Speaker 1: Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves.
Speaker 1: From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented
Speaker 1: by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
Speaker 1: the best outdoor podcast the airways had off. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
Speaker 1: stories to share. Trapping. My trapping started at a young
Speaker 1: age when I ran a trap line on our farm
Speaker 1: where I grew up. Now, those experiences and lessons have
Speaker 1: served me well in just about every aspect of my
Speaker 1: outdoor career. I'm going to tell you all about them.
Speaker 1: The first, I'm going to tell you a story. My
Speaker 1: uncle Dobb, whose actual name was Troy Alvin Matthew Atkins,
Speaker 1: was everyone's favorite uncle and no blood relation to any
Speaker 1: of us. He was a hunter, a fishermen, and above
Speaker 1: everything else, a trapper, at least he was to us.
Speaker 1: His notoriety as a trapper wasn't solely of our own
Speaker 1: imagination either, because there were a lot of trappers back then.
Speaker 1: But Uncle Dobb specialized in mink trapping, and a successful
Speaker 1: mink trapper was revered even amongst trappers as having the
Speaker 1: extra skill set to consistently add the prized fur bearer
Speaker 1: to their daily take. Now mencher difficult to catch and
Speaker 1: have been known to travel as much as ten miles
Speaker 1: in a night. They have excellent eyesight, hearing, and depending
Speaker 1: on who you ask, either a keen or a poor
Speaker 1: sense of smell. I found arguments for and against it online,
Speaker 1: but who really knows. I tend to lean toward the former.
Speaker 1: With mink ben the predators that they are, but no
Speaker 1: one actually knows except the mink, and the only thing
Speaker 1: they absolutely fail at is talking. Having observed mink in
Speaker 1: the wild myself, I find them beyond curious and busy,
Speaker 1: very busy, like full on, hyperactive busy. They never slowed down,
Speaker 1: and their constant search is for something to eat, and
Speaker 1: they're good at gathering victials. I was standing knee deep
Speaker 1: in a narrow portion of the Little Red River one
Speaker 1: day with a fly rod and losing a sword fight
Speaker 1: with some overhanging tree limbs. I was occasionally dropping the
Speaker 1: zebramage in the vicinity of some feeding rainbow and brown
Speaker 1: trout that I could see in the crystal clear water.
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing any good. I was also seeing flashes
Speaker 1: of something I'd originally thought was a brown trout, darting
Speaker 1: in and out of the shallow water column, only to
Speaker 1: disappear in the shadows from the overhanging limbs that were
Speaker 1: all about wrecking my rhythm. I started my casting sequence again,
Speaker 1: and eventually all things merged into one, but instead of
Speaker 1: a river running through it, my fly tied itself in
Speaker 1: the grounding, not about six feet over my head. And
Speaker 1: while I stood there, staring at the second fly and
Speaker 1: the leader that I would be sacrificing to the lord
Speaker 1: of the limbs that day, and listening to the babble
Speaker 1: of the cold water as it brushed over the rocks
Speaker 1: and around my knees, I saw that brown flash again
Speaker 1: out of the corner of my eye. It was swimming
Speaker 1: further out of the shadows this time, and it came
Speaker 1: within a few feet of where I stood. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't a brown trout. It wasn't even a fish. It
Speaker 1: was a mink, and he was swimming underwater like Michael Phelps.
Speaker 1: I watched him go toward the bank, climb up on
Speaker 1: the edge, and immediately right back in the water. I
Speaker 1: stood there like an idiot, with my hopelessly anchored to
Speaker 1: its final resting place, a third of my fly rod
Speaker 1: pointed skyward. While this mink swim upstream against a strong current.
Speaker 1: I saw him slip up behind the twelve inch rainbow,
Speaker 1: put him in a half nelson and drag him up
Speaker 1: on my bank and eat it right there in front
Speaker 1: of it. The mink are killing machines, and it's been
Speaker 1: said that they'll raise a chicken coop and just murder
Speaker 1: all the chickens for sport. You know, it's one thing
Speaker 1: to lose a chicken to a coon, a fox, a
Speaker 1: coyoder or whatever. But at least they're making a meal
Speaker 1: out of it. Not these vampiric thieves of the night.
