Life Lessons Learned on the Trap Line

Growing up in our household, you didn’t have much of a choice; at some point in your childhood, you were either going to run traps with Dad or you were going to run your own line. Or both. Don’t get me wrong, Dad didn’t really force us to trap…but his father trapped, he trapped, and, By God, we were going to learn how to trap, too! With each year that passes, my memory gets more like Swiss cheese, but I can surely recall times when I just didn’t want to go out and set or check traps. Maybe the weather was bad, or I had something else that seemed more pressing, or it was just too darned early. But, looking back, I know those many hours on the line with Dad taught us all far more than we may have realized…and not just about trapping, but about life in general. The goal here was to write an article, not a book, so I am going to have to condense the “life lesson” list down quite a bit. Here goes…

Lesson #1: Get Up and Get After It (or, better known as, The Early Bird Catches the Worm).

Many outdoor pursuits require participants to be up and in the field before dawn; trapping is certainly no different. I’m sure there are many turkey hunters who have had the unfortunate experience of getting into the timber just a little later than they wanted, only to find themselves busted by birds that have already flown down from their roosts. When you went out to set or check traps with Dad, you didn’t have the luxury of hitting the snooze button. His call to “Roll out!” was your sign that you’d better get up and be ready to go, because you were hitting the road as soon as Mom had the day’s sandwiches and coffee ready (no, we didn’t drink the coffee when we were kids…).

I suppose Dad, without expressly stating it, knew that getting an early start was preferable on several levels. First, it allowed you to be out before sunup, which gave you a different perspective on furbearer movement patterns. It also meant that you could get more sets made and checked in a day than you would if you dawdled. Finally, it helped assure that you could get the fur back home, hung and drying in the garage at an earlier point in the evening, all the better to allow more time for skinning, fleshing and putting up pelts.

Dad worked full-time as a telephone repairman, so he only had four or five weeks (he generally devoted about all of his vacation time to trapping from mid-November until the end of the year) to really hit trapping hard. Therefore, it was a before-sunup to well-after-dark exercise, every day, during that time. I think the take-home lesson from his success as a trapper, at least in this regard, was that getting up early and putting in a hard day’s (and night’s) work pays real dividends, not only in the fur caught, but also in the entrenchment of a solid work ethic; that’s something that serves you well throughout life.

Lesson #2: Get It In Writing.

This sounds like good legal advice, and it is, but it pertains to trapping and other outdoor sports more than some people might think.

Dad carried a pocket-sized notebook in which he wrote down all of his landowner contacts, including the name of the person he spoke to, their address, phone number and the date he spoke to them. That way he would always have a record of trapping permissions he had obtained, as well as any other pertinent information about a piece of property or landowner that might be useful.

You’d be surprised the number of times that we’d drive onto a property to check traps, only to be stopped by a farm tenant and asked what we were doing. But, with Dad’s “little black book,” the issue was almost always resolved in no time. I think the life lesson from this experience is that it truly pays to be meticulous in your record-keeping, whether that be for keeping track of tax deductions or for maintaining a list of trapping permissions. It just makes good sense to write details down in black-and-white, because memories can get fuzzy. Fostering the habit of “getting it in writing” goes a long way to avoiding problems.

Lesson #3: You Are Never as Clever as You Think You Are (which might be condensed to Be Humble).

As Dad was fond of saying, with trapping you have the uniquely difficult task of getting an animal, amongst the untold acres of area it might roam, to put its foot on an area of about one-and-a-half square inches. When you sit and think about it, it really is a tall order!

But another twist Dad always added was that, even if you studied your target animal well and knew what you thought were their daily patterns, our native furbearers could make you look pretty foolish in a hurry. So, he always taught that you needed to approach each set with an eye toward minute detail, attempting to read the surrounding topography, trail sign, and any other important clues, so as to avoid getting skunked…in the bad sense of the word!

What he knew from years of experience, and we were soon to find out, was that trapping had a way of laying low even the most haughty attitude. No matter how good a set looked or how sure you were that you’d make a great catch at a particular location, it doesn’t take too many days of getting up before dawn and checking empty traps to realize that you don’t always know it all! Further, he always taught us to listen to the “Ol’ Guys” when we had a chance to learn from other, more experienced outdoorsmen. He knew that many of the folks in his and his father’s generation had grown up spending far more time in the woods and waters than kids of our time ever would. Why not shut your mouth, open your eyes and ears, and take advantage of their experience?

Hand-in-hand with the above sentiments was the fact that Dad was never one to brag on his trapping exploits and had little tolerance for that type of behavior from us, either. Sure, he was rightfully proud of some of the things he accomplished over the years, but he was squarely against the idea of bragging about numbers (or antler spreads, etc.). He wanted us to be respectful of the landowners who were kind enough to allow us to access their properties, respectful of other outdoorsmen, and, most of all, respectful of the animals we trapped and hunted. He instilled in us that being able to live an outdoors-oriented lifestyle was a gift and he strived for us to maintain a healthy humility about our place in the world.

Lesson #4: Take a Kid Trapping (or, in today’s parlance, Get that Kid Outside and Off the Video Screen!).

Growing up, we spent many hours in the field with Dad, attributable more than anything else, I suppose, to the fact that in the timber or on the river was where he preferred to spend his leisure time. Still, those squirrel hunts, days spent looking for morels, afternoons of plinking cans with a .22 rifle, and countless hours of setting and running traps, among other activities, instilled in myself and my siblings a love of the outdoors that we never had to truly articulate…it was just what our family did.

Years later, I’m working on a 20-plus year career as a biologist, my twin brother has worked almost as long as a Conservation Police Officer, and my sister lives in the country and raises horses. I guess the lessons Dad instilled sure took hold, even if we didn’t know it was happening!

The sitting President of the Illinois Trappers Association (ITA) has the ability to submit a monthly report to a publication called the Trapper’s Post, which is a trapping and outdoor sports-related magazine geared toward the trapping community. The current ITA President, Neal Graves of East Peoria, always signs off on his reports with the following statement: “Remember to take a kid trapping.” In today’s day and age, with kids having so many distractions we didn’t have years ago, I think it is more important than ever to make sure we get kids into the outdoors, whether that be through hiking, camping, fishing, hunting or trapping; just something that helps them understand the value of and gain an honest appreciation for the outdoors. We were very blessed to grow up in the times and in the way we did, and trapping was a major part of that life. I believe all outdoorsmen need to remember that introducing a youngster to the joys, and even the hardships, of outdoor sports is the only real way to keep alive the traditions we love and value so much. That is a lesson I learned without really knowing I was learning it and I definitely try to pass it along to my kids.

Granted, the lessons I’ve attributed here to trapping can definitely be learned in other ways. My wife has been a coach in some fashion for 20 years. I’m sure she, like many coaches, can adeptly use sports-as-life metaphors…and I don’t take exception to them doing so. However, I submit that trapping, hunting and about any outdoor sport you can think of can impart those same life lessons; lessons that are important for character building and the future success of kids who are engaged in those activities.

I hope that sharing my experiences growing up in a “trapping household” and the lessons I gleaned from that lifestyle might be helpful for some other parent who is looking to get their child involved in a life spent outdoors.

---

Tim Kelley is a District Wildlife Biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife Resources and based in the Havana office.