It’s easy to become complacent between trapping seasons, taking a well-deserved breather and assuring yourself you have plenty of time to prepare for the next season. But don’t let it sneak up on you. Here are three crucial things every trapper should be doing in the off-season to prepare for the following year. Fix tear-ups
Being a hunter is about accepting certain realities. The fact is, we set out into the fields, forests, and mountains to take the life of an animal, plain and simple. We do this not out of some perverse bloodlust, but rather because we choose a lifestyle that keeps us connected with the land. We choose
I remember the first western hunt I went on. I was black bear hunting at about 7,000 ft. in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho. Not exactly a high-altitude hunt. But I’m a flatlander from Minnesota who hadn’t been to the mountains in years. Having spent a lot of time adventuring in the mountains growing up,
Trapping in my home state of Colorado looks a bit different than it does in many other states. Body grips, leg holds, and snares were outlawed back in 1996, so trappers are confined to using exclusively cage traps. Having been born in the year they were prohibited, I’ve personally never used leg holds or snares,
My dad’s little Winchester Model 94 Trapper always struck me as a petite, perhaps slightly anemic rifle. The short-barreled lever-action is lightweight and chambered to the gentle-shooting .30-30 Winchester. I’d shot plenty of .30-30s before. This little guy shouldn’t be any different, I thought, tucking it into my shoulder at the range. Then, someone punched
Written by Bernd Debusmann, this article was originally published by Free Range American on January 27, 2021. It’s a sunny, abnormally warm early evening in October, and Taylor Chamberlin is about 20 feet off the ground. Looking down from his tree stand through the dense canopy, he sees his target: a whitetail cruising for acorns. Chamberlin draws his bow and lets
