Here we go again, it’s raining like crazy!   But what do you do?  Gotta go check the traps.

Besides getting wet, what do I expect to catch today?

Well, remember I have a skunk and a raccoon in live traps and all those traps need to be recharged with new bait.

Something unusual happened yesterday as well….I have made a deal with Maveryck that since I have to turn my rig around anyway in order to check the live traps, that I would stop at his house and walk back to the shed and check in the bucket for any rats he may have caught.  I will then leave him his money underneath the bucket.  Yesterday the bucket was gone…is that his way of telling me he has pulled his traps?  I’m not sure, so I will call him today.

OK, expectancy:  I set 48 traps on Peterson’s yesterday with very little sign…Usually I could expect about 24 rats from those traps, but with so little sign, I think I’ll be lucky to catch 15 rats…I’m also thinking the whole area may only have about 30 rats total.

Nicholas’ line, all 80 some traps, will only have 4 rats and Doris’ pond and the 13 traps I have there will have one rat.  20 rats for today.  No new raccoons or skunks.

Bears Butt

March 4, 2014

P.M. REPORT

I gave the rain a little thought before leaving home and ended up putting my hip boots on and then putting my rain pants over them…The idea for that was not to have the rain pants draining the rain down into my boots…it worked.  Out on the line, I put my rain jacket over my shirt and then put my second shirt over the rain jacket.  The second shirt soaked up the water and got very wet, but no water was allowed to drain down into my shoulder length gloves.  How smart am I?

So it rained and rained while I was checking the traps at Peterson’s and just about the time I was finishing checking those traps the rain stopped and it actually got warm and sunny!  I was pretty happy and I noticed the birds were chirping alot as well, so they were happy too.

While driving out to the trapping area, there is a turn in the highway and off to the side of the road is a big field with sheep in it.  As I approached the turn I noticed the sheep all bunched up and looking in one direction.  I stopped the car and studied the field.  Suddenly I saw movement about 200 yards out….a coyote!  He must have been harassing the sheep until I stopped.  It ran a little ways and then stopped.  I got out with my pistol, slammed the clip in it and walked to the fence.  After cocking it (semi-auto), I used a fence post and aimed about 10 feet over the coyote and fired a shot.  He took off running for about 100 yards and then stopped again.  I aimed 10 feet over its head and fired again.  That time the bullet must have been pretty close, because he took off with after-burners on and didn’t stop until he was on Club 41 property.

Back at trapping…Peterson’s was just as expected…poor…14 rats got caught and only three traps set off without a rat.

I made the short jaunt over to the 3rd seep and saw quite a bit of sign there.  But I need traps.  So, I made my mind up to pull some from the Bull Arena.

At the Arena, the first three traps held two rats…I thought…Am I going to experience a run here?  And so I continued to check traps.  At trap number eight I decided I would probably not catch any more rats and that I needed to pull some traps.

I went to pulling and pulled 32 traps.  I did not catch another rat until the third to the last trap on the line….a total of 3 rats.  I will pull the remainder of those traps tomorrow in preparation to set Club 41.

On to Doris’ pond, I had one trap set off with nothing in it…that means there is one more of them in the pond.  I’ll probably keep those traps there for two more days.  Unless of course I catch a rat there tomorrow.

Richard Nicholas came over to B.S. about how the trapping was going, especially over on his place.  I showed him my tally sheet…Day one = 23 rats, Day two = 17 rats, Day three = 9 rats, Day four = 3 rats and then told him I was going to pull the remainder of the traps tomorrow and he could move his bulls back in there whenever he wanted.

In our small talk, I mentioned shooting at that coyote and he said he had just come off the mountain to the West and had seen 3 coyotes up there.  I asked him why he didn’t have a rifle with him at all times and he said he never remembers to put it in the truck before he heads out there.

He said he couldn’t believe I had caught 11 rats out of Doris’ pond and asked where they might be coming from.  I told him that during the summer past, there were probably two different families come into the pond from down stream.  He said the owner of that adjacent property would probably give me permission to trap down in there and that he would call him and find out.  Then would call me.  I hope he does as the place looks like it could hold a few rats.  It’s not a big place, but then neither is Peterson’s.  So, if that comes about, I will set some traps in there tomorrow and plan on beginning to set Club 41 on Thursday or Friday.

When the rat trapping was done I made it over to Bull Run to dump out the skunk and raccoon that I shot yesterday.  No other critters were caught.  I loaded the raccoon up and brought it home.

Back home I saw where Bob had 7 rats laying on the skinning shed floor!  So it wasn’t too bad of a day of trapping, 24 rats and one raccoon to deal with tonight.  I have not heard from the Weasel.

In the trapping shed, Weasel came in with Cody with one rat!   Cody skinned a rat last night and insisted he skin his dads rat tonight!  YEA!  Congrats to Weasel and a big YEHAAAA to Cody!

25 Rat day!

Bears Butt