Away promptly at 8 a.m. and out to the trapping fields by 9 a.m….it snowed this morning but just a skiff and out there it was even less, but to make up for it, God made sure we knew it was still almost winter.  A very cold 15 mph wind was kicking up out there and made our noses run really good as we ventured out to check the lines.  My hands were near frozen when we came in from the Channel line with our big bag of 2 rats.  We sat in the vehicle until they thawed out and we got some hand warmers working.  I’ll tell you, when the thumb on my right hand gets cold, I’m cold all over.

As we sat there we made a plan for the rest of our lines…check the floats and those other traps in that direction, then hit the newest sets and finally come back to the end of the Pollock line and begin pulling traps.  With that decided, off we went!

I wasn’t too surprised not to find many rats in traps, but Wapiti came through with the highlight of the line with a double catch on one of his floats!  Good Going Wapiti!

The weather was sunny, but that danged wind just would not give up.  It did warm a bit by the time we were done, but still too cold to just stand around BS’n.  Once the Pollock line was pulled and we were back at the truck we counted our rats…12…Now 12 doesn’t sound like many, but it is quite a few in reality…We will take it!

We separated the traps and bagged them up, tossed them in the truck and headed for home…it was just after 1 p.m.  On the way home we caught Bob checking traps on the side of the road and stopped to jaw jack with him a bit,  He had just taken a rat out of a trap…we told him how many we had and asked him about his count so far….He was guessing he had 6 or 7, but was not real happy about the total…A raccoon had gotten a couple of his rats back up the line a ways.  For Bob not to know exactly how many rats he had caught is unusual for him, and so I’m reading between the lines when he said what he did to actually mean…the season is over.

So, I’m actually writing this while I wait for Bob to get home with his total count and will finish it once we get done with the skinning shed chores.  If the website continues to stay up I’ll post this tonight, if not…I’ll post it sometime…

As I was waiting I called the Weasel to find out if he was going to come over to help process rats tonight or not, he said he was planning on it.  I asked if he might be able to come sooner than the usual time (5 p.m.) he said he might and then I went out to begin getting  the dried rats ready to flesh.  Soon the Weasel showed up and helped finish getting them ready with me.  I would flesh and he would stretch…good deal!  And we went to work.

About an hour later here came Bob and he was carrying a bag of rats…as he entered the shed I said…You are carrying the bag of rats..that means you have 16 rats…he didn’t say a thing just went about what he was doing and then dumped the bag…15 rats!

15 RATS!!!!  He kicked Wapiti and my butt again!  And a total of 27 rats for the day!  Excellent….this is a very nice way to end the season..we are over 730 rats now and should break the 750 mark by Saturday!

Brek is on his way over to skin these 27 rats and we are all waiting to get the job done for the night.

Bears Butt

March 21, 2013