Speaker 1: They're just biting next, drinking blood and hitting the trail.
Speaker 1: Uncle Dob got after one particularly daring specimen that he'd
Speaker 1: identified by a peculiar track that he made in the mud.
Speaker 1: That mink was going around his sets, digging them up
Speaker 1: and generally becoming a pain in Uncle Dobb's ego. The
Speaker 1: crooked foot track was giving him away in it came
Speaker 1: down to a battle of wits and skill. He was
Speaker 1: running his trap line down in the river bottoms every day,
Speaker 1: and while catching multiple coons of mink throughout the daily runs,
Speaker 1: this one particular mink out foxed him. You see what
Speaker 1: I did there on multiple occasions, most times but not
Speaker 1: every time, on his sets they were either passed over
Speaker 1: or dug up, and he found that crooked track. It
Speaker 1: was as right front foot as eye as I remember
Speaker 1: him telling the story, and it was a battle royale
Speaker 1: of him against this mink, and finally Uncle Dob got
Speaker 1: the best of him with a one and a half
Speaker 1: single spring trap. He never revealed anything different about how
Speaker 1: he did it, and I'm sure it wasn't a secret.
Speaker 1: I seriously doubt he changed much of anything. He was
Speaker 1: just persistent with the tried and true methods that had
Speaker 1: served him through the Great Depression, when a successful trap
Speaker 1: line was literally money and the mattress and food on
Speaker 1: the table. His reputation as a good trapper didn't by
Speaker 1: pass his own understanding either. He was good and he
Speaker 1: knew it. He also liked to have fun. In one
Speaker 1: story I remember hearing about him was when he and
Speaker 1: another trapper of somewhat lesser skill were staying down at
Speaker 1: the cabin on the saline river, the same cabin that's
Speaker 1: still in the Fry family that you've heard me speak
Speaker 1: about before. It was the one where I sucker punching
Speaker 1: my dad in the belly while he was taking a nap. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they'd been down at the river a few days and
Speaker 1: someone came by and asked if they'd had any luck,
Speaker 1: to which Uncle Dob replied, well, last night I caught
Speaker 1: five cones and two mink, and my trapping partner here
Speaker 1: caught an otter. That was strictly a coincidence. He was
Speaker 1: a good trapper, and my brother Tim followed in his footsteps.
Speaker 1: He learned a lot from trapping with him when I
Speaker 1: was just too little to go. But he passed those
Speaker 1: lessons in some of his own down to me and
Speaker 1: his sons, Matthew, named in honor of Uncle Dob and Will,
Speaker 1: both of which are pretty good travers themselves. But Tim
Speaker 1: told me his mission growing up had always been to
Speaker 1: best Uncle Dobb's record of a one hundred percent catch night.
Speaker 1: He put out ten traps one day, and when he
Speaker 1: ran on the next morning he had ten coons caught,
Speaker 1: and that was the standard. If you wanted to beat
Speaker 1: the record, you had to have a minimum of eleven
Speaker 1: traps with one hundred percent catch all in the same night,
Speaker 1: and Tim came as close as anyone ever did in
Speaker 1: the family. Long after Uncle Dob had passed away. He
Speaker 1: set his eleven traps many days through that winter, and finally,
Speaker 1: after coming close several times, was eight or nine coons
Speaker 1: out of eleven. Then one day, as Tim put number
Speaker 1: of ten in his basket, he walked around the next
Speaker 1: bend of the creek to see that number eleven had
Speaker 1: chewed the limb he'd wired his trap chain to into
Speaker 1: a small piece of wood, and he climbed a small tree,
Speaker 1: his foot still caught in the trap, close to where
Speaker 1: the set was made, and there it was the record
Speaker 1: staring at him from eight feet off the ground, the
Speaker 1: chain hanging with an easy reach like a light chain,
Speaker 1: along with the record, and all he had to do
Speaker 1: was literally reach up and grabbed that coon and the record.
Speaker 1: He grabbed the end of the chain of the one
Speaker 1: tug he pulled the trap off the coon's foot as
Speaker 1: he bailed out of the tree, running away with his
Speaker 1: hide and the closest anyone ever got to Uncle Dob's record.
