Yesterday was such a long, long day involved with trapping, from heading out West, to checking, to setting a few traps, to coming home and tending to the trapping shed details, to taking down rats, to mending a broken trap and taking apart a trial trap, to fleshing the catch and putting up rats from two days of trapping….well, you get the drift…that is why there was not a PM report for yesterday.  You will have to let this suffice.

Weasel and I got away about 9 a.m. for what I was considering a relaxing day on the line.  We checked the live traps on Bull Run and sure as shootin, there was another big old raccoon!  Weasel was in charge of the pistol and in short order killed his first raccoon!

And then we moved over to the Seeps to check those traps.  My expectancy was not high for any rats to be caught there, but we did catch 3 and I considered them a bonus catch.  The sign that was there is all gone now, the runs are filling up with moss and the mud that normally is in the deeper runs has all settled and nothing but clear water fills them.  I have to say I have caught almost all the rats out of there and it’s time to move those traps.

When we got over to the Trellis and began checking those traps there were two traps that have not had any rats in them until today.  It was a nice reward and the beginning of a pretty good days catch.

At the end of the checking, we not only pulled a total of 22 rats and one raccoon out, but we set a few traps as well.  We figured, we had a few traps and we had some open water, why not lay them in!

On the way home I had to stop at the “Short Stop” convenience store in Corrine to pick up a 25 ounce beer I owe Bob for a bet we made the other day.  When we pulled in, Bob pulled in right behind us to find out what we caught and to tell us what he had caught.  His catch was 10!

A great catch day on the line!  32 rats and one raccoon!

I think Weasel learned a thing or two about setting traps and the how tos’ of making sets where there were no sets and I’ll let him know how his catch rate did on Monday.  He also got to see just what a remarkable muskrat area we are trapping.  Up here in the local field he is elated to see a single rat poop on a rock or mud dob…out there we were stepping over piles of rat poop to get to the big piles!  There must be hundreds of rats on the Trellis and we are making a pretty good dent in their population right now and still have a week or so to trap it!

Once we were home, I went to disassembling my floating colony trap (story coming soon), which just didn’t work the way I thought it would.  In the shed Skinner Man was busy taking care of what now turned out to be 5 raccoons!

After I made two colony traps out of the one floating variety, I pulled down 50 rats from their stretchers and put them on hangers.  We needed both the stretchers and the hanging space for the rats that Skinner Man would be processing today.

The day ended with all five of the raccoons put up on stretchers and all 64 rats skinned.  Several of them will have to wait until they are dried some more before they can be put up on stretchers, but we combed and put up what we could.

After the rats were taken care of, it was very late for me and my butt was thoroughly kicked.  I excused myself from the shed as Weasel was preparing to skin out his first ever snare caught animal, and fox.

What a great day!  And what a great week of trapping…we caught a total of 195 rats this week!!!! Not bad for the end of week number 2 of the 2014 rat trapping season!   Add that to the 102 we caught last week and the 65 Bob caught last Fall and are in the freezer and we have a total of 362 rats!!!

Today is Sunday and we don’t usually go out to the trap line.  It’s a day to regroup for the upcoming weeks rat trapping.  You would think it was a day to relax, but here is what I have to do to prepare for next week.  Check the vehicle for vitals like gas, oil and tire pressure.  Chop up more carrots for bait.  Make sure the toy has plenty of fuel and load up another bag of bait set traps.

Bears Butt

February 23, 2014