Slower Than Molasses In.................November

     As I woke up this morning from a 12 hour coma, feeling like I was moving slower than the molasses that Aaron had poured on a log yesterday. I asked myself, "is it worth it?" When I stepped outside and the moisture in my nose instantly froze to my nose hair I wondered again, "is it worth it?" And, when I tried to put my hands into supposedly waterproof gloves that had frozen solid in the truck overnight, I asked myself once more "is it really worth it?" Fighting the urge to return to my warm blanket filled den, I convinced my self to go meet Aaron, reluctantly of course.

     During the drive to the Brown residence, I began to change my mood. The sun was shining, there was a nice coating of frost on everything; just a very nice winter morning. After meeting Aaron, we headed over to Farmer Frank's place to check our muskrat traps and a few raccoon traps. We managed to get one muskrat in Frank's pond. A respectably sized one, in a 110 conibear placed in front of a den entrance. We pulled all of the other 'rat traps (on account of us both leaving for the week) and made our way down to Frank's section of the creek. Guess what was down there...nothing!  We then checked our other four raccoon traps and found...nothing. But hey, I guess that's why they call it trapping and not catching. So, our total catch for the day was one lonely muskrat. A very slow day in any trapper's book, but if you ask me it was a great morning, and I am willing to bet that Aaron would feel the same way. We might not be the best trappers and bring home critters by the hundreds, but we always bring SOMETHING home.

                                          The catch of the day

     Days like today are a great time to repair your equipment, or build some new supplies such as snares, stakes, drowner rigs, and other things of that nature. A few days ago we spent some time in Aaron's shop welding stakes out of rebar, and constructing some snares. It might be much less a hassle to buy items such as these, but that just isn't our style. I think these snares will work quite well, and they only cost about $6 per dozen to make. The stakes ring in at about $13 per dozen. Which is significantly less than buying them pre made. Most of the materials from the snares can be re-used. 

                                          A dozen snares, shiny and new. We need to do something about that. 

     Sure the snares look good to us, but they stand out like a sore thumb in the woods. Now what I could do is buy some trap dye, and treat them properly, but where is the fun in that? Instead I took a dozen or so rotten disgusting black walnuts, a few handfulls of grass, and a scoop of good old fashioned dirt and gave the snares a nice hot bath in them for about an hour. And, they came out looking great. The cable is supposed to be stainless steel, but they look pretty stained to me.

                                          They are brown, ugly, and they smell like dirt. Just how we like them.