Appleknocker writes...
The problem is the "nature of man". Man is spoiled. When we find we can do something with less effort and still get our desired results that is the way we start doing it. Unfortunately, we don't stop there, we continue to increase our "less effort" until the results are not acceptable
Outstanding post appleknocker! I was going to stay out of a controversy with my trapper friends on this forum but it has become irresistable.
Why would one want to think of all sorts of slipshod ways in which they could slide along by omiting factors and details? One, in my opinion should be thinking "what details can I add or buckle down on and increase my harvest?" My Dad and I have instructed hundreds of students over an 80 year span and all of the students that adopted a professional attitude out shined other trappers in their area. I don't care if this was the more difficult U. P. of Michigan or the easiest trapping location in North America, the students who listened became the best in their area. Time and again I hear "saving time" as an excuse for sloppy methods. Believe me, it is just as easy to incorporate high detailed standards into the trapline procedure that don't take an extra 5 minutes per day, if that. I make sets in two to five minutes and still use the highest reasonable standard to ensure foreign odors are kept to a minimum, excess human scent kept to a minimum, clean traps are used, tracks are brushed out, guiding appears natural, set appears natural, etc., etc., etc. Obviously each and every detail isn't essential to a harvest at every set with every animal but being that I don't know just where to be lax and being detailed is incorporated into the routine, I don't have to concern myself with that. I trapped coyotes for 25 years during the bounty era where a trappers catch was public record. One had to take coyotes to the Conservation Department to have various statistics recorded, one of the statistics being whether the animal was adult or juvenile. Well guess what, I looked over scores of those bounty records and always noted something that stood out like a sore thumb, the slipshod trappers were harvesting 90% pups and 10% adults where the detailed trappers, including myself, were harvesting 50% pups and 50% adults. This is not to mention that my harvest and the harvest of my Dad's and my students was always triple that of the other trappers in a 100 mile radius. Does that tell one anything about always paying attention to detail and not trying to second guess what one might be able to get away with? Trappers who omit the human and foreign scent factors, along with the use of clean traps and equipment here in the U. P. are ALWAYS SECOND or THIRD RATE producers. I realize that areas of higher human population and urban coyotes are more acclimated to human and odd odors than our wilderness acoyotes BUT all of the Lenon students who practiced the same U. P. high standards in their locality always outperformed the competition there too. This, in my opinion is the result of a "professional attitude" ingrained into all open minded successful Lenon students. Sorry if i'm coming through as arguementative but facts are facts. My dad used to say he could tell right away when a new student arrived whether he would fail completely, just be a mediocre trapper or whether he would shine over the others. Dad was right, I can tell the same thing whitin a minute or so of meeting the student. If the student comes with no prior trapping experience, so has no pre-concieved ideas, they are more likely to be highly successful. One who comes with pre-concieved ideas will not change them no matter what they see. If they seen old charlie who never changed cloths, used rusty traps, spit snooce every few moments between puffing on a cigar with the ashes dropping at the set, used a bucket of rotten fish at every set, took a pee at the set and left his lunch papers and banana peeling at the set, disposed of his animals in a pool of blood at the set, catch 6 pups per season, they would insist my precautions were not necessary. (This may sound like an exagerated joke of fiction, but I knew a bounty trapper just exactly like that. He blew off at the bar about how many coyotes he bountied so I checked his records...six juvenile coyotes in seven weeks! Ace