Speaker 1: Some things are just meant to be some things aren't.
Speaker 1: That Tim broke in his record that day, and had
Speaker 1: Uncle Dob been there to witness it, I'm sure he
Speaker 1: would have been proud of it and told everyone around
Speaker 1: that Tim had bested his record and it was strictly
Speaker 1: a coincidence, and that's just how that happened. Trapping has
Speaker 1: been a great pastime of mine and being inspired by
Speaker 1: my brother Tim and other members of my family like
Speaker 1: my uncle Dob. My brother Tim actually got to trap
Speaker 1: with him when I was too little to go. The
Speaker 1: coons were the main target, and back then the fur
Speaker 1: prices were good. Fela could make a good amount of
Speaker 1: money trapping through the winter, even in the South, where
Speaker 1: the winners didn't get as cold and the quality of
Speaker 1: the fur lagged behind the Northern States. The animals down
Speaker 1: here don't get as big as they do up there,
Speaker 1: which limits how much fur you have. Once the animal
Speaker 1: is skin, obviously you're gonna get more usable fur from
Speaker 1: a larger source. It goes along with what's known as
Speaker 1: Bergmann's rule. If you're not familiar with that, allow me
Speaker 1: to pontificate. Bergmann's rule is an eco geographical rule that
Speaker 1: states that within it, a broadly distributed taxonomic clade. Populations
Speaker 1: and species of larger size are found in colder environments,
Speaker 1: while populations and species of smaller size are found in
Speaker 1: warmer regions. Now, the rule derives from the relationship between
Speaker 1: size and linear dimensions, meaning that both height and volume
Speaker 1: will increase in colder environments. Now in non nerd Lingo,
Speaker 1: that means the further you go up north, the bigger
Speaker 1: than animals get, and the word of the folks talk,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding, not really, the heartier they have to
Speaker 1: be to withstand the winners up there, the critters anyway. Now,
Speaker 1: looking on a map, once you reach the top third
Speaker 1: of the continental US, you're going to start seeing the
Speaker 1: size of the animals get bigger and the fur get thicker,
Speaker 1: as simple as that. Now, I know people who hunt
Speaker 1: and trapped in the northern US who've sent me picks
Speaker 1: of seemingly huge coons and beers that we would count
Speaker 1: here in the South as extra large one, presenting them
Speaker 1: to the fur buyer that would grade out as an
Speaker 1: average or large up north. I recently got an acquainted
Speaker 1: with Jake and Riley Debo from New Hampshire, and I
Speaker 1: mentioned them on here in episode or so going. I'm
Speaker 1: completely intrigued with their way of life and how they
Speaker 1: represent the world of trapping to the rest of the
Speaker 1: world through their social media. Social media is a descriptor
Speaker 1: like Jombo shrimp. It seems to contradict itself. I can
Speaker 1: only imagine how much grief they get from the antis
Speaker 1: that troll around on the Internet looking to duke it
Speaker 1: out virtually with someone over something they don't agree with.
Speaker 1: I've said it before. Folks that verbally attack others the
Speaker 1: way they do while hiding behind the keyboard should have
Speaker 1: to list their address in case the attack e wants
Speaker 1: to drive over and have a meaningful exchange of ideas. Anyway.
Speaker 1: They have a business selling fur items that they produce
Speaker 1: from fur, but a sales pitch is the last thing
Speaker 1: you'll see on their social media. It's one advanced level
Speaker 1: class of instruction after another on how they prepare their
Speaker 1: equipment all the way to the end where they prepare
Speaker 1: the fur harvested for the market, and folks like Jake
Speaker 1: and Riley put a great and true face on what
Speaker 1: trapping is and the benefits of the practice. It's absolutely
Speaker 1: one of the best and closely regulated renewable resources on
Speaker 1: the planet that builds a stronger environment for all the
Speaker 1: nature when the populations you're held in check beaver's for instance,
Speaker 1: everyone knows that when a beaver sees a free flowing creek,
Speaker 1: his first thought is i' muna stop this nonsense immediately.
