More Club 41 today…in earnest!

Yesterday I was able to set 22 traps in an area no bigger than a quarter block.  IT looked like a lot of rat activity but I had to remind myself that a few critters can make a lot of tracks when they don’t have much room to move around.  There might be 15 rats in there.

As you know I picked up a new computer this week and I was going to make this posting from it, but it won’t let me go to this site for some reason.  Anyway, until I figure that one out you will just have to put up with postings from this old computer.  Which by the way is going to go to my oldest sister as soon as I am weaned from it!  And as soon as I get one more big file moved to the new guy.

Anyway, that was a side track to the rat trapping activities.

Last night we noticed that all the male rats are swollen and the run is in full swing!  That means we “might” have one more week of trapping and the timeline has caught up with us.  I still have big plans to finish setting Club 41 and want to move over to the Big Spring area as soon as I can, but that might not happen!  I’m moving as quickly as I can, but there seems to always be something that hinders my plan…Maybe I need to relax.

I took a couple of pictures last night of a “before combing” and “after combing” to show just how much better the fur looks.  I hope to include that in a story soon, but those pictures are loaded on my new machine and unavailable to me on this one.

The weather man is calling for a beautiful day today and it’s days like this that make me feel really good about being out doing this trapping stuff.  A whole lot better than seeing it pouring cold rain and knowing I have to put all my plastic stuff on in order to do my trapping duties.

So, what will the day bring?

The 22 traps should kick out 10 rats, Doris’ pond will be a big fat zero and the 29 sets on the channel at the club should yield 6….16 rat day.  No raccoons or skunks.

Bears Butt

March 8, 2014

P.M. REPORT

What a beautiful day it was out West!  Almost the temperature Bears Butt predicted back on February 2nd!  NICE!

By the way, this is being updated on my new computer.

I hit the new area first thing and found eight rats waiting for me!  Not the 10 I expected, but 8 is better than none.  Some of the traps I had set I really expected to see rats in did not have anything…that’s trapping!

Doris’ pond produced zero, as expected and then on to Club 41….the cattle out there are funny…they see a vehicle and suddenly come running expecting food…I had none, so they hung around awhile and then went on to better grass fields…by the way there is no food for them out there and they need some…OWNER…PLEASE FEED YOUR ANIMALS!!!

Checking the 28 traps on the channel, most of the traps were high and dry, as I expected with the high water from yesterday receding and leaving some of them as far away from the water as a foot.  Every one of the traps had to be redone and moved closer to the water…a time consuming chore.  Once I was done checking and packing away the four(4) rats I caught, it was on to bigger and better things….setting more traps.  I made it back to the rig and loaded up the toy…the cattle were laying all around the rig and waiting for food, but I had to move down the line closer to the big dam.

I loaded up and headed in that direction…cattle in tow!  They are crazy!

My first order of business was to set the floats on the dam…5 of them…what a chore and Bob has made sure some of them have traps that are nearly impossible to set and have very short chains….frustration was mounting, but I got it done.  There are two traps per float and so 10 traps are set and ready for the unsuspecting.  Nice smelling carrots with secret sauce on them as well!

And then the fun part of the day…go exploring!

WOW!  The first thing I found was “CHANGE”….they have changed almost everything out there.  Opened ditches that have never been opened as long as I have trapped it, closed ditches that have always been opened.  Where I could consistently catch 10 rats, was void of any rat sign and the den holes 3 feet above the water line…totally changed.  I figured one place that would never be changed was the two seeps up by the house that borders the club….I drove the distance up to there and sure enough….change!  Not change from the club members, but change from lack of rats to keep it looking like it did even up to a year ago.  A small run of water meandering down through a meadow of chewed off bulrushes and no sign of a rat any where!  A place Wapiti and I had a hay day catching rats at last year….nothing!

So, over to the small pond that the club President (Matt) insisted I trap two years ago and the drainage out of it….I started at the bottom of the line and worked my way up…first off the water at the bottom is WAYYYYY deeper than it has ever been and no rat houses or feed dens could be seen…it wasn’t until I was 1/4th of the way to the pond that I found the main water stream and I set a colony trap in it…it was clean and deep…just like rats like to have them.  As I worked my way up stream toward the pond, I found a little sign here and a little sign there, but nothing really great until I hit “the feed area”….a small stand of bulrushes encircling three feed mounds.  I set 11 conibears there to cover EVERY run coming and going from that spot!  Total “over saturation”…but by now my mind said, these 5 rats have got to go!  If no other rat lives on Club 41, these don’t belong here either!  I set 16 sets on this place and figure that by Monday, I will have caught every rat that exists here!  Long live the Rat Trapper!

So, what am I trying to say here?

I’m saying, that 5 or so years ago, I was asked to come and trap this club and help these guys out with a muskrat problem and now, they don’t have one!  I have done my job and wiped out the entire group….well, you can never catch them all, but they do not have any muskrat problems right now….none!  And I’ll make it a part of my report when I sent them my trap/catch report for their annual meeting.  Who has done his job…Is me!

So, I ended up at the skinning shed with 12 rats!  Bob only had 2 and Weasel (On a Roll) caught one!  A 15 rat day!  We’ll take it!  I had one live trap tipped up on its top so the critter that tried to get into it tripped the door and then continued to try and get the rat body out of it, unsuccessfully.

So, what’s next?

No rats on Doris’ pond, I’ve caught all the rats on the property next to Doris’, There are no rats on Club 41, we have trapped all of Petes.  BIG SPRING! Strategy being thought about as I type!

So, ending week 4….A total of 116 rats for the week, but the big deal is Weasel accounted for two of them!  YEA!

Bears Butt (from the new computer)