Trapping In Alaska
I started trapping in Alaska shortly after I arrived here in the mid 1980’s. At first I trapping with others but within couple of years I had sprung out on my own. I started out watching cabins and feeding horses for those I guided for and while there I trapped remote lands of Alaska through the winter months. Soon enough I had developed traplines for the sole purpose of trapping. We enjoy a liberal, four to six month trapping season, in Alaska depending on where you chose to trap and which species you intended to trap for. I trapped intently for fifteen years in remote places all over Alaska. These places included Kodiak Island, Horsefeld Creek in the Nutzotin Mountains, Cordova, several places in the Alaska Range, Yukon Flats and Tanana river valley. The longest time I ever spent alone was 5 months at one time without seeing another person.
One of my earliest cabins, with a fine early season, mixed catch of mink, martin, cross and red fox, wolverines, lynx and beavers. I trapped 11 species and stayed out on remote lines all winter.
Another cabin on the same line, these were built by earlier trappers of the area, I took over several traplines and put them together in order to cover enough ground to make a living. I got some cabins with the traplines I bought as well as built a few myself. They were distributed about 15 miles away from each other about the trapping area. On my best trapline I ran about a thousand traps. I used four registered cabins and had four snow machines.
The bread-and-butter fur bearer in Alaska is by far the martin. Alaska has some of the best in the world and a good trapper could catch three to four hundred in a season with the right area and if he concentrated solely on them.
I preferred to trap all of the species Alaska had to offer and spent some time trapping for them too. Because I spent time trapping multiple species, my martin catch would top at between one and two hundred a year. I found that to be plenty for the ground I covered.
The most common set for martin in interior Alaska is the pole set. The pole set could be very selective if used correctly. The catch is held up off of the ground where the fur could not be ruined by spruce pitch or small varmints. I would regularly let females and small martin go to help keep my catches large and healthy.
Lynx are the second most popular species to trap in interior Alaska. Being highly cyclic, lynx could be trapped with great success during the peak of it’s cycle.
Lynx could be easily caught during the high end of it’s cycle. I averaged over a hundred a season on good years.
The “kittens” were among the best colored of the lynx and paid the best to the lynx trapper. I employed the “Family Plan” in lynx trapping during the high cycle where-by I would set a cubby for the adult female with snares all around it. I would catch her and all the kittens traveling with her. It payed to catch the young ones because they paid the best and when the population crashed, they were gone. Cannibalism becomes a reality within the lynx population when the hare population plummets.
A really good day on the line as well as plenty of martin I brought home lots of lynx. There are several kittens in this picture that were traveling with the adults.
Lynx were almost always alive and unharmed in sets made for them. Toward the end of the season when they were more likely rubbed between the shoulders, or at the end of their high population peak, when there was no kitten production adult lynx were very easy to let go to provide seed for the next year or population cycle.
Wolverines were about as plentiful as they could get in the area I trapped. I could catch up to six a year.
True to their reputations, wolverines are tough critters. Though not terribly hard to catch, they are hard to keep. Big traps and good foot holds are needed to catch and hold wolverines.
Given enough time, wolverines can chew up everything they can reach including the trap anchor if a big enough one is not used.
Wolverines have large home ranges and a trapper may only get one or two chances at a particular one in a season. They are highly prized on the local market though, and an experienced wolverine trapper can earn some money trapping them.
Wolves are highly sought after, although a lot of time can be spent setting for them for relatively pay off. Trappers have to decide if time spent trapping for them isn’t better invested in fur bearers that result in bigger fur checks.
Wolves can range in color from almost perfectly white to black and there is a certain allure to being able to catch them.
Snaring wolves is a very effective way to put more of them in the fur shed. Of course, the main drawback to snaring them is that you have to carry large frozen animals back to where they can be thawed and skinned. They can be cumbersome that way.
A hundred year old beaver lodge on a hot spring. I found it was incredibly hard to trap open water beaver in Alaska because everyone else in the country was trying to get them too. Wolf, wolverine and lynx tracks were all around this open water in hopes beavers could be caught on land for an easy meal.
Teaching younger people to trap is the only way to insure that trapping will be around in the future. This is not a very big beaver. Normally the goal would be to catch two of the adult size beavers in the lodge. If no more than two adults are taken from each lodge we could be sure to have they would continue to produce beavers for years to come.
Trapping beavers can also be very time consuming because most of the time we have to cut though over thirty inches of ice to set for them. I caught about ten a year in order to have enough beaver castor and oil for making lure for the next year and enough beaver fur for when I needed a new hat or mittens.
One of my newest cabins. I built it with big logs for good insulation and fitted it with a door big enough I could bring a snow machine inside to work on it if needed.
There is lots of work to do on the trapline. cabin to build and trail to cut, as well as all of the day to day chores like cutting fire wood, collecting water and handling fur.
Every day ten martin were young inside to thaw, ten were turned fur-side-out on the boards and ten were skinned and boarded skin-side-out.
Bridges sometimes needed to be built to access otherwise unreachable country to trap.
Hazards are everywhere on the trapline. In the early days there was no such thing as satellite phone and In-Reach. If you got into trouble , it was up to you to get out. I was staying in a wall tent while I was building a cabin one year in the early 1990’s when I made a mis-step and twisted my ankle. As I went down I heard an audible “Pop” and I could see my right ankle was at a bad angle. While still on the ground I braced my right leg against the base of the cabin I had been working on. Using my left foot I pushed the right one back into place. I made a splint out of a felt boot liner and stayed off the foot for two weeks while the swelling went down. After two weeks I built a crutch and began moving around more and more while the leg healed. It’s for this reason I always have a supply of fire wood cut in case I was injured and couldn’t cut what I needed. The ankle was fully healed by the time the airplane came back three months later to buy fur.