Speaker 1: In doing so, he creates a wetland habitat that benefits
Speaker 1: dozens of species of insects and wildlife, all of which
Speaker 1: coexists and depend on the other for survival. But if
Speaker 1: they're left to dominate the space, they eventually going to
Speaker 1: do more harm than good. When the number are held
Speaker 1: in checks, say by trapping, that's called wildlife management, And
Speaker 1: all you listening probably already know that it's a simple
Speaker 1: concept that works, and it's based on nothing other than science,
Speaker 1: simple science at that Also, it's fun. I love the trap.
Speaker 1: Historically there's always been a conflict among coon hunters and trappers,
Speaker 1: and where I grew up there was no shortage of either.
Speaker 1: The dog hunter's main argument was they didn't want to
Speaker 1: get one of their dogs hung up in a trap.
Speaker 1: I agree, I don't want to have to go get
Speaker 1: old whaling. I don't want either. But with the invention
Speaker 1: of the dog proof trap, that has become a non issue.
Speaker 1: A coon has to reach inside and manipulate the mechanism
Speaker 1: that springs the trap in A dog's foot just won't
Speaker 1: fit in there, as opposed to stepping on a pressure
Speaker 1: plate that releases the jaws on a standard foot old trap.
Speaker 1: It was pattented in nineteen eighty four and is an
Speaker 1: excellent method of targeting that's predators like coons, skunks, possums
Speaker 1: and not. This trap allows hound hunters and trappers to
Speaker 1: coexist at the same time on public ground where both allegal.
Speaker 1: Now they used to be a recipe for a fistfight.
Speaker 1: I've had traps sprung, hung in trees and just outright
Speaker 1: stolen by folks who didn't want to share the space,
Speaker 1: and it could be they just didn't like the idea
Speaker 1: of trapping. However, during that time that I'm referencing, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of anti anything associated with hunting and fishing,
Speaker 1: and if there was no one said it out loud. Now,
Speaker 1: in reality, it may not have been such a disagreement
Speaker 1: over trapping versus coon hunting as it was the battle
Speaker 1: over the hides themselves. The fur prices were still good then,
Speaker 1: and finding a dead coon a beaver or especially a
Speaker 1: fox or an otter on the road was like hitting
Speaker 1: the lottery. They normally got scooped up like a hot
Speaker 1: grounder to the shortstop and taken home. Some of them
Speaker 1: might still be kicking, and maybe a good vet could
Speaker 1: have saved them. But a twenty dollars coon laying on
Speaker 1: the side of the road nineteen, which was what the
Speaker 1: average coons were back then, is like seventy six dollars today,
Speaker 1: which is almost a tank of gas for your lawnmower.
Speaker 1: So why do people continue to do it? Why go
Speaker 1: to the trouble of such a labor intensive investment of
Speaker 1: sweat equity in the fur market that crashed thirty seven
Speaker 1: years ago and shows no signs of ever coming back.
Speaker 1: That's your answer. That's the why. Because it is going
Speaker 1: away and it doesn't deserve the maligned face that anti
Speaker 1: trapping community has placed on it. The benefits of harvest
Speaker 1: and animals by trapping for fur and food far out
Speaker 1: weigh any argument to be made against it in the
Speaker 1: management space alone. Want more ducks, limit the nest predators
Speaker 1: on the landscape. Want more quail, turkeys and any other
Speaker 1: ground nesting bird. You guessed it put a thin in
Speaker 1: on the stuff that eats them. It's just that simple.
Speaker 1: My friend and coon hunting partner, Michael Roseman, has said
Speaker 1: a hundred times that coon hunters as a whole, that's
Speaker 1: hunters who chase coons with a dog no less about
Speaker 1: the animals they chase than any other group of hunters
Speaker 1: out there. And I one hundred percent agree with him.
Speaker 1: We depend on the dog to do all the work.
