True stories from the trap line.

[Humptulips]

Cat  Scratch Fever is a viral infection carried by cats. I had a dead bobcat in a trap that had peed on its feet when it died. When I was taking it out of the trap one of its claws scratched my index finger.
About a week went by with no effect. The scratch had completely healed so you know it was pretty small. Then my finger swelled up tight. Then my hand and kept working it's way up my arm. Then I had pleuracy which is an infection of the lining of your lungs. became very painful to breath. This is when I went to the hospital.
After an exam and a few tests the DR. asked me if I had been scratched by a cat. Yes and what can you do for it I asked. He said not a damn thing except treat the symptons. Antibiotics don't work on viral infections. He told me it comes in three phases so you will get better and then sick again, better and then sick again.
He was right. The second phase was a very high fever, bad nausea and dehydration.
Third phase was headache. I'm talking the headache from hell. Treated that with some pills that would choke a horse.
Hand stayed swelled tight the entire time.
It took about 6 weeks to run its course but I'm immune now that I've had it.
Kind of think I lost money on that cat.

[Humptulips]

Nobody else? I guess I'll have to tell another one.

This has to go down as the most unusual catch I ever made. I dare say hard for anyone to beat.
This happened about 20 years ago. I was trapping a place along the river, good beaver and otter spot that I trapped every year. It was about a mile walk in on an old logging road that was washed out. I had several sets at the river but I liked to get in a land set along the way so I had something to look at while walking in. There was a pretty big clearing along the road where there had been a big landing. It was all grass except for an alder growing in the middle. This alder grew like some alders do when growing alone. Limbs clear to the ground and the trunk forked and forked again 'till it looked like a giant bush.
It was this place I decided to make a coyote set. Not sure if I remember the particulars of why I had what I had but the ground was as hard as flint and impossible to drive a stake in. I believe I made some kind of flat set or mound set and managed to dig out enough to bed a #3 LS. I had no drag but I did have in my basket a few snares so I hooked a couple together and attached to the alder tree. Ended up with 12' or 15' from tree to trap.
I come down the trail to check traps and here is a coyote hanging in the tree.  The coyote when caught climbed the tree. Now that right there is strange but what was stranger was the result.
The coyote  climbed pretty high up and jumped out, snare cable over a limb. It worked great for the coyote because when things came tight he pulled right out of the trap. Back foot catch I might add. That though is where the coyotes luck ran out. As he fell towards the ground he went right into a crotch and he wedged right up against his hips. There he was hanging in the crotch with his front feet barely able to touch the ground. He only managed to give the ground a good sweeping. Trap was hanging in the tree just above.

[Turner89]

That's a good one there, Humptulips. Great stories, hope you guys have some more.

[Turner89]

Here's one.    Me, and my friend had a little muskrat trap line on kellog lake back in high school. We would row around the lake checking Our traps, taking turns pretending one of us was Jim Bridger, or Jeremiah johnson, and the other, a news paper reporter from Seattle.
 One day we were having pretty good luck ( by our standards). We had 2 rats in our first 2 traps, and on our way to the third. We could see that there was something in our trap, that hadn't jumped in the lake to drown. First thought it was another rat, but when we got there, we found a a small red devil. We had a mink, that wasn't going down without a fight. We had no gun, or club. Just the oars. That mink put up a major fight, but in the end the newspaper reporter (Darren that time) beat him down.
  After checking out the mink, and feeling pretty good about our success, we moved on to the next trap. At first look we thought we had another rat. The trap was gone. How we didn't see it is beyond me, but there was a small beaver in our trap alive that hadn't moved, and was sitting there blending with the brush. Freaked us out at first . So now, it's my turn to take on the beaver with the oar. This was a little longer battle, which ended finally, but not before I had broke our oar. It took us quite awhile to get back to our pickup pulling our way along the shore.
  I would do anything to be able to do that all over again. Wouldn't change a thing

[wolftrapper]

Okay, my brother and I were beaver snaring, found a HUGE house in a dammed up creek.  Thirty-some inches of ice.  We cut two holes, and each made a set, with three snares per set.  The water was very murky, and we checked those sets three or four times, without making a catch, even though there was signs of action.  Then one day, we pulled one set up, and had three beaver hanging....pulled up the other, and had three more!!  Never before, or since!  That was back in the late sixties, in Alaska, and as I remember it, we estimated that beaver lodge @ over twenty feet across the base.  We caught 60 beaver that winter, right after which I enter the U.S. Navy.  Four years later, I was back on the trapline.

