in your area maybe but why blanket the whole state with a law to reduce harvest . i have to many , hell i cant have a garden with out maintaining a electric fence around it .

Any records kept on deer depredation kills?

I don't know how many deer were killed by coyotes within the hearing distance of where I hunted yesterday afternoon?

But I know how many rifle shots I heard of humans killing (or at least attempting) to kill deer. At least 25 - and it was windy, not a good afternoon for sound travel.

The issues of everything are usually combinations - but the last place humans look for answers - is always in the mirror.

predators cost you both game and money that's a fact.
any one ever seen a yote when a cow drops a calf , well I have and if they do that to a calf why not a fawn.not much difference just one is a tame animal and the other is wild ,

ok lets go another route about predators, take coon and deer feeders, that along cost the hunters that use corn in feeders .a family of coon can clean a feeder with 50 lbs of corn in less then week, once the coon find it, once the fighting starts which draws more coon and that feeder has no food in most cases over nite, lets say 7 bucks a bag of corn times 7 days that's 49 bucks times 4 that's 196 bucks a month which adds up to almost 2 grand a year, that's just for one family of coon.

what my point is when you bring in a trapper or you trap the predators your saving money and your building the deer herds as well as helping all your game birds, when a trapper comes in they remove every thing from possums to yotes.

you have to keep all the predators under control if not the predators will keep your game under control. more predators means less game. more preadators take more food to live.

thinking I am joking ask any trapper that traps red fox and they will tell you what red fox because of yotes there is very few left,

I think all hunting clubs need to add more money into their annual dues to pay a trapper then hire me to come catch all these problem coyotes! That way I can trap full time and retire!

I hate totes with a passion, BUT yotes get blamed on a lot of Calf deaths that never happened. The calf may have died, but not from the yote.. 90% of time

third you could all chip in and buy the traps you need and take turns running the traps.

fourth hire a private trapper BUT BEREADY TO PAY OUT THE BACK SIDE. they want spend 100 bucks to catch a 4 buck yote

FITH
CALL MONTGOMERY get a state trapper LMAO good luck there , you might see one some times next year or the next IF YOUR LUCKY

the fact is hunters hates trappers , trappers hates hunters but the truth is they need each other ,

Mr. William I agree with some of this and disagree with some of it.

I don't think most trappers are paid nearly what they're worth. People see they can buy a dozen traps for $200 -/+ and think trappers are charging way too much. What they aren't considering is all the other stuff it takes to effectively set up and run traps.

Why would hunters hate trappers? If a trapper does his job efficiently and effectively the hunters in the area should love him.

Coyotes have been and still are a big problem at our place. For this reason alone I haven't shot a doe in four years due to the fact we aren't seeing as many or with fawns. I'm the only one that bow hunts our place and I've only seen one spotted fawn in the last three years. Don't have any on cameras at the feeders either.

We have a couple of pear trees about forty yards behind the camp house and when you are pulling in the evening your headlights will shine on the deer eating them. This has been a common thing the past ten years or so. But not this year. Now you see coyotes eating the pears off the ground. We've never seen this before and is very disturbing. We are definitely going to hire a trapper.

If a trapper runs his line like he should he will have a heck of a lot of time invested. I was running less than 10 traps on about 600 acres and it would take about a hour to run them before work. How many folks are willing to get up a couple hours before work and run traps? My guess would be not many, kinda like a guy that would set a hog trap and check it once a week. I have more respect for a animal than to leave it in a trap longer than is needed.

Choot em trap em no poison though. They have the run of my property yote tracks on deer tracks, yippin and barking sunrise and sunset. Hard shot they never stop if I see them they are running. Im afraid they are like hogs its a loosing battle.

north40 trappers don't get paid for what they are worth not in fur or money and one must be dam good to make it in the adc business , what people fail to think about is the time it takes in the field chasing trap shy animals. once a beaver or yote gets popped and gets out then the real game starts. you know that and I know that.true any one can set a trap but even then they need more then the basics.

I am not saying all hunters hates trappers but I can say this much and I have seen it over and over as well from others.some dog runners hates traps period . been told several times to my face. two years ago had 60 traps taken off the Talladega national forest the next year lost 18 more and these was behind locked gates, the locks was cut and traps taken.called the warden and was told I only deal with private land, that gets under my skin bad . they are paid to do a job and that job should be private and public

now Jackie Malone works the kid shops along with fish and game and I respect that. at least it is a start

what the trappers need to do is teach more about traps to the public , you and I both know it is how the trap is used ,most think that a trap breaks a foot or it cuts the foot off , we both knows it want, even had a warden trip a duke 1 1/2 coil and told me to my face that trap could have broke a kids foot. lol heck that kid must of had some real small feet,

let me correct the post above hunters don't hate trappers they hate traps. that's from what they seen or learned from sloppy trappers and no education about the traps, the thing is traps with teeth is a thing in the past,i want go in to the anti ways of twisting a persons mind right now

I have caught several dogs in traps and none have had a broke foot. If a trap won't brake a gray fox's foot it won't brake a dogs foot. I think it goes back to checking the traps regular. If you leave anything in a trap long enough it is gonna have damage to its foot. Just my opinion, Jon

Jon you are right! If you set the traps up like they're supposed to be with enough swivels and check them every morning you don't have to worry about anything with broken legs! I've caught many, many dogs that I can guarantee you when they got home the owners couldn't even tell that ol' Fido had spent the night pinched in one of my traps!

They must have moved to my neck of the woods. They're like fireants here. Kill one and 2 move in.

I ran traps here for one year. It's nearly impossible to do when you have to be at work at 7:00 am. I caught 2 dogs while trapping. Neither had a broken toe but my traps do have offset jaws. They were both big dogs. Those big white goat pen dogs. I got one of them out and it never growled at me. The other one I had to keep contained with the choke stick.

I caught my own fingers, