Tuesday, March 12…Time marches on whether we like it or not.  Wapiti and I made a command decision yesterday…we are NOT going to take on the Bull Arena area.  We stopped on the highway and looked at the bulls on the other side of the fence and the “big boy” was staring at us with great interest.  Sort of like he was begging us to come through the gate.  He looked just about like the bull on the insurance commercials, only bigger and meaner.

So, with that decision made, today we are pulling the Bull Run traps and moving them to Club 41.  To me that makes the most sense.  Bull Run has been a real pleasure and quite a trip, but the raccoons are there and the rats are gone.  The rat count for yesterday was 3 from there and I lost another to one of the masked bandits.  Wapiti contacted his son in law, who is a wildlife specialist with the Federal Fish and Game about raccoons, specifically if they are color blind.  Thinking they could be smart enough to follow my flags and travel to them and check my traps.  It is just too odd to have a bunch of  rats that I caught on one particular day eaten right out of the traps.  One or two on occasion, maybe, but 5 in one day…???  His reply was that he didn’t know for sure if they are color blind or not, but that they are a highly curious animal and perhaps the waving flags drew their attention, or because they like to travel on “main paths”, my trails through the swamp just might have been the ones they chose to travel, and of course the trails lead to the traps.  They would go along and smell the caught rat, get more curious about the smell, look around until they found the rat and enjoy their feast.

So, first thing this morning we are hitting Bull Run, pulling those traps and will skip checking Big Spring today, go directly to Club 41 and set the traps we have.  And then out to Peterson’s ranch and collect our bounty of rats from the 90 traps we set yesterday.

I’ll bet you know the rest of the plan we have in mind….

Weather for today calls for highs in the low 50’s!  I like 50’s this time of year.  At the trapping fields the snow is all but gone, the water is almost completely free of ice (although I did run into some setting traps yesterday.  It seems like Promontory Mountain hasn’t gotten the word that Spring is here yet).  When I was trying to explain Club 41 to Wapiti yesterday as we drove along the Promontory Mountain road, we could see some ice still clinging to the ponds out that way.  We should still have plenty of open water to set our traps.  If not, at least I’ll be able to show Wapiti the trapping areas that we will keep tabs on and set when they do open up.  Ice or no, we still only have until the end of next week.

In the skinning shed we see “a lot” of sign that the rats are beginning their run.  On the freeway I saw 3 rats smashed which is another sign of the run.  So, even if their is still ice and snow, the rats know when to run.

Bobs plans have him setting traps on his usual “right of way” line and that is what he plans to do beginning today.  This area is almost completely open for him to set traps, even though the big slew waters are very deep because the upstream melt is backing up against the still frozen waters down stream.  He needs to get his traps in for the run.  In the past most of his catch comes from the right of way traps.  He plans to continue to trap the interior of Pete’s place but his concentration will be on the road way.  I told him of our plans to leave the Bull Arena alone and he said he was not afraid…what does that mean?  Does he plan to trap it alone?  Or is he not afraid because he hasn’t seen the bulls?

So we have our plan for the day, the week, the rest of the trapping season….oh, haven’t you got it figured out yet?

Today, pull Bull Run and set those traps on Club 41.  Tomorrow, pull Big Spring and set those traps on Club 41.  Thursday pull Peterson’s and set as many of those traps on Club 41 that we can…So by Thursday we will be totally committed to trapping Club 41.

More bologna for lunch today, but not with cheese and pickle.  That sandwich was really good, but it was like eating a Carl’s Junior burger as I was driving…all drippy and sloppy….I’ll tone it down a bit today.

Bears Butt

March 12, 2013