Jim’s nephew Simon, is 17. He trapped for three consecutive years with Grandpa Jim. Simon had bought a set of used traps and he invited his Grandpa Jim to go field trapping with him. Grandpa Jim was a life-long hunter, but he only had trapped with water sets as a ten-year-old. Field trapping requires different traps and different methods than water trapping. Simon set traps for coyotes, foxes, bobcats, raccoons, minks, and muskrats. However, in the first year, they trapped skunks, owls, cats, and other animals they didn’t want. Simon has skunk stories to tell!The first raccoon they caught was a forty-pound male on a dairy farm. Simon describes skinning the raccoon for its fur. They kept the fur, as it was Simon’s first. Simon’s first ‘money catch’ was a forty-pound coyote. Simon took it to a fur dealer, and it was the only one brought in that was caught in a leg-hold trap, instead of being shot with a rifle.

 

Simon and Grandpa Jim tell about checking traps day and night, rain or shine, snow or ice, and how they humbly sought help from a successful trapper as they progressed from being inexperienced and unsuccessful to being skilled and sometimes successful. As Simon learned, perseverance and patience are essential. You can do everything perfectly but you may have to come back to the trap for three days before seeing results. Field trapping involves enticing a specific species of animal to step on a two-inch circle of steel in the middle of a wilderness. Grandpa Jim especially loved watching the sunrise with his grandson, Simon, as they checked the traps each day before school.

 

Jim concludes that trapping was an ideal way to teach humility, perseverance, and patience — definite marks of a man that will help Simon throughout his adult life.

 

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