Upland and Downstream: Muskrats, coons, and unlikely conservationists

This is the very first blog of Upland and Downstream. I suppose that if you read about who we are you kind of have an understanding of what we do and who we are. So, with that let's just jump right into this blogging thing.

Pat and I have been setting a few traps over the past few days. It's a good time to get out in the woods, and sort of take inventory of the woods in late fall/early winter. The stark contrast of spring warmth and rejuvenation and winter's bleak sort of "nothingness" is an interest of ours.

Most folks, I suspect, don't exactly appreciate the coldness of a wintry evening. Rightly so. It's cold. It's windy. It's rainy. It's cold and windy. It's cold, rainy, and windy all at once. This means that wildlife is on the move searching for shelter and food.

However, it's a great time to be in the woods. Yesterday's temperatures were in the 50s, today it's in the upper 20s. Pat and I saw tree sparrows migrating, dark-eyed juncos, various woodpeckers, song sparrows, and a few other species while in the swamp yesterday looking for life in the dry swamp (we had a really dry summer here in Ohio this year). We saw signs of life everywhere. The animals all seem to know that the cold is near. Deer have been moving a lot recently as well.

We have been setting traps the past few days as I mentioned earlier. We're not "meat hunters" if you will, hoping to subsidize our lives by the sale of pelts, nor do we get a sick thrill out of killing mass amounts of furbearers. Sure, we do make some money from muskrats, minks, and coons. And I must admit, it is exciting to see a trap set work out to our advantage, though that means the life of an animal. We respect the animals we trap. In fact, some of the reasons we trap is to maintain the population of raccoons, for example. These coons prey on the eggs and young ducks in the dozen or so wood duck boxes we built and maintain. Not all coons will be trapped, nor do we want to trap all of them. If we were to trap all coons, what would we have to trap next season?
Hunters, trappers, and fishermen are often unlikely conservationists in the eyes of some. I guess this is sort of the type of stark contrast that we've come to have an affinity for.

p.s.
A thanks to farmer Frank (another unlikely conservationist) for letting us trap on his property.