After a 20 years vacation from the trapping scene this year my oldest son saw a pile of traps that I inherited from my grandpa when he died.I remember trapping with him and dad when I was younger and when the boy asked if we could go I said yes.My dads got liver cancer and he is currently in remission but you never know from month to month or year to year if he will be alive for one more season.I wanted mky son to have the memories of trapping with his grandpa that I had so it was a no brainer for me.

We got a real late start, the weather sucked and dad couldnt do a lotta the things he used to, it mostly consisted of me and my son setting trap lines out and him and dad doing the checking, then I started getting a little more into it and I was also running a seperate line all the way to work and back about 2 hrs round trip.

Things were slow coon werent moving much but we got a few, my son got his first coon in a set he made.We found a creek full of muskrats and after freeze up dad and my son went out and trapped a few rat houses so we got a few dozen of them.Then I became kinda obsessed with catching a mink so started concentrating on that, wound up with four of them so far.

My biggest challenge came when I decided to try coyotes out.It was the end of November and the ground was freezing and thawing, it was raining and snowing then melting and freezing at a rapid pace, seemed like every day my traps were frozen or exposed.I had yotes dig traps up, footprints on the pans of frozen traps, lots of refusals and a few snapped traps.It became personal but was almost comical to watch, I was at the point where it was either laugh at myself or give up alltogether.I was having fun so I just changed things up a little and started reading up on snares.

I ordered a dozen a few weeks ago and got a few out, work was eating my free time up and I dropped my trap line down to 4 snares, one hay set and a few mink sets.Went out last friday to check my snares, it crappy out, winter storm had come in and it was a 1/4 mile walk into my last set I had to check.Theres a deer gut pile out on a driveway going across a creek and one trail going through the drive, I had snares out about 30 yrds away from the gutpile and trheyd been in place for two weeks without even a coyote track on the trail.I was actually going to pull them when I went out the next morning but had to check them anyway.

The first snare was empty, I could see across the creek and the swivel on the other snare was still in the opening in the willow patch, I turned to walk away but something didt look right and I looked back.I couldnt see the loop so I walked over to it.Hidden from view behind a clump of willows was a very dead female coyote, she had tangled up in the willows and gotten hung on the backside of them.I was excited to say the least and have now caught everthing I set out to catch this year finally.

Next year Ill be ready for the opener, Ive already requested the first week off and am going to buy some more traps and snares to run along with the right things to make coyote sets since I pretty much improvised everything this year.