A.M. March 21, 2012

Very busy day in the works for today.  Hitting Club 41 and pulling all traps there.  That will take some time!  I am expecting to catch around 14 rats on that line.  If it wasn’t for the end of the season they could still be left and catch a few more rats, but there isn’t time left for me.

Then over to Petersons and Doris’ to check the other traps.

It will be a late day/night before retiring.  18 rats from yesterday to skin/flesh and stretch plus today’s catch.

Let’s see…hmmmm…with 59 newly set traps and the usual 25-50% catch rate added to the expected 14 rats on Club 41 I could net 30 or so rats….hmmmm.

So, here is my thought process:  The weather is absolutely beautiful.  No wind, warm, calm in the swamp.  All that adds up to a wonderful night for the rats to swim and play.  Plus they are looking for “muskrat love” (I’d post the song but I don’t know how).  Second,  I’m very optimistic about the Peterson line.  54 traps, most of which are set in very good places.  If I was to net a 50% catch rate there that would yield 27 rats.  Discount some “near catches”, you know, traps that get the trigger caught in the jaw and hold it open for the rat to escape, or the rat is swimming too fast for the jaws to catch etc.  So, with say, 5 of those I expect 22 rats there.

I set 5 new sets at Doris’ pond and they “should” net 50%, so there is another 2 rats.  The “old” sets at Doris’ should yield half of what they did yesterday which was 7, and so give 3 more for today, total yield at Doris’ today would then be 5….what it all means is 14 + 22 + 5= 41.  That is my expected catch for today..41…

Now once home with my41 rats.  Bob will come in with 10 and add to that the 18 in the fridge we will be processing about 70 rats tonight.  It looks like I better get off this computer and head out!

Bears Butt

P.M. Report

This P.M. report is actually being accomplished in the A.M. of the next day.  My rear was kicked big time last night and when I came in from the day’s activities, I crashed!

So, what happened?  Lots!

I managed to pull all the traps on Club 41.  I had over 70 traps out, scattered over nearly 3 miles, so it took some time to gather them up.  I did manage to pull 8 rats, which I call “bonus” rats.  I also took a couple of pictures of what was a lucky rat and I will post them later in a special report I have planned.

So, you are probably interested in “the bottom line” so you too can get your day going.

Bob pulled out 9 rats yesterday.  He too pulled his Club 41 line.

I checked the Peterson line with a great deal of enthusiasm as I really thought I would knock them little buggers in the head.  I had about 10 set off traps with nothing in them.  Caught one duck and two little brown birds, but the best part was I nailed 20 rats!

Over on Doris’ pond I got another 5 rats and so the total for the day for me was 33.

Getting home rather late (after 4 p.m.), and going straight to work on skinning/fleshing and stretching, we had 60 rats to process and it took until just about 8 p.m.  That made for one very long day for this old man.

Bears Butt