Leap Day, Feb. 29, 2012

A.M. Report:

Holy Moly, winter is about to happen upon us!  We have a winter storm WARNING that begins today at about 9 a.m. and last until Friday about 11 a.m., deep snow accumulations in the valley expected……NOOOOO!  I want to go trapping not move snow!

Well, whatever we have happen with the weather, I am going to the swamp today and see just what happened on my lines last night.  My plan was to set a few traps on the Big Spring line, but this storm might stop me from doing that.  We will see once I’m out there.  The weather is entirely different way out that way than it is up next to the mountains where most of us live.  Sometimes it’s worse, sometimes it’s better.

Todays lunch will be a bologna sandwich with mayo and cheese.  An almost “staple” in my diet.  As I eat my bologna sandwich, I think of steak, tacos, hamburgers, tuna, chicken and pork chops, and when the sandwich is done, I take a large drink of water and then get back to work.

It was cold and windy last night, so what do I expect as a rat catch today?

10 again.  Actually, with over 90 traps out, 10 seems like a low number, actually I’ll take 10 any day.  That is nearly $100 after they are sold and if Bob and I can make that much each day, we each pocket $50 and that is good.

OH!  I almost forgot!  My expensive boots came yesterday!  YAAAA!  I tried them on last night and they are the most foot friendly hip boot I have ever put my foot into.  Soft and cushy!  Now if they will keep the water out, I will be a happy guy with a big ol grin from ear to ear!  The box says they are tough.  The box says they “breath”.  The box says they are the best commercial boot made.

They are made of a thick rubber from the knee down, a cleat sole, but not a sole that will fill with mud and keep the mud captive.  The toe is stiff so you can’t depress it down, but it does not have a steel insert.  And there is a tough cloth type of material that goes from the top of the foot, all the way to the top of the boot.  A material that looks like you could poke it with a sharp knife and it would not cut it.  Briar and thorn proof and snake bite proof…that is what they advertise.

Will they hold up to the bite from a 5 foot rat?  I hope we don’t have to find out.

More later!

Bears Butt

P.M.

What a storm!  I made it to the parking spot and the weather was a little breezy but balmy.  Maybe temps were around 40, maybe even 45.  I don’t have a temp gauge so I don’t know for sure, but it was comfortable.

I put on my new boots…AHHHH…nice!  And the rest of my trapping stuff and headed off.  Checking the Trellis line I netted 2 rats.  About usual in my opinion, and normally I would have all of those traps pulled and set somewhere else, but I promised Bob.  Anyway, 2 paid for the gas.

Then loaded up and headed farther West to check the Goose Club line.

The signs at the line are showing me I am making a big dent in the population on that line and it won’t take too many days to have the bulk of them caught.  4 set off traps and one of them really raised my eyebrows.  A conibear that was triggered but did not close.  Nothing was stopping it from closing and when I picked up the stake with the trap it did not close until I touched the trap…then SNAP!  Lucky rat.

My new boots are wonderful!

Hitting the rest of the line I did not start picking up rats until the few traps just before the channel and then things started looking good to fill my goal.

One bait set down the channel had rat crap on the trap, but no set off trap.  That to me is a rat telling me to “kiss his behind”.  I’ll catch him tomorrow.

Around the horn and to the traps Wapiti and I set yesterday yielded a welcome surprise…rats and more rats.  We set some “air hole” sets and of the 5 sets, 3 of them produced and one was set off (already counted above), not bad for 7 sets.

Down at the end of the line, we set 8 traps and 4 of them produced!  A great day of trapping.

Me: 16, Bob 6!  Great Day.

The weather continually got worse and worse to the point that tumble weeds as big as me were being tossed over my head.  The temperature dropped about 15 degrees since earlier and I decided I had had enough fun for one day and headed for the barn.

Bears Butt

P.M. Report

A.M. Feb. 28, 2012

Currently snowing lightly, some sticking to the roads.

Wapiti and I have decided to delay our venture and not leave town until around 10:30.  Give the road crews a chance to clean up the slick spots or at least give the roads a chance to thaw.  There is one particular spot on the way that is always the worst on a day like today, and the county guys hit it pretty hard with salt, but it takes a while for the salt to work.  An hour will help.

With only two lines left in action, I plan on only checking the Goose Club line today and hopefully (if Wapiti doesn’t have any objections) set from 5 to 10 more traps along that line to finish setting it.

We may take a few minutes and drive along the next line I plan on setting, one I call “Big Spring”.  Just to see what the sign looks like.  We will weigh that out when the time comes.

