Do you remember your first trapping experience and what was your age?

For me it was following a friend and his farmer dad setting a sort of springtrap for pike under the ice.
I was 9 years old.

Walking the ice and checking traps was a great experience.

Nailing dead chickens to a post with a trap under it, caught a lot of possums those first couple years.

12 yrs old...1976.

Two Victor #2 dbl longsprings. Wired them to a limb drag...no long chains.

Sardines for bait. Walked across town to a creek bridge toting traps, wire, and sardine tin.

Caught 2 coons and a nutria. Sold the coons for $16 each and the nutria for $8...all on the carcass.

I thought I was an expert!

A few days later caught my first grey fox in a trail set baited with chunks of salt pork. Had one of those #2s wired to a 4" oak sapling. $45 on the carcass.

That did it for me.....hooked for life!

1956 Amsterdam, ohio, Dad took me to the creek behind the house and instructed me on how to make a pocket set using a 1 1/2 victor long spring. Had a muskrat the next morning.

Helping my Dad on his live fox line. Seemed to be always in the dark before work. He would bare hand them, my job was to release from the trap which I failed at half the time. Then I had to get and hold a feed sack while he put in the fox. He could do all this himself but not while I was there. I’m around 8-10 yrs old early mid 80’s. He got bit a time or two. I never got a scratch but did get yelled at some.

When I was, probably 11 or 12, this was 1961 or 1962, trapping season came in on November 15th. On November 14th we would get ready and at midnight, so we were officially on the 15th, we would go out and set a few traps. Then we had something to run in the morning.

Went out in winter with friends after school snaring snowshoe hares when I was 7 or 8 years old.

Around1955. Father showed me how to make a muskrat ser called a pen set . Small sticks upright coming out of water in a tight circle baited with cut up apple. Next morning as I approached the set I could hear noise in the water. I was going to be a professional trapper. My mother was happy. Wood duck!

Traping mice in my first rent house. Victor mouse trap baited with cheese. The catch was tosed out and the cats chickens one got a snack.

In the early 70s i used to ride my bike to this little gas station. The owner was also a fur buyer and sold supplies. I used to hang out there for hours listening to the old guys talk trapping and work on fur. I was hooked before i ever set a trap.

9 years old in 1998, coon in a pvc set anchored to a cinder block.

Mid 70’s catching coons and possums on 1 1/2s. And made wooden traps and caught flying squirrels.

I was 10 years old. Dad gave me 6 traps and helped me get started. Still remember the firsy animal I Caught was a Coon.

mid sixty's, probably 11, walked to the pond and set some muskrat traps where I thought was a good place, caught some so I guessed right, lol
All on my own, no one to ask questions...

Probably around ten years old started setting out rabbit boxes that my late great grandad had. Found a couple old jump traps in his basement while exploring the farm and set them out on some holes around a lagoon and caught some muskrats.

…. I came out of the womb holding a # 3 sleepy creek

And a nice spotted up wildcat in the other?

1972-3. “Borrowed” a rusty #1 Victor hanging in the neighbor’s barn and set it on a well used trail going from an irrigation ditch into a duck marsh. Had a big angry nutria the next day. Started buying traps at the local hardware store and was getting $3 for carcass nutria.

I had bear and cougar dogs before I started trapping. Somewhere around 20 years old I ran into an old guy that mentored me with bear dogs. He taught me a lot. We baited bears to run with dogs, someone else told me about trapping bears with foot snares, I was all in on that even though it was not legal. I bought a couple of the Fremont bear foot snares, set up a trail I had going into a bear bait and had a bear the next morning. I anchored the snare down with a long heavy cable, what a mess it made. I learned real fast what dogs I kept and who got culled. I sold my hounds once I had kids before Oregon banned hunting bears with dogs and then started dabbling in trapping. Took a few years to figure things out, allot with the help of this site.

wws

1960 was nine years old brother gave me a number 2 long spring.
Told me there was a hole down in the sinkhole in front pasture that I needed to set.(never told me what might be there)
Ended up catching a rabbit I am sure that day it was a giant of a rabbit.
Just glad it wasn't a skunk back then.