The season has ended exactly as I expected.  I have told you many times that you set traps and can usually expect a 50% (or close) catch on the first night, then 50% of that on the second night, and 50% of that on the third and by the 4th night the catch rate is close to zero, so you might as well plan on pulling the traps after the 3rd night…AND as the trapping season goes on, the run comes and goes rather quickly and yet you still catch a few rats here and there and then suddenly where you were catching lots of rats consistently, nothing gets caught.

Today, we pulled all the remaining traps and as expected, we caught a total of 3 rats!  No other traps set off, no new tracks around, no sign of any kind…the place just died basically over night.

But, the morning was a cold and windy bugger as you can see in Wapiti’s face:

I don’t know what Wapiti was wearing this morning, but as for me, Long Johns, levis, heavy hip boots,  sweater, long sleeve heavy shirt, rain coat, over coat, face/neck mask, ball cap with ear muffs, wool gloves and shoulder length rubber gloves….was I still cold?….YES!  Freezing!

But we went on about the job we had to do.  Rolling up the flagging around the clippies, pulling traps and stacking them on the toys.  Line after line until we were completely done.  By the time we were finished with the trap separation duties and loading of the truck the cold temp and wind had given way to probably 5 degrees and 2 mph…A very cold day.

Wapiti was glad the trapping season had come to an end and he is ready for a mini-vacation this weekend!  Good luck to everyone going over to the Big Small City!

I made an attempt to take a video of us high fivin and talking up the trapping season, but my battery died…sorry.

On the way home we stopped and talked to Bob…I told him we were done trapping for the season, with 60 plus traps out last night and a catch of 3 rats that is a pretty good indicator that the season is done.  And if we were planning on trapping another week, we could expect zero catches every day…that is just the way it is with trapping, especially muskrats.  At that time, Bob had also caught 3 rats, but still had quite a bit of his line left to check.

At 4 p.m. in rolled Bob…half frozen and very hungry…he doesn’t take a lunch out with him….He had already been in the shed by the time I noticed he was home and so out to the shed I went…a nice sized pile of rats lay on the floor…very nice to see…a quick count showed he caught 17 rats today!  A fine 20 rat total for the day…and a nice way to almost finish the trapping season….Bob still has tomorrow.  I figured it up and if my count is right, he needs to catch 15 rats to give us an even 800 rat total for the season.  How would that be????  But we are not counting our chickens (rats) before they are caught.  We still have a very big pile of rat hides!

Brek is scheduled to be here to skin those 20 rats tonight and Weasel is coming to help stretch the ones we dried from yesterdays catch!  This season is closing up really well.

Bears Butt

March 22, 2013