I saw where The Chattahoochee Valley Outdoorsmen held an event this year right after deer season that looked about like a local bass tournament except with coons, coyotes, and pigs…..Looked like they had quite a few categories and prizes for the winning teams…..I know from looking at the pics it looked like they had a pretty good turnout for the event and ended up with a pile of critters being caught ….They had several 16 ft trailers loaded down.

What about some folks taking some funds and sponsoring a sho’ nuff annual trapping event in late Feb with some sho’ nuff prizes donated by people who like turkeys?? Regional events all held at the same time with the regional event winners numbers going toward crowning a “state champion” that gets to go on a special hunt with Chuck at the Hog Trap.

I’ve thought having a derby on Skyline would be fun if it had a big turnout.

Need to be trapping all year and not just Feb and Mar.

Need to get everyone who is going to trap to pencil in a 2 week run somewhere around the end of Feb/ early March timeframe

I like it.

Imma throw some bills on JohnV

I got a better idea. The state should use a portion of license sales to hire trappers.

Wish big I guess.

I’ll put in a team.

JohnV da man!!

Deadeye, Pollwol and a few others pretty awesome at it

There is a man that lives in Calera....James Smith.... who limits out EVERY year on Turkeys.....mostly on public land. He and his son produce and sell "Wild-Man's Trapping Baits". He's supposedly REALLY good at trapping Coon,Coyote,Fox,Bobcat,Opossom,etc.

These regional events would also be a good place for folks to come and turn in their coon and coyote tails that qualifies them for the early bird hunt March 18-25……..Any Alabama resident that turns in 25 coon tails and 5 coyote tails gets a voucher for an early bonus bird.

Gonna be a bunch of tail less roadkill laying around.

The earn a buck program in WI haloed clean up the road sides in my friends laughingly said

It’s a good idea so don’t get me wrong.
It’s just people will cheat if they can.

I’ve thought this out and roadkill coons and coyotes wouldn’t account for enough to be a blip on the radar compared to the total that would be caught…..Just think about it this way…..Lets say we implement it tomorrow and every turkey hunter in the state starts scooping up any road kill coons they come across……It’s not that many to begin with if you keep count as you ride around but still…..

Now you go ride around and try to find your 25 tails laying on the side of the road with all the other turkey hunters scavenging for them and I’ll go down here to the hunting club with a truck load of DP traps and let’s see who gets their tails and who doesn’t…..I'm guessing I'm gonna catch 25 to your 1...You can see how this is going to play out…….Anybody that wants their 25 tails is gonna go get some traps and catch them…..They probably wouldnt even pull over to mess with one stinking tail on the side of the road......Sure, you’re probably going to get a few roadkills in the mix somewhere along the way but its not even significant to the process

Steve told of some fights in roadside ditches when they first implemented earn buck program. Said it was entertaining to some degree.

Still it’s not a bad idea and I agree it wouldn’t account for much difference in the grand scheme of things.
It just reminded me of years ago hunting in WI.

Wish they would let us trap on WMAs during turkey season. Turkey hunters could put a hurt on them at just the right time.

You’d put a whammy on the coons…. A lot of guys would catch them off of corn feeders during deer season or just after and we probably have the coon populations pretty heavily concentrated on feeder locations in late winter……You also have better odds of catching the females during deer season too ahead of them going to den up to have babies……We need to try something all these lines to make a difference

I had a guy hit me up to give him my beaver tails because his buddy could get 20 dollars a tail in Arkansa for them. Pi**ed me off he even had the nerve to ask me that. Then I wondered if he trapped for the state or if Arkansa just had a bounty on them? I'm sure some lazy people would be hitting up people to buy tails if Alabama offered any kind of incentive

I thought about people bringing in tails that were caught out of state and is why I put that part in there about it being just for Alabama residents…….An incentive like that would create a small “fur market” where a certain amount of turkey hunters would just basically buy their early bird tag from a trapper who filled the quota for them…..That reminds me, I think we said last time that 20 coon tails worked out a little better for the sake of $$$.....Its gotta be something the hunter is willing to pay and something worth the trapper going out and trapping.

How much would a turkey hunter be willing to pay a trapper for that early week and extra bird??.......$500 maybe......It would have to be enough for the trapper to go out and catch however many you make the quota.

The ideal thing for the trapper would be to find some folks who are willing to pay you to trap their land after deer season is over and then sell the tails to turkey hunters for the incentive on top of that……You would probably be getting into good enough money doing that to spur on some more trapping to take place around the state

Sounds like a good idea