I’ve been thinking today about how things have changed in just my life.
When I started, no one locally would help you and most of the literature were the old Harding books. Very outdated. Fur Fish and Game was of course around. Then you started seeing new, now old books, like Weiland’s, Helfrich and Grawe. Next big thing to come along was trapping VHS videos. That was really a big thing. And then of course they started becoming CD’s. Now I’m seeing CD’s dying out. They’re being discounted some by the makers because now all the new ones get all they want instruction wise from YouTube. I was just thinking about this.
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It has definately changed.a lot of information out there but personal instruction is hard to beat
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I believe the thoughts of paying for information has declined greatly. I always thought buying a book or video as an investment. I’ve never paid for personal instruction. I’ve definitely run with a few people I’ve learned from. When you go one day and see the sets and locations not being where you would put them and go the next day and see catches it makes you realize there’s more than one way to do things. I believe also methods that work well in some other state may not work as well here. I guess we all trap the way we think is best.
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I’ve always looked at a book as an investment too. I’m not much on videos due to my lack of being able to pay attention to much of a video. For some reason I can watch a dvd and remember just one or two things and not much of those. I can read a book and visualize the sets and locations in my head from memory and utilize them. I personally think it would be amazing to make a monthly or quarterly magazine with articles from the members to send out if costs allowed it. Kind of something like the fur takers magazine. A couple educational articles, a couple stories.
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I actually like books better too. O’Gorman used to say a video took six times watching to absorb it.
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I like books as well, particularly if they have good pictures, a lot of the older books had really good drawings of what they were talking about which I find super helpful. I also really enjoy the demos at get togethers and conventions. I had the opportunity to go the FTA Trappers College a few years ago, I highly recommend that if you ever get the opportunity it was time well spent but at times it was like trying to drink from a fire hose.
The only time I paid was at the trappers college,it was fun and informative.I really enjoyed Tim Julian and Gary Jepson.most of it was learned through demos at rendezvous’s and this group and last but not least lotsa hardknocks
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The first get together I ever went to was UTK in Paris a few years ago. I’m not much on videos exsept I really like watching the guys I grew up reading about and during the time frame that I was trying to learn in. They have allot of entertainment value if nothing else! Hard to believe how fast 15 or 20 years will change.
Im book crazy and always have been. My granny brought me home a Hawbaker trapping north American furbearers book it came in goodwill was missing the cover and was gonna be through away so she got it for me.
After that I had a few more Hawbaker books (mink,coon,fox,beaver) and Dad had an ar Harding fox book and a handful I mean handful of 70s and 80s ffg that was all my material for several years when I was around ten we started finding ffg at Walmart and momma would once a month take me before school to get the new one. Then for Christmas or my birthday she got me a subscription.
That’s all I had till I was 18 and in taxidermy school somebody at the house before me left a catalog I believe was Hal Sullivan and 1 single furtakers magazine that had one of the Leggets on the cover with 2 red fox.
Up to this point dad had kept me talked outta trapping full time. I wanted too but he head me off at the pass. Well momma would send up care packages to taxidermy school from time to time. I had a friend back home who was about 15 years older than me who started trapping that winter. He was super green and was doing dumb stuff like peanut butter on the pan and tieing off with string. He knew me and daddy trapped so he went and talked to Daddy who set him on the right path. Well mean while (he spent money like crazy) he started buying videos and sent me a copy of Matt Jones and linn Williams Secrets of the Eastern long line in one of mommas care packages. It was the first I ever heard of cable stakes or peat moss I was still using leaves and wax paper and sifting dry dirt over traps. Talk about eye opening. After that daddy couldn’t hold me back there was guys in the state trapping full time and I was gonna do it too and I did and I was poor and broke till way after I got married but I’m sure glad I did it.
I’m sure there was allot of stuff on the Internet way before I found out. It just wasn’t something people I knew did. We just never thought about looking for information on the web. Different generation I guess.
Colt
I subscribed to FFG in high school. A girl was selling subscriptions for her senior trip. That was in 1980 and I’ve never missed an issue since. I also have ALMOST every issue from 1960 to 1980. I need to sit down sometime and sort them out. I don’t know why. They’re probably burn pile bound when I’m gone. The old Harding fox trapping book was the first one I ever bought. That was about 1977. I hadn’t caught a fox yet and the book made it seem even more impossible. One of my early old favorites was Wyshinski’s Trapping mink, muskrat, fox and possum. His possum trapping stories made me want to possum trap. Possum were my main trapline quarry early on. A skunk was exciting. I still have a couple of my possum boards. They’re no where near NAFA specs, they didn’t have to be then. Coon were sort of rare here then. I caught four in 220’s and the furbuyer didn’t believe me. I had built and maintained a river cane fenced down tributary trickle all summer and looked at coon tracks running through it. I was very ready to set that when season came in.
Possum was my main target for years,I even have a bait recipe and was gonna market it just like Hawbaker.
I guess I could let the formula out know as the possum market has cooled so much!
Start with a quart of wild grapes.
Crush in a jar and let them stand a few days in the sun till they start to ferment.
Add a handful of deer scraps and let stand another day
Then add a couple handfuls of dog food and shake it up good the juice will soak into the dog food and the possums can’t resist it!
I used it on my possum pole sets or the possum log sets.
Not just eny 8 year old and formulate the deadliest possum bait known to man.
Daddy said I prolly wouldn’t sell as much as I thought. But what did he know!
Colt
Love hearing everyone’s stories ! The first introduction of trapping came to me at an early age. My Grandfather would set wash tubs, and stick pyramid boxes with a figure 4 trigger for rabbits to help feed the kids he still had at home. The trapping instructions were him telling me how he did it, and tagging along whenever we came down to visit. He had a couple of #1 long springs, and something about them just cast a spell on me! He would set them in dens to try and catch whatever, and that was my intro to trapping. As the years went by, I worked enough odd jobs to order a couple of Hav -a- hart cage traps, and they served me well for several years. About the time I turned 14 or 15, I got fox fever due to fur skyrocketing in price, and ordered a john Clousers Space age fox trapping book, and Hawbakers Trapping North American Furbearers. After that, it was trial and a whole lot of error ! And now, after a bunch of books, and 2-3 dvd’s , I can say that I am a fairly good Possum trapper!
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Since Colt gave so freely of himself with his possum bait recipe I’ll give mine AND the super secret set that took many possums, one skunk and my first ever grey fox. Fine a persimmon tree around first of October and start saving persimmons daily. Freeze them in quart containers. Go into woods, dump container and set three #1 longsprings around it ( it’s legal now).
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Around 1976 I was at a grocery store with my mother. I would hang out by the magazine stand at the front of he store while she shopped , I’d look and read some of magazines that interested me. Sports afield was a pretty good one and seen at the back of the magazine there were adds for selling anything from dogs, rabbits and trapping supplies. I seen FFG magazine advertised and I sent my yard mowing money and started reading the great information. I seen an advertisement for E.J. Daily’s in the FFG mag and sent for a catalog. I sent more of my yard mowing money to Daily and ordered my first trapping method books. I have the mink, fox, beaver, and muskrat books still today. Also My first cat book by Butcher… The book that I absorbed was Trapping North American Furbearers by Hawbaker… I ran into a trapper when I was 14 or 15 years old. He had some 110’s in the back of his truck and we started talking. He knew where I lived and dropped off a pile of the Trapper news papers for me, That’s back when that paper was about 3/8" thick.
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