I ran a short line over New Years....I decided to mainly gang set the homeplace instead of running all over the place. I was very happy to find a double on reds in the front yard on the morning of New Year's Eve.






That's a #2 trap on his foot. He stretched to 34" on a fox board:


The mornings catch off the farm:



Some fur from a couple weeks ago on the stretchers:



Pulled my traps and I may be done for the year. Guess I've becom a holiday trapper Had a great time, learned a lot, had some interesting experiences. Like getting stuck on an electric fence in the dark (just thought it was barb wire until I started getting buzzed ), or having to release a couple of pit bulls (not at the same time thankfully).

Nice job, nice double on the reds. A lot of doubles this time of year as they start to pair up for mating season. Of the 5 we caught last weekend 4 were on doubles. And we also caught a monster possum like that one, weighed 14 lbs and swallowed a possum stretcher so I tacked him up on a coon board. I wanna say it went 33 inches as well. Turkey egg eatin fools!

That one red from the farm with no white on it, is that because it's young?

Barry I don't think it was young, just the color of it....

Gotta love cleaning up the possums! I didn't catch any this year until my last couple of checks and I picked up 3 off my farm, all jumbo sized. My rule of thumb is if I think it will bring a buck at auction, I put it up. If not, at least it's one less egg eater. I've had a few go for $6-7. Those don't hurt the fur check! That big one in the pic, he was shedding before I skinned him. If the hair pulls when he comes of the board then I guess it was just a big waste of time! Normally doesn't take more than a minute or so to skin a possum, but he skinned like a coyote....lots of fat though I don't know what the deal was.

Here's another pic from the season. This beaver moved into our pond last spring. I let him stay through the summer and fall which was a mistake...took out a lot of trees. Must have had a mate because I also caught a kit. Don't know if there's more now but have not seen any fresh sign since I caught him about a month ago. Anyway I caught him at a castor mound but he came from the bank side when he got caught and then pulled back up the bank enough to get caught up instead of down the drowner, and got out. He would no longer work castor sets. I cleared the 12"overflow....came back a week later and he had plugged it. He had built a platform of mud and branchs so he could reach the pipe and plugged it. I cleared it again and bedded the trap on a drowner on that platform for a back foot catch. It worked, but either the branch he was carrying or one from the platform got tangled in the drowner chain and he did not go to the bottom. However he was down far enough to drown. This is what I saw when I checked in the morning.




Don't know if there is more there I guess spring will tell. When I checked last summer, there had been a whole colony where the outlet from our pond goes into the river a mile away. The drainage from the pond is just a trickle and doesn't hold beaver. When I went back to trap the river all signs of the colony were gone....no fresh chews or sticks. I picked up a couple of small ones there, don't know if they were stragglers, just moving through or what. Guess I haven't got the beavers figured out yet.

Nice Catch. Surprised you are getting so much for the opossum's. What are you getting for the fox now?

Vic

We've gotten as much as $5.50 for a few jumbo possums in recent years, but then again some only brought 20 cents, yes cents! We always get a few in our fox sets, figure every dead possum saves countless ground nesting bird eggs.

Vic I'll let you know how the prices go....I sent my stuff off the other day, hopefully it makes it up there in time to get lotted for the auction next month.

Good luck neill, only thing we have left at NAFA is one coon, left over from last may's sale. Our pick-up agent comes within a few miles of my house in march so we always get in the late spring sale. I caught a real nice 32 inch boar coon yesterday out of the 6 traps i had out. Let me know how you make out in the feb. sale, assuming you're talking about the feb. NAFA sale anyhow. 47 rats, 23 coon, 15 reds, 1 gray, 1 yote, 1 beaver, 1 possum and counting....