Evan Crosby Family Trapping - January 2025

All Days on the trapline are fun. Recently my son Lane and I had a day that will be one to remember for years. At the first stop we had a raccoon that got into a muskrat set. I had the trap wired to a log thrown up on the bank of the creek. Well the raccoon decided to go for a swim instead of getting tangled up in the brush. He was able to drag the stick to deeper water then decided to climb up on an overhanging limb. Needless to say, the cable was a tangled mess. Lane had to go put his waders on and cut the cable to begin untangling the mess. He was nearly belly deep in the freezing cold water.

At the next stop we had a blind set where a trail running down the saddle intersected a well used crossover. This spot was successful on beavers and otters last year. With the cold weather the water was iced over on both sides. Coyote tracks were all over the ice. Well the blind set held a nice male coyote. Its toes were still pressing on the pan of the MB 550. The polyfill hadn't even been able to make it out from under the pan, I asked Lane if he wanted to shoot the coyote. He said I could shoot it, this will be important later. I always feel a little tricksy catching coyotes in blind sets but this location wasn't intended for them. If it was I would have used a drag. Being that the trap was anchored in place the blind set was completely torn up. 6 foot circle of churned up dirt. I remade the set as a baited flat set and will set the crossover blind once the ice melts.

Turning from the blind set towards where the creek leads to the sloughs we have some conibears and some otter toilet sets on the land near a beaver den. I could see that we had a pretty big otter in one of the toilet sets. As we get close to the otter Lane askes if he can shoot it. Backing up a few days as we were checking traps, there was an armadillo digging in the hay field. Most landowners want the armadillos gone. Lane asks to shoot the armadillo. I give him my 22 pistol and he lines up the shot. First shot misses and sets the armadillo to running left to right. Lane fires a couple more times with the armadillo moving a bit faster each time. On the fourth shot he hits and kills the armadillo. I laugh and tell him he must be kin to Wyatt Earp.

Back to the otter. I hand Lane my 22 pistol and as you can imagine a trapped otter is not a kindly animal. He is trying to line up a shot and I notice that the otter is caught by only one toe in the MB550 offset. I tell him to hurry up because I don't want either one of us needing rabies shots because he didn't shoot fast enough. No sooner than I said that the otter pulls out and is running right towards us. I grab Lane and start hopping, running, trying to fly to the right away from the water. I nearly trip over the remake bucket. As we are moving the otter steers to its right towards the water. The beaver den is right to our left and pretty high above the deep water. Behind us it gets pretty shallow where it feeds the sloughs. As all this moving (and praying) are going on Lane shoots one time. I run my hand down his arm and take the pistol back and scoot over to the creek to try to maybe get the otter taking a breath. It stirred up the mud in the shallow water heading upstream towards the front of the beaver den. As I'm looking I see the weirdest sight. A small trail of bubbles coming straight up from an otter tail! The otter is dead head down in the deep water tail just a few inches under the water. I stand there watching thinking its going to move any minute and I need to be ready to shoot if it nears the surface. After a minute I'm convinced its dead. Its too deep even for waders. I tell Lane to go back to the truck and get the Trappers Pole. He slides into the water as far as he can get in his waders and drops the loop of the Trappers Pole over the top 2 inches of the otters tail and cinch up real tight. It worked! We were able to lift the otter out of the tangle of beaver chewed stick and get it on the bank. We laugh and high five each other. Looking at the otter, the bullet went in just behind the shoulder with a heart lung shot like you would give a deer. I tell Lane he really is like Wyatt Earp. He says I guess I'm going to have to figure out who that is if you are going to keep calling me that. LOL. I guess we are going to have to watch the movie Tombstone this weekend. Needless to say I will be looking at how well the animals are trapped before I give him the pistol again for a while.

It really was a great day on the trapline. The eagles were roosting and calling to each other on the cliffs and we had 3 different catches and some great memories. In closing, take a kid outdoors. They are our future and it will mean the world to them.

Thanks
Evan Crosby