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Originally Posted by 7mmstwguy
That is an amazing video..thanks for sharing.
Yeah..I know pretty much what your asking..thats the thing about trapping..
"there are more than one way to skin a cat" and "You can't teach an old trapper new tricks"..lol
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Oh I don't know that I'd agree that you can't teach an old trapper new tricks. I hope that's not true.
But there definitely is more then one way to skin a cat, or flesh a Beaver.
I know a few trappers who can flesh a beaver on their knee in under ten minutes. Some say they can do it in as little as five minutes or less and they do it pretty much the same way I do. But I can't confirm that they are that fast. I only know they are a lot faster then I am.
I fellow I tutored nearly twenty years ago never learned to flesh on his knee, he uses a fleshing beam and a draw knife and he's as fast as anyone I know and does a beautiful job.
He's an interesting fellow. No sense of caution, gung ho plus, and now ten times the trapper I was. I taught him to snare wolves and within a year he had caught more then the total I had to my name when I gave up trapping. The man's a born trapper. I had to work at it. LOL
Speaking of old trappers. My dad trapped until he was in his eighties. He helped to develop techniques for conibear traps when they hit the market and that was after his sixtieth birthday. He was one old trapper who not only learned new tricks but actually helped to develop them.
I'm only a couple of years past sixty so there is still hope for me. If my health would allow it, I would still be out there tramping through the bush looking for tracks and making sets.
There is no life like it. Some love it, some hate it. Either way, no one who has done it can ever deny that it is the closest to nature that a man can get. A trapper is part of the environment, living off his wits much like the animals around him. We leave less of a footprint on the land then any other outdoor user except perhaps some hunters, and we have less of a negative impact then any other.
The tree huggers can never understand that. They think that living in a city and protesting hunting and trapping does the least harm. In fact it does more by a wide margin.
It takes a lot of wild land turned into farms and residential properties to support that one city dweller. It takes trees and oil and thousands of gallons of water to support that city dweller.
A trapper needs only a small garden and a rifle, axe and some clothing to survive and even prosper. Many of us live on wild meat and wild fruit. We burn wood from fallen trees, we carry water in a bucket and build our homes from the trees around us.
We have no need for the latest fashions or big smoke belching cars. We have no need for lawn chemicals or high priced perfumes. We don't run to the doctor every time we scratch off a bit of skin and we don't pop pills like they are candy much less flush outdated pharmaceuticals down the drain.
These days it is nearly impossible to live off the land the way we once did, even so, trappers, even those who live most of the year in a city, while they are trapping, still leave less of a footprint on the land then any other person.
Yes we kill animals for our income. How is that any worse then flattening a dozen animals a day on the freeway? How is that any worse then starving many animals to death by turning their environment into cropland or industrial developments?
The big difference between a trapper and an tree hugger is that we know that we kill animals and we strive to do so as humanly as possible.
The tree hugger has no concept of his impact on the world around him.
He thinks he has no effect and feels self righteous because of that.
But in truth, he causes the death of many more animals then the trapper does. He just doesn't see it. He doesn't see the injuries they suffer from overcrowding and fights for territory caused by being displaced by human development. He doesn't see the starvation and disease cause by destruction of wild environments for human use.
Worst of all, because he does not see how he impact wild creatures, he can not believe that he is anything other then the savior of wild things.
The rightful lord over lowly trappers.
There is an old old saying, "there are none so blind as those who will not see".