[Machias]

Week from Hell that I nearly didn't survive.  When I was 18 and my first year in the Air Force I was stationed at Loring AFB in northern Maine.  The day before I had caught my first ever mink and was excited to check my set again.  it was a pocket set just above a small beaver dam.  Got there and had a HUGE skunk.  A moose had walked through and knocked part of the beaver dam down and my set was high and dry.  I was able to flip the skunk into the pool and drown him.  I lived in base housing so I skinned my skunks out in the woods.  I hung him from a tree and cut across from heel to heel and nicked a scent sac.  They were full as can be and squirted right into my eyes.  It burned something awful.  I spun around and ran towards the stream to wash my eyes out and promptly ran into a tree and nearly knocked myself out.  Broke my nose.  So I crawl over to the water and get my face under water and force my eyes open enough to wash them out a little bit.  I drive to the ER on Loring and I'm standing outside tapping on the window and the Med Tech is looking at me and motioning me in.  I'm motioning him to come to the door, he walks over and opens the door and is like what's up,     Holy crap and took a step back.  They had me in the room flushing my eyes out and these big metal fan blowing and the windows open.    Very next day I'm setting some muskrat traps and cutting a stake and like a moron turn the blade towards myself and nearly cut my left index finger off.  All the way to the bone, took 16 stitches.  Well the next day I was having a bit of trouble driving so I had a friend drive me to check sets.  I had two fox sets in a potato field.  Only thing is you had to cross some RR tracks, but there wasn't a road over them.  You just eased up to them and kind of bounced over them slowly.  Got to the sets and had my first ever double on red fox.  My buddy was so excited he hit the tracks doing about 10 mph.  The truck jump up so high and came down so hard it caught the frame of the truck and stopped us dead.  I wasn't wearing a seatbelt and launched my face through the windshield and knocked myself out!!! 

[Da stump]

Years ago when leg holds where legal i was trapping above Greenwater and caught a cougar. I could tell that i had something because the area was tore up a bit but had to step around a big stump to really see it.  I stepped around the stump holding my 22 with cc caps in it expecting a bobcat.  Instead a 98 lb cougar is crouched caught by 3 toes in a northwoods #3 coil, the chain fully pulled back away from me. It let out a low growl that had the hair on the back of my neck standing up.  I slowly backed out of the area and talked in a calm voice, at least i tried to keep it calm, lol.  Went back down to Greenwater and phoned the State patrol.  They contacted the game dept and Bruce Richards came out with a tranq gun. when we left town it was a convoy of about 5 vehicles.  When we got to the trap site there where a group of houndsman there debating what coarse of action they where going to take.  I really was thankful they played all above board because it could of been bad when all the police and game dept showed up.  Bruce Tranquilized the cougar and we got it out of the trap to discover that it had a collar on it that was half choking it. The batteries had long since been exhausted.  They where able to loosen the collar, give it a antibiotic shot and release it, the trap had done o damage.
Looking back on it i had made a mistake when i made the set.  Had grabbed a black bag out of the trapping freezer thinking it was a beaver carcass, instead it was scraps from a deer i had taken that year.  The deer scraps, hide legs etc drew it in since it was starving.  I was not cited but learned a lesson and glad that the cougar was given a new lease on life.

[Humptulips]

Cougars, what a pain in the rear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When you catch one you can count on at least a haf day shot dealing with it.
Best experience I had with one I was in OR and caught a female about 110 pounds. I did not have a catch pole with me to release it so I called ODF&W for some help. All there bios were busy so they put me in touch with Enforcement. In OR that is the State Police. A reall nice Trooper called me and we agreed to meet in the morning and go out to the cougar. I explained I didn't have anything to release it with and he said no problem.
So we get out to the cat, him following me. I ask him what he brought to turn it loose with. "He says you have a pistol, right?" I said yes. It was prett obvious as I had it in a hip holster. He said " Why don't you shoot it first and then we'll release it" So that's what we did.
I asked him about the chances of keeping it which I knew was against the law but nothing ventured nothing gained. He surprised by saying, "I don't see why not." I had to take it down to the bio in town and she was going to write me a permit to keep it. Permit was all written but while she was taking samples a phone call came from Corvallis and that was the end of me leaving with the cougar.
They said they were going to use it for training?
I always figured it got trained into a rug in someones den.