Sunday, March 10…MARCH TENTH!  Holy mackerel this month is flying by…Day Light Savings Time and my computer clock says it’s 6:34 a.m., it feels like 5:34 a.m. to me…This change in the clock takes me almost a week to get used to…What would Jim Bridger have done?

Today’s trapping takes Wapiti Dung and I on our adventure.  He has chosen to help us out to gain some ground on the other trap lines we have got to trap and this day is a “gathering and preparation” day.  We need traps in order to set some of the lines “out there”.  Bob says he has one bag of conibears still in his breezeway and we will get them.  Also a bag or two of leg hold are there, they too will come with us.  But we need more.

Remember, 20 conibears in each sack and 10 leg holds in each sack.  Those sacks are not enough traps.  We will pull the Little Spring line today and maybe, just maybe the Trellis line…Wapiti and I will decide.

The weather for the week is calling for warm and Spring weather, some slight breezes typical of March and over all…nice…I like nice.

What to expect with the rats?  One thing will be their desire to “run” and running takes its toll on their fur…big holes and bite marks…It also makes for some very large daily catches and lots of work in the shed, skinning, fleshing and stretching…early mornings with late nights.  But, it is short lived, we only have to deal with it for a couple of weeks and then the run ends, the rats go to where ever it is they go to rest, and our season comes to a screeching halt.  Two weeks is all we have left.  We can do this.

On the other side of the coin, Wapiti is going to see some different country.  Club 41 is a different sort of place.  Yes it’s muddy and wet like any other swampy ground, but it has its own beauty.  Tons of different waterfowl, the normal hawks, eagles, owls, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, skunks and of course the cursed muskrats.  This trapping place made me rethink how to trap.  At first I didn’t think there were any rats out on the Club..then I learned what to look for…little openings hidden in the short salt grass along the banks and ditches.  Places that have openings only about one inch tall and about 4 inches wide…this is where they enter and leave their dens.  I discovered one by accident and it produced a rat every day for almost a week.  Soon I had discovered hundreds of openings just like that one and my catch rate went straight up.  After that is was common to find them…I just had to look.   There are the usual type rat hideouts as well, but the small openings seemed to be the ticket.

Small seeps of drainage’s also hold fairly large populations of the little critters and it didn’t take too long to find those hideouts as well.  It’s all about getting to know the land and doing some exploring.  My first visit to set a small seep I found also found me chasing a rat across the open ground with my whacking stick…I caught him out and away from the main water source…his surprise…my pay for the day!  If I recall, that seep produced nearly 25 rats that first year and an average of 10 since then.  Not bad for a place that can only accept about 10 traps to cover it all.  Two to three nights and you have all of the rats caught.

I talked to one of my rendezvous buddies one time about Club 41, he said he had trapped it once and found it didn’t have enough rats to make it worth his time…hmmmmm….lucky for me!  We usually pull over 100 rats off there in a relatively short period of time and now with two full time trappers on the Club, we should double that amount.  I’m happy!

By the way, the 80th Birthday party for my cousin Sharon was a real fun time…just like a mini-family reunion!  Happy Birthday Sharon!  You don’t look 80 and you sure don’t act 80!  Keep doing what ever it is you are doing to stay so fit and good looking!

Bears Butt

March 10, 2013