Speaker 1: The old hay that ain't my job phrase may have
Speaker 1: been coined by a hound hunter who was just sitting
Speaker 1: around waiting for the dog to bark. The ones who
Speaker 1: have taken the time to educate themselves and study what
Speaker 1: they do and when they do it have always been
Speaker 1: more successful. And I learned more in one season of
Speaker 1: trapping coons than I ever have from hunting them with
Speaker 1: a dog. Not only was I learning about coons, but
Speaker 1: I was also learning about every other critter that roamed
Speaker 1: the same woods that the coons did, not by catching them,
Speaker 1: but by looking for coon tracks and being curious about
Speaker 1: what all those other tracks were. And I asked questions,
Speaker 1: and I read books, but mainly I paid attention to
Speaker 1: him who already knew some things. He wouldn't tell me.
Speaker 1: I had to find those out on my own, which
Speaker 1: is the best way. Anyone, regardless of their age, learns
Speaker 1: the quickest when they take on a new task. The
Speaker 1: anticipation of finding coons in my traps would keep me
Speaker 1: awake at night and getting up before the alarm went off.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I ran my trap line before I
Speaker 1: caught breakfast over the school bus. I was creeping out
Speaker 1: of the house with a flashlight before daylight to go
Speaker 1: check my traps. And every empty trap was a lesson
Speaker 1: in observation and application, and I took mental notes of
Speaker 1: what worked and what didn't. I came up with a
Speaker 1: list of dues and dons for each set, and I
Speaker 1: made that was successful or not. There's just as many
Speaker 1: lessons in failure as there is in success, if you
Speaker 1: can accept it quickly and get past the fact of
Speaker 1: what you did it just didn't work. I'd called Tim's
Speaker 1: house before bedtime and asked him either fur wood started night,
Speaker 1: which what I was asking was if he thought the
Speaker 1: animals will be moving. He'd give me his prediction. Most
Speaker 1: times he was right. I don't remember a time when
Speaker 1: he didn't catch more than me. But I learned what
Speaker 1: to look for and helps me to this day when
Speaker 1: trying to estimate on whether Whalen and I are going
Speaker 1: to have a bunch of action or if we're going
Speaker 1: to struggle to put a coon up a tree because
Speaker 1: of the conditions, the time we're going and where we're going,
Speaker 1: and everything else that goes along with it. I learned
Speaker 1: a lot of that initially from trapping. It's a great
Speaker 1: way to introduce young folks to the outdoors and they'll
Speaker 1: put them on the fast track to learn about everything
Speaker 1: that lives on the landscape where you're doing it. There's
Speaker 1: another way to learn the principles of trapping if you
Speaker 1: don't have your own personal uncle Bob or older brother
Speaker 1: Tim like I did, and that's to take a look
Speaker 1: at my friends Stu Miller's at Coon Creek Outdoors YouTube
Speaker 1: and social media pages. He has got a ton of
Speaker 1: how to videos on his page with some great lessons
Speaker 1: he's already learned that he shared him with everyone. Highly recommended.
Speaker 1: He can snatch catfish up out of the water too.
Speaker 1: I sampled some of that last weekend at the World
Speaker 1: Championship Squirrel Cookoff. I know who eats fish at a
Speaker 1: squirrel cooking well, I eat fish every chance again, and
Speaker 1: I ate a lot of squirrels too, and I try
Speaker 1: not to miss an opportunity to eat eat it one
Speaker 1: of them. REEVEA. Hanson, the Pride of Autubon, Iowa and
Speaker 1: requisite engineer of all things this country Life, is going
Speaker 1: to put a link to Stud's videos in the podcast
Speaker 1: description that you'll see on whatever platform you listen to
Speaker 1: us on. Just click and watch Meat Eaters Radio Live
Speaker 1: shows up and running every Thursday at eleven am Mountain time.
Speaker 1: And I just hosted the last two episodes of those
Speaker 1: and you can see them on the met Eater podcast
Speaker 1: Network channel on YouTube if you missed the live version.
Speaker 1: We had a great time at the World Championship Cookoff
Speaker 1: last weekend in Springdale, Arkansas. There's also lots of bear
Speaker 1: grease hats in this country live shirts and talk with
Speaker 1: so many folks that support me and oklay Bow. It's
Speaker 1: always such a blessing to be able to just stand
Speaker 1: around and visit with old friends and make new ones.
Speaker 1: What a day that's gonna do it for me. So
Speaker 1: until next week, this is Brent Breeves signing off. I'll
Speaker 1: be careful