Wow, having been on the road for eight days, it has taken me a while to wade through this thread. Haven't read every post, but enough to get a feel for it.
Most have seen our trapping videos. I started trapping before I started hunting. I think I was six or seven when I had my first weasel line. It was that year that I caught my first pet, and have never caught a pet since them. I saw weasel tracks going into our firewood stack. So, I took some cat food and put an "ought" long spring in front of the little crack in the stack. That night, my Dad woke up to our cat whining. He went outside and found my sister's cat in my trap.
Since he had warned me about setting traps near our pets, I didn't get a "timeout." Even at midnight, an ass beating was deemed appropriate reward for my foolishness. A lesson well learned.
I have trapped for the better part of 50 years. Since catching my sister's cat in my first season, I've never caught another pet. A lot of that can be attributed to common sense; mostly where I set, what time of year, what type of sets, what traps/snares used, etc.
If I were to catch a pet, I would feel terrible, no matter where the culpability rests. Fortunately, I don't make any sets that would be lethal to a pet. I only use conibears under water. Due to the huge number of unrestrained pets in the part of MT, I don't use snares. I set my pan tension on land sets that I have a pretty good idea of what size of animal it would take to spring the trap. Suffice to say, in almost all instances it would take a large canine to spring the trap and if they did, the offset jaws would serve to restrain the animal without much pain or likely no injury.
I accept that trapping is under attack. It has been since I was in college and I've had more than my share of it. My first time of being on TV was at an animal rights protest in Reno in 1989. They organized their protest around the set date that trappers were given to get their pelts sealed by NDOW. It was the only date that worked for me and my tax season schedule so I went to the NDOW office to get my bobcat pelts sealed wading through a long line of hecklers and TV cameras. A 23 year-old trapper in his CPA attire, carrying an arm load of bobcat pelts was more than the journalists could resist. I ended up on the evening news and a large center spread in the Sunday edition of the Las Vegas newspaper.
That exposure only made things worse. The next morning at the CPA firm, many who saw the news that evening were quick to give me an earful of what they thought of trapping. When the Vegas paper spread came out, another wave of pissed off people felt compelled to give me an earful. A lot of trappers reached out to me and thanked me, but the experience made it very obvious that the future of trapping is not very bright.
Now in Montana, I don't trap on public lands (this proposed legislation applies to all lands, not just public lands). Just not worth the risk of an accidental catch of a pet that is off leash and a long distance from a trail or road. In effect, it has marginalized where I am willing to trap, which serves the purpose of reducing trapping.
I trap on private land. I've still had traps messed with. Duck hunters and fisherman along a river are some of the worst. I can see their tracks in the mud and snow, seeing what they are doing. I go to my sets that are often up creeks that feed the river, and my wires are untwisted and my conibears are gone.
I am trustee of a large ranch. The ranch incurs the amount of wolf predation you would expect from cattle operation based in prime wolf and grizzly habitat. They accept it as a cost of doing business and they don't file for any depredation claims. Those who read the Bozeman Daily Chronicle might remember a big spat of an REI x-country skier whose dog got caught in a wolf trap, giving the owner reason to make a huge stink in the newspaper.
The story that seemed not worthy to publish was that the skier was trespassing and the traps were set on private lands. The ranch manager had set some wolf traps on the ranch, almost a mile away from any public land. The skier's dog ends up in the trap, way into private land. The ranch manager gets a visit from the warden, trappers are drug through the mud in the public eye, and the ranch decides that it is no longer worth trying to manage wolves via trapping due to the amount of trespassing on the ranch.
Yes, that example is anecdotal. But, for some to comment that trappers are irresponsible and want to be unaccountable, does not reflect the reality of the behavior of the collective group who knows their activity is under scrutiny. Every trapper I know is very aware of this scrutiny and they take all reasonable steps to minimize conflicts with other outdoor pursuits. In my example, I've given up on trapping the millions of acres of public land out my backdoor. I know that every dog that finds its way to a trap, no matter how appropriate the trapper's activities, is another nail in the coffin of trapping.
I'm not naive enough to think there aren't some knotheads out there with a trapping license who do stupid stuff. It is for that reason that many trappers demand trapper education. If you sat through any of the trapper education classes, you would see a lot of focus on the topics that have been discussed in this thread. When you know you are under the microscope and you are a very, very small minority, you become hyper-aware of how the actions of even one person can spell the demise of an entire activity.
AFWA (Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies) and the state trappers's associations have come up with BMPs on trapping. You can find the high points of those BMPs here -
https://www.fishwildlife.org/application/files/5015/2104/8473/Introduction_comp.pdf
If you want to go into more detail of the 22 species for which BMPS have been developed, cruise the many links on this site -
https://www.fishwildlife.org/afwa-inspires/furbearer-management
This BMP project has taken a ton of work, all designed to create better trappers who are more informed. I don't know of any outdoor user group who has went to such great lengths to develop BMPs for the participants of their activity, though such may exist and I've not yet found it. I think hunting would benefit from some of this same exercise that trappers have went through, by activity and species. I think the general outdoor recreationists would benefit from BMPs of public land use. But, until those other activities become as marginalized as trapping, I'm sure we won't see BMPs for those activities anytime soon.
This discussion has taken a lot of twists and turns from the original post about a piece of legislation that has very little likelihood of even getting a hearing. The value of this thread has been to see the perspectives hunters have on the topic of trapping. To me, that has been very enlightening.
Carry on....... (do so with civility)