Expectations on rat catch for today: 12

Why in the world would I expect that many rats?  Mostly because of the 20 traps I set yesterday, that is all I can say.

Later!

Bears Butt

P.M. Edition:

What a cold day it started out to be.  Bundled up really good at the truck and felt like I had too much on by the time we finished.

Wapiti was to be my great helper today.  I’d check one trap while he checked another…..He forgot his hip boots!

So now to quote him:  “I have gone from an almost helper, to no helper at all”.

We made the best of it, he did have on his Buckle up to the ankle rubber boots.  And as one can imagine, was this the only thing that started the day off on the wrong foot, er tire?  Nope.  He arrived at my place with one flat tire on the trailer and no spare…hmmm.

We puffed up the tire and ran up to his place and picked up the spare.  As good fortune would have it, we did not need to change the tire.  It held up all day…Wapiti, if you are reading this, please go and get that tire fixed….

Back on the line….Things started off rather slowly.  No rats, no set off traps, just a casual stroll through the swamp trying to keep as warm as we could.  Wapiti staying on high ground.  We checked several traps before Wapiti finally checked a trap that held a fuzzy critter and he yelled out…WOOPPEEEE!  Now one more to cover our gas.

Several traps later and that job was done.  Rat number two went into the body bag.

The last trap on the first part of this line was a real winner.  A bait (foot hold) trap that had the “dog” completely removed from holding the pan,  the pan completely depressed, the jaws partially closed….this combination NEVER happens, but some lucky rat is out there and does not know just how lucky he was.  We ended up with 4 set of traps counting this one with nothing in them.  Bummer!

As our journey took us to the far end of the line, rats started to fill the bag at regular intervals.  Wapiti, unable to venture into the deep water, stood fast on the edge of the swamp with the body bag open and ready to accept flying rats.  The bag began to fill rapidly.

At the removal of a very large rat, I reminded Wapiti that one of his jobs was to have ready his pistol in case a rate erupted from the undergrowth of the toolies and attacked me while I was preoccupied removing one of its brothers from a trap.  He said he was ready.  Did I see his gun brandished?  No.  I guess his training in Pahrump, Nevada has his instincts so tuned that in an instant he can brandish his pistol and fire before the fangs of a five foot muskrat gnash my throat.

We went on, and Wapiti continued to hold open the body bag until we reached the end of the line.  How many rats were in the body bag?

10.  Rats!  Missed my guess again.  This is getting to be a regular thing.

We then went to setting more traps, our problem was water.  There wasn’t any.  We continued to look and to travel down the corridor of toolies and finally began to look for “air holes”, places where the rats regularly come to the surface for a breath of air.  They all tend to use them and so the ice doesn’t form.  We found a few, very few, but iron was layed and we continued to the end of the line…the Goose Club fence!

We ended up setting 17 traps.  Some excellent sets and some not so good, but what good is a trap in the back of the truck?

Back home, Bob had one rat laying on the skinning shed floor.  One half his gas paid for.

Brek is back with us as our skinner!  YAAA!!!  He can skin a rat in under 30 seconds and not have one flaw in the job.  He had the 11 rats skinned in less than 15 minutes, while Bob and I struggled to flesh and stretch them.  Brek finished his skinning, had a coke, B.S.ed with us and kicked back for the rest of an hour, while Bob and I did our jobs.

All in all…A wonderful day in the swamp!  Thanks Wapiti for coming along and watching my back while I trudged through the ever dangerous swamps of the five foot muskrat.

Bears Butt

A. M. Report, Feb. 27, 2012

Weather will be a factor today and tonight.  20% chance of rain/snow today increasing to 60% by tonight and then 80% by tomorrow!  Accumulations possible.

Well, I plan on Accumulating 12 rats today, my mind says 18, but for this report we will stick to 12.

Goal:  Pull 1/2 of the remaining traps on the Fish Springs line and set the traps I pulled last Saturday out on the Goose Club line.  That should complete that line.

Tomorrow, Wapiti wants to attend the trap line and experience it in a blinding snow storm….it will be an interesting day…more on that tomorrow.

Things look good for a fairly early start today (8:30) and so to reach my goal should be easy…of course there are always the interruptions that seem to occur regularly.  An interruption could be a simple as talking to someone traveling down the road, to a flat tire, to jump starting a stranded motorist, to just plain talking to someone over the fence about daily stuff.  It all consumes time and time is what it takes to properly address a trap line.  All in all, life is good and rats will get caught.

Bob will have his hands full today trying to locate his traps in the burned swamps of Petes place.  I don’t envy him that task.  And wish he would pull those traps and get on with trapping Club 41, our next area.  But he wants us both to hit Club 41 at the same time…oh well.

I have dry boots, fixed and dried rubber gloves, a new bag of carrot and onion bait, water to drink, a sandwich and a brand new week ahead of me.

I’moutahere!

Bears Butt

P.M. Report

Well, it was a pretty good day out in the swamp all things considered.  I was out there about 9:30 with the toy unloaded and ready to head off.  I experienced a whole lot of blown off flags, which makes for a slow hunt to find the traps.  That really irritates me when that happens.

Anyway, I found all the traps and netted 10 rats total for the day and had 5 other traps set off.

I managed to set 20 new sets on the end of my Goose Club line.  I still need to set about 5 or so more to complete the line.  Maybe Wapiti will help me with that tomorrow.

I hit the middle line, which is Fish Spring and decided to pull all of them…38 traps pulled.  I only caught 2 rats out of the 38 traps, which was actually 2 more than I expected.  I just can’t believe that line.  It screams “rats”, but there just aren’t any there.  So, that is it until next year in there.

The short line I promised Bob I would leave through the run, this year, produced 2 rats and it is sort of disappointing to me to even have to check those traps, but I promised and so I will check it every other day through the rest of the season.

ATTENTION!!!!  I just read the winter storm warning for the Wasatch Front.  It said tonight around midnight it will begin to snow and snow hard through the commute in the morning…snow accumulations 1-3 inches on the valley floor.  YUK!  I don’t want no STINKING snow to ruin my trapping tomorrow.

For the count, Bob caught 4 rats today.

Bears Butt

A.M. Report, Feb. 25, 2012

WOW!  High Winds last night!  The forecast said up to 25 mph and I believe it.  These winds are expected to shift from the South to the NW by this afternoon and pick up speed to 30 mph by late this afternoon, as a front comes through with snow.

All of this does not bode well for a muskrat trapper.

First of all, today I expect to spend a lot of time re-tying my locator flags.  I really do not like to do that.  And in anticipation of that I am going to experiment with a “new idea” for flagging.  I’ll not let you know what my idea is until it has been tested.  But I feel “VERY CONFIDENT” it will work and if it does there could be a small “trappers” market for this idea.  A man has always got to be thinking of better, faster, cheaper….!

So, what do I expect besides re-flagging?  My predictions have been so bad lately, I almost hate to advertise a guess, but I will anyway….14 rats.  Why this high a catch rate when my last two days have been so very far off?

It was warm and calm all day yesterday.  The 1/2 inch of ice was all melted off by 2 p.m. and so there would have been some rat movement during the afternoon and into the night, before the winds started.  It was warm all night, with a low of only about 40 degrees (perfect for rat movement).  Plus I had set a new bunch of traps which usually, but not always, tends to yield around 25 % the first night.

And so, until later!  I’m outahere!

Bears Butt

P.M. Report

What a long day!  I made it to the trapping fields only to find snow, blowing and howling winds and colder than an Oly on a winters trip in the Crawfords.

I put on almost every piece of clothing, coat, rain gear, hat, sweater, rubber pants, boots, wool gloves, rubber gloves and face mask I had in the truck.  I felt like a penquin out of a northern ice field.  And still it was cold.

Was I complaining?  Not one bit!  Had my boots been leaking, you would have seen this note posted about 9 hours ago with loads and loads of 4 letter words.  But, since my dear wife allowed the budget to see a way for me to have new boots, I was a happy camper this morning!

I don’t think there was more than two seconds that went by that I did not run my right wrist across the nostrils of my nose…and that went on all day long.  I see how some folks get a very enlarged end of the nose as they age.

Did I say it was cold?

I launched my toy down on the “Goose Club” line, that I set yesterday.  I figured if the storm was going to have me cancel any of my trapping I would at least get this line checked.

It went well…”weller” than expected.  35 traps…13 rats!  Not bad for an old guy and a toy.  In the wind, I even managed to set a colony trap and two other conventional traps!  Back at the rig, with the wind howling I was not even phased…heck…if we get $10 /rat, that was a $130 day.

Driving up to the Trellis and Fish Springs lines, my mind wandered to how the country would look like on August 6th….hot…dry…It almost made me think I was warm.

Unloaded at the stop and ready to head off, I could not help but notice across the street in “Petes place”, the fields were all burned and ugly.  HMMM.

I checked the Trellis line with a big grin on my face, because any more rats was just going to be a bonus to the catch of the day so far…I added 2 more rats to the catch…no other set off traps.  Life is definitely good.

Bob pulled up at the same time as I arrived back at the rig.  The weather had turned hospitable…only a 30 mph cold wind and threatening snow in the distance.  I kept the gate from banging into the front of his truck as we talked.  Mostly about Petes fields all burned up!  Heck, that is where is trap lines are.  All of his flags are burned.  Will he be able to find his traps.  The place is charcoal black!  He was going to go and talk to the owner “Pete” about what happened and hope like heck it wasn’t the exhaust of his truck that set it all ablaze.  After all, he drives out in through four foot high crested wheat grass with his pickup to check his traps.  Did his exhaust cause the problem yesterday?  Did Pete lose any cattle in the blaze?

We talked for awhile and then he headed off to talk to Pete.  I headed off to my Fish Springs line to One:  Pull 1/3 rd of the line and Two:  Catch more rats (I hope)!

30 mph winds kept me going slowly into the wind in order to keep my hat and ear muffs on my head.  It was blowing so hard, I could not tell if my toy motor was running, and only my forward motion told me it was.  Off across the waste lands of Fish Springs and surrounding wet marsh grass I went, to the very end of my line.

I pulled 22 traps as I made my way toward the beginning of the line.

Checking the remaining traps I had two set off with nothing in them and two that held extremely large rats.  I figured the only rats that would have come out of their dens would have to be 50 pound rats with 8 pack abs and that is exactly what I caught.  We will have to look into buying special order conibear traps for future use.  Those rats barely fit in that 4 inch square trap.

So accounting ones among you:  17 rats total for the day.  Bob chose not to trap because of the “inclement weather”….will I be such a puss when I reach 74 like him?  So, Bob’s count is O.

I left the swamp with a belly full of wind and cold.  I punctured one rubber trapping glove on a barbed wire gate and had a wet hand and arm, but I made it through the entire trap line.  That glove is now repaired and ready for Monday’s balmy weather.

Does life get any better than this?

By the way, Bob talked to Pete about his fields being all burned up and Pete said there was a semi truck loaded with large ties that had a problem with one of its right rear wheels and as he drove along, it was spitting out hot metal and fire along the way and did a real good job of starting a series of grass fires on the side of the road.  Then when yesterday afternoons winds caught hold the fire really went to town.  Pete and sons were able to get all the cattle moved and none were hurt.  The truck drivers auto insurance will pay dearly for the “HUNDREDS” of cedar fence posts and barbed wire that will have to be replaced because of the damage.  AH!  The life of a cattle rancher.  If it isn’t hard enough just to tend to the cows calving and an occasional one getting through the fence and onto the highway, what would thay have to do?

Bears Butt P.M. Report

No trapping tomorrow…It’s Sunday and I need a break.

Feb. 24 trapping expectations.

Up early to hit the swamp as early as “an old man wants to call early”.

My goal to day is to swag in about 50 traps out on my west most line, the one I call “the goose club”.  That was my expectation yesterday when my boots failed me.  So, with new boots, I should be able to get the job done today.

My expected rat catch rate for today is seven.  Why seven?  It was windy yesterday, which rats hate.  They can’t detect the predators when the wind is blowing hard.  Then it turned cold and probably froze 1/2 inch of ice.  Cold plus wind is not something rats really like.

Wish me luck and I will be reporting the results of the day later on.

Bears Butt

Feb. 24, 2012 A.M.

P.M. Report

Just got done skinning, fleshing and stretching the catch.  Me – 2, Bob – 8 !!!

I was sure a lot farther off on my guess than what turned out to be real.  No other traps set off either.

I did manage to set another 35 traps on the Goose Club line.  Tomorrow I hope to put out another 20 to 30 traps on the end of that line.  Next week I’ll set the Big Spring line that goes SE from the Goose Club line.  For that I will have to pull some of the Trellis and/or Fish Springs lines.

Big rats today…of the 10 we caught, only one was under 15 inches!!!!!!  And Bob caught one that went over 17 inches!!!!  Those are BIG honking rats!  According to the book, a Large rat measures up to 14 inches.  An Extra large rat will go 14 to 15 1/2 inches…so you can see we are dealing with some very big animals out there.

I always carry a side arm and am ready at the crash of a toolie to draw, aim and fire.  You never know what huge rat will come at your throat when you are least expecting it.

This is the first night of trapping I have not had to bring my hip boots in to dry them or to fix a hole in them!  Thank you Frogg Toggs!

Bears Butt

Bears Butt