It’s been really nice to have a day off from trapping, but don’t think for a minute it is a total day off, just a day not to travel out to the trap lines.  A good sleep in was sure welcome and an excellent breakfast of venison steak, spuds and eggs, sure beats a quick frozen sausage patty and a hard cooked egg on a half slice of toast.

This will be the last week of the trapping.  Wapiti, Bob and I have had a short discussion about this week and decided that for Wapiti and I, Friday will be the last day for us, we will pull our traps by that day.  Bob will most likely extend into Saturday and I’m sure part of his reasoning is to maybe get some help from a Grandson to help him.  Pulling traps is a full time job if you wait and do it all in one day.

Wapiti and I have talked about segmenting the job by lines.

I made up a batch of carrots this morning for the upcoming week and I think I have plenty to cover us.  There was a good read in the latest “Fur, Fish and Game” magazine about putting Anis Oil extract in with our chopped carrots.  The author said he always did it and increased his catch rate by doing so.  This year Bob and I decided we would give it a go as well.  We have always used carrots and so to add anis oil would be no big deal.  We found a local source for 2 oz bottles of the stuff for 88 cents, pour a bottle of it in the bag with the chopped carrots and add about six ounces of water, mix it around and seal the bag…it smells great…licorice carrots…sure a whole lot better than rat carcasses in the back of the truck!

We have lots of traps we can set and we also have a game plan beginning tomorrow morning…another 8 a.m. start and we only have Club 41 to deal with.  Check the existing traps, modify our float sets to include mud on top and under the traps (something I totally forgot needed to be done) and then get to setting as many traps as we can.  We have loads of places we need to trap yet.  Our goal is to maintain our 30 plus rat days until it is all over, and “over” is nye at hand.

So trap setting will continue through Wednesday and by that day we will begin pulling some traps from lines that have gone dead on us (Pollock Pond for one).  Wapiti will get to see the rest of Club 41 this week.

Enjoy your St. Patricks Day…Green Beer…Corned Beef and Cabbage, and good family company!

Bears Butt

March 17, 2013