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I know that people have to make a living, and I support hunting when it’s done humanely, but I just can’t condone trapping. Not with snares and not with leghold traps.
I do for a very simple reason:
In the 1970′s, my grandfather was able to finance his union activities (including a long strike) through fox fur trapping.
I’d rather people use furs (I do wear fur) than petroleum-based synthetics.
At one time, trapping was a very important subsidy for rural communities all over North America. When the hippies destroyed the fur market in the West, it was just another nail in the coffin for rural America.
Nature is much crueler than any trap, and yes, you can train dogs to stay out of all those but conibears.
I’m sure you’re aware that your state puts out a video that shows you how to trap and snare coyotes.
I didn’t see any LGD’s associated w/ either of the farmers interviewed. They’re really missing a bet.
The thing is who will be the watch-dogs of the forests when almost everyone has moved to the city? Hunters rarely venture further than a few hours outside of their home-town. Sure, regulations can be put into place so corporations don’t destroy the environment; however politicians always follow the green-paper trail. So, we need trappers to act as a whistle-blower.
Also, if there are no trappers, then biologists loses a venue where they could obtain their precious data (ie. population count, population density et cetera). I understand the emotions behind leg-hold traps and snares, but these emotion-based logic is purely human-invented. They have very little to do with reality.
Just think of how many great naturalists and biologists started out trapping.
L. David Mech, the world’s leading wolf expert (with whom I have some disagreements) is one of them, and he still traps mink in Minnesota. He got his start trapping black bears for field research.
All the reintroduced wolves descend from ancestors who were caught with foothold traps, as are all the otters swimming in West Virginia’s rivers right now. You can’t catch a wolf with a box trap!
I don’t really have a problem with people wearing fur. I’ve worn fur myself & I wear leather & eat meat; it would be kind of hypocritical of me to damn people for wearing fur. I just don’t like the idea of animals dying slow agonizing deaths if there’s a more humane alternative. I think of all the animals who lose all or part of a foot or feet in traps. I realize that nature is indifferent to suffering & life can be cruel, and I’m sure that there are many trappers who are conscientious about regularly checking their traps & who try to ensure that the animals don’t suffer unnecessarily, but I’ve known way too many who aren’t.
My own dad used to trap small furbearers back in the 60s when the bottom was out of the coal market and there just wasn’t any work here. He caught possums, skunks, and muskrats in box traps and foxes with steel traps. (He caught a great horned owl once in a fox trap. He was able to release it alive.) He made money to keep gas in the car and food on the table for a couple of winters when I was about 6 or 7 years old, mainly by trapping. I’ll never forget him turning a fresh winter fox skin inside-out & having me put my hands into the soft fur. But I never grew to accept trapping and I was so glad when he stopped. (Just as with everything else here in the 60s, there wasn’t any money in it. We moved to Michigan, where he began working as a sheetrock hanger, an occupation that he would have until he developed cancer and retired at 71.)
I am aware that trappers do contribute to the economy and ecology of many areas, and maybe my antipathy to trapping is based on emotion and empathy rather than cold hard logic. But it is what it is. I’m not an extremist calling for a ban on trapping, and I don’t think trappers are evil people out to deliberately torture animals, but I’ll never be able to bring myself to think of trapping as humane.
I think you hit on it K. Sometimes these issues affect us at a gut level (remember our lengthy exchange about shooting polar bears), but we mustn’t let these negative feelings influence our reasoned decisions. Way too many people follow their guts w/o first engaging their intellects.
Then let ban hunting because many people gut-shoot deer and moose; and more use under-powered rifles and calibres.
Dave,
Note that I said I am not advocating for a ban on trapping nor labeling all trappers evil. Nor am I condemning the lifestyle. I just wish there was some way to lessen the time that the animal is trapped, and the risk crippling but not killing, trapping non-target species, etc. For most animals, being held fast against their will is the ultimate in terror. If death by trap could be made instantaneous or nearly so, I don’t think it would bother me nearly as much. As massugu pointed out, it’s a gut reaction over which I have very little control.
I agree, way too many people are out there blazing away indiscriminately with firearms and bows, too, and its disgusting when someone shoots & mortally injures an animal and then just leaves it to die. But I wouldn’t want to see hunting banned, either.
I bet that there is a way to set up a trap with an electronic sensor that signals that it’s been tripped. The problem is that in order to develop and provide such a trap, it would have to be actually accepted to do such trapping in the first place.