I felt a little excited yesterday as Wapiti and I headed West.  We had no interruptions in our travel, we got a great start to the day and everything was going great.  We were anticipating 20 rats for the day and lots of time to set many more traps.  A perfect Monday of the last week ahead of us.

And it was just as anticipated and did turn out just as planned.  Well, almost….The checking of the existing traps only yielded 19 rats instead of the expected 20 and we did lose two to predators.

Neither one could be salvaged…goodbye nearly $20….But when all is considered we could have lost a whole lot more rats this day.  Out here the water level is dropping daily as the ice melts farther down stream and the backed up water ways are draining rapidly.  All last week we were having to move our traps down to the waters edge even if only a few inches.  Today we were looking at caught rats up to 5 feet away from the water.  All the traps I checked had to be moved.  And so to lose 2 rats was not such a bad day at all.

Wapiti really saved the day on his sets of 3 floats at the Big Dam…At the truck the count was 14 and we needed one trap at each of the 6 floats to connect in order to make our hoped for 20 rat day…My floats had at least one trap not visible from the distance and so my hopes were high that I had done my half, Wapiti on the other hand had one trap off of two of his floats and two off at his third…I checked mine and only caught one rat in all my set off traps…He on the other hand had 4 rats in 4 traps!  A super percentage of take on floats!  Thanks Wapiti for setting those traps in perfect places, without those rats our take would not have been close to the 20 we hoped for.

Now it was on to set more traps and set traps we did…at days end we had set 76 traps out!

Driving back home Wapiti said, “You know, after all day at it, I’m tired, but I don’t feel like my butt is kicked like last week”.  Could this mean that he is beginning to toughen up on the trap line?  I think so…this is good for the mental as well as the physical part of the body.  Taxing, sure, but very good for ones health…as long as the bulls don’t get you.

Bob is already home from his trap line by the time we get there and Wapiti packs our 19 rats to the shed where we find a sack filled with rats laying on the floor.  Bob has a surprise for us we are sure, other wise he would have dumped them out.  As it turns out though his surprise is just that he caught 20 rats and was proud of it.  He just wanted to see how many we caught first…he kicked our butts with that one rat!  Good job Bob!

On a negative side, Bob lost 10 rats and most of them were taken by raccoons…At one of his sets, a float he has 4 traps on, he had caught 3 rats, all 3 were dangling under the float in the water, completely submerged and all 3 rats had been eaten!  I declare a war on the masked bandits and wish everyone reading this would take 10 or more of them out this coming year.  Those 10 rats would have meant Bob would have brought in 30 rats today and would have given us another near 50 rat day…it also means that we lost nearly $100 from our fur check….Bob pulled his line from the internal workings of Pete’s ranch and is now completely trapping the frontage road.  That will make his job a lot easier on him then walking around checking traps 100 yards from the truck in the sticky mud and swamps.

And there you have it… a 39 rat day!

At the skinning shed, Brek showed up and I was once again very happy to see that.  The Weasel came as well to help pull down another 50 rats off the stretchers and help with the sundry tasks that are necessary in the fur processing.  Thanks Weasel for coming…again!  Your help is very much appreciated.

So, here is something I have not told you…yet…Hides drying on the stretchers need to “cure” and as they cure they get sort of like “papery”, if you will, when they get that way, they can be taken off the stretchers and placed on hangers.  At this point it’s OK for them to touch one another.  If they hold any moisture at all, the touching will mold and mold is not a good thing.  Upon feeling the hanging stretched hides in the shed, we just couldn’t make the decision as to whether they were ready or not to be taken off the stretchers and so the decision was made to wait until today to take them down.  I turned the heater on low instead of just air for the night to assist in them drying.  It’s a good thing I did too, because the night time temperature was 34 degrees.  The heat would also assist the drying of the furs that Brek just skinned.  If we are able to pull down 50 more rats today, those 39 hides will be put up, if not, we will put those in the freezer and dry today’s catch for putting up tomorrow.

As for today…..

Wapiti and I set 76 more traps, including a couple of colony traps.  One area we set quite a few traps in (32 traps, almost half) was a small seep and in my opinion, there were rats in half of the seep (one line that Wapiti set), but most of the water has gone from that place and it’s my theory those rats moved up to an area that I set, where the ranchers have made an attempt to improve some springs.  There are 4 smallish ponds they made that are about 6 inches deep, except where the springs are bubbling up and  “who knows” how deep they are.  I accidentally stepped in one as I was setting traps and I never touched bottom, I am very glad my boots are as long as they are and that I had some solid mud to grab onto or I would have probably found out just how deep it really was….in my exuberance to set traps, or find places to set trap, I have to be more careful in the future.

OK, so now that I have explained that; it simply is a fact that even though we set 76 traps, with 32 of them in “marginal” areas, we can only expect our 50% catch rate to apply to the other 44 traps.  So, on the old lines, we should expect 7 to 10 rats on the channel line, 4 to 5 on the Pollock pond line, 4 from the floats, 22 from the (44 traps) and 10 from the remaining 32 marginal traps…a total expected catch today of  48 rats…Wouldn’t THAT be nice!?!

Over on Bob’s line, he should catch another 20…NOW WOULDN’T THAT BE NICE!?!

Wapiti and I still have some areas to set more traps and so today is going to be a real “butt kicker” of a day.  We are going to have to “high ball” it or we won’t get those other traps set.  We will probably pull the Pollock line tomorrow and put those traps to rest for the season and depending on the outcome, we might pull the seep traps we set yesterday as well.

Wish us luck!  We have a rain day in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow which will only effect us and not the activities of the rats, in fact they just might enjoy the fresh water falling on their noses.

Lunch for today will once again be a half sandwich of corned beef, chips and lots of water.

Bears Butt

March 19, 2013

(Date was originally printed March 29, 2013, my error…Thanks Wapiti)