call) unsafe fellow outdoorsmen/ women and shere numbers of hunters in the woods during general seasons. Always wanted to try trapping but never got the opportunity while spending 22 years in the military traveling around the country and world. Got settled into one area and life in order and decided life is coming to a close time to do do things on the " bucket list" trapping got me in the woods when hunter numbers were reduced, although failed to consider that was the time the bunny snugglers invaded the woods or would take control of trapping by limiting trapping because they didn't don't control their foo foo pets so they banned anything but cage traps. Well one must adapt so mainly just trap private property or get far enough back on public the average bunny snuggler doesn't go

No one in my family trapped. I bought a dozen #1 single longs thru the mail catalog and trapped pocket gophers for 3 years. I moved to a farm to live with a family after grade school. I trapped two years there for rats, and fox. Then it was college, Viet Nam etc. so was out of trapping for for 15 years. Working with farmers in 1980 I saw a lot of coon damage. I bought some traps, got permissions and have trapped every year since.

Bryce

The year was 1954 and I fell under the influence of FF&G (copies given to me from one of my Uncles and one of my dad’s friends who was a rat trapper) and Jack London! I attended a country grade school (k-12) with about a dozen kids to a class and never knew of another kid that trapped!