The author breaks down some differences between sustainable trapping and management trapping techniques.
By Steve Bartylla
I was beyond thrilled. The ice on the flowage wasn’t safe to cross and I’d made a mistake of setting an ancient beaver colony the day before. The flow made it so the ice never got more than one decent thrust with the ice pick thick. I’d actually brought a length of rope, to pull the supplies behind me, as even a few traps may be the difference between using my feet as cross country skies to cross or break through. Crossing that ice was honestly one of the stupidest things that I’ve ever done.
Then, after having slid my boots across the ice the next day, two of the three runs that I’d set farther from the lodge held super blankets. They, along with the three traps I’d set, were loaded in the sled and pulled 10 yards or so behind me to safety. I made it and wouldn’t be doing that again!
In 24 hours, I’d survived the most dangerously foolish act that I’ve ever knowingly done, as well as caught the breeding pair that I was after and I was out. To me, minus the stupidity factor, it had worked exactly as intended. I caught the breeding pair in a day and shifted those traps on to the next colony to repeat the process. When trapping somewhere north of 20 colonies at all times, from the season’s start to end, that was how I racked up big beavers in big numbers, while still being able to continually repeat that process on those beaver colonies many years in a row.
Although great for sustainable trapping, that’s about the worst way to try to manage a nuisance beaver population, unless you want an annual struggle.
Overcoming the Invisible Foe
As it applies to management trapping, we really have two challenges to overcome. The first is simply learning the habitat and animals intimately enough to become skilled at reading their sign and predicting where they will step or pass through. That’s a big one and something most new trappers clearly see.
The more invisible challenge is that almost all of the info out there these days is on sustainable trapping practices and methods, with comparably little on trapping to help manage the habitat and the animals being trapped. Specifically, sustainable trapping practices don’t work when trying to clear some beavers from a stream they’ve dammed, which flooded half of your corn field. Catching the breeding pair typically only replaces the beavers doing the breeding. But you need them all gone.
At the same time, although catching the alpha female coyote is often a great thing for the longline trapper, for those trapping to manage habitat and other animals, well, it’s not so great. If you catch the alpha, the beta females in the pack typically go through a re-shuffle, trying to determine who the new alpha is, if the pack even stays together. The results can be numerous previously beta females breeding and having litters of pups, instead of just the one.
As managers, we don’t mind catching the alpha at all, assuming we are catering our tactics to management. Why? Because we aren’t going to put out many single sets for coyotes. Instead, we’ll make two and mostly three sets per location and we’ll set all of the good spots at once. We do our best to get as many caught in as short a time as possible, reducing the time they have to become trap-smart.
A single set or two is fine for having a location that may produce a few catches all season, which is often effective and leaves ample breeding stock for future years.
Carpet bombing a property with multiple sets at each prime location is a far more productive management trapping philosophy, despite it not always being a good sustainable trapping technique. As opposed to getting a more sustained catch, and switch limited traps from one prime location to the next, one is hoping to get a big surge up front. If we’re going to educate any furbearers, we may as well get as many as we can before they get tougher to catch.
Conclusion
Many of the sustainable trapping techniques apply directly to management trapping, as well. The key really is to understand why certain practices are used. Then, we can pick the ones that best help achieve our goals, as having a sustainable fur harvest on that ground isn’t likely one of them you’re overly concerned with.
— Steve Bartylla is one of the country’s most respected experts on land and habitat management for whitetails and turkeys. He has been a land-management consultant and outdoor writer for more than 20 years, and grew up trapping in Northern Wisconsin throughout his youth and on after his college years. He is also host of “Grow ‘em Big” and “Hunt ‘em Big” shows on Pursuit Channel and YouTube.
