Lessons From The Trapline

Henry Spann with his first trapped bobcat.

I have written to GON before about my experiences with the Georgia Trappers Association (GTA), particularly in regards to the annual Convention and Youth Field Trials (both of which are not only free and fun, but will teach you more about trapping than years spent watching YouTube videos), but today I wanted to talk about the experiences my son and I had this past season as amateur trappers once the GTA official events were over. 

Each Christmas vacation for the past three years, I have loaded up my pick-up truck and made the trek from my home in Pickens County to Swainsboro for the GTA Youth Field Trials. After a few days of setting traps, checking traps, skinning critters and hours of conversations with men who have forgotten more about the outdoors than I will ever know (special shoutout to Mr. Mike Wilson, Josh Hall and Brad Gill), we would come home and get back to working our own traplines. 

The kids would have fun getting up early and running the line for a few days, and they would put in a couple new traps of their own, but eventually their enthusiasm would wane, and they would lose interest until we went back the next year. That is to say all except my 12-year-old son, Henry. He continues to ask, and by ask I mean harass, me daily to get new traps in the ground, explore new areas for sign, try out new lures, baits and traps. As I write this, it is 95 degrees outside, with humidity also in the high 90s, and the only way I’ve been able to  justify to him why we’re not setting up a few more footholds for yotes is by writing this article. 

This past winter, his passion and tenacity paid off big time, and he had his best season in the trapping woods thus far. He has long insisted he was too old to just help me with my traps and that he should set his own. I’ve obliged and watched from my F-150 as he set a half-mile trapline up our gravel road and down the adjoining web of dirt roads. He’s set everything from DP’s to leg holds and tried every setup imaginable from the classic dirt hole to flat sets to compass sets. He’s used fox urine, every bait and lure in my bag and even snipe and bobwhite carcasses to try to get those clever critters to come in to put their foot on a pan. We’ve argued over tracks (is it a world-record coyote or the neighbor’s yellow lab?), given pep-talks to ground anchors that didn’t understand how they were supposed to work in red clay and burned through our supply trap ID tags in record time. I have had the joy of being by his side not as a mentor giving commands and advice, but as a partner, slowly realizing that his ideas and strategies are often superior to my own. 

I have watched my son growing up and slowly changing from a boy into a young man in many facets of life, but I think it has been most clearly demonstrated through his love of the outdoors in general, and trapping in particular. It is no longer an activity I am engaged alone in and bringing him along to be a good dad, knowing it’ll take twice as long and be three times as frustrating. It is now an activity that I wouldn’t want to do without him, and one I rely on him to help me accomplish. 

All in all, this season involved many firsts for my son. Those firsts included: first compass set catch, first gray fox, first time doubling up on coyotes, first time catching our dog (he’s laying at my feet right now, completely fine by the way) and many others. However, I think if you were to ask him, he would tell you that his favorite first the past season happened early one morning in January.

He had a late night the evening before and I woke up early and decided to have my coffee in the truck, run my black lab, and thought I might as well check the trapline. I was taking my time driving the backroads of the property we share with some friends, occasionally trouncing in my rubber boots through some thicker stuff down a deer trail to shine a light on a set too deep in the woods to see from the road. 

I was almost done for the morning having only caught a possum and already wondering if we had enough eggs left to fill me up before I went to work, when I saw eyes staring back at me from about 50 yards away. If I’m being honest, I assumed it was an opossum and was considering whether or not I was gonna let him go. (Don’t judge me too harshly for this. I know they eat turkey eggs and are ugly as sin, but I just like the little guys for some reason). As I got closer, I saw it bolt as far as it could up the small pine tree beside it, and let out a guttural sound that about sent me out of those rubber boots. Once I got my light fixed on it, I realized it was a good-sized bobcat, something Henry had been after, but had been repeatedly outsmarted by. 

I tore back home as fast as I could, tiptoed up to his room, and acted as casually as I could while trying to regulate my breathing. I shook him awake and said in my most nonchalant voice, “Hey buddy, I’m heading out, just wanted you to know I already checked the trapline.” Fortunately, my setup worked and he sleepily asked, “Did we get anything?” I replied, “Nothing but a opossum…and a giant bobcat!!!” I have never seen a person move as fast as that boy did flying down the stairs, grabbing his coat and leaving his shoes all while questioning again and again, “Are you serious? Are you joking?” A few minutes later, there was no doubt. The bobcat was fixed to the tree a couple feet off the ground with its front foot firmly held  in a MB 550 offset jaw dog-less foothold trap. It was truly a sight to behold, and while I’ve never bayed a cougar, I assume what we experienced then was a miniature version of that. The cat was not happy with us and did not hold back its anger and resentment. It was quite the show, but because we knew the animal was distressed, we dispatched it as quickly as we could in the early morning chill as dawn was just starting to break. 

It turned out to be a tom, a little over 26 pounds! It had a beautiful, full winter coat, and at that moment, I don’t think either of us would have traded it for anything. Quite the haul for a first bobcat!

Henry skinned and salted it that morning, and in the coming weeks, pickled, fleshed, degreased and tanned it, all with a huge grin on his face. Its hide now decorates his bookshelf. 

To me and my wife’s only son, the older brother to his four sisters, and budding outdoor aficionado, that skin is a trophy to his hard work, perseverance, and love for God’s fierce and beautiful creation. To me it’s another bittersweet reminder that he is no longer my little boy who needs constant help and oversight, but he is in the early stages of becoming a man who can do hard things, fight his own battles, and struggle toward his own goals. I could not be more joyful for the life God has blessed me with and the wife and children He has entrusted to me. As difficult as it can be, I am thankful for these reminders of how fleeting my time with them is, and how when all is said and done, they are not mine, but His. With all that said, I think I’m gonna go set some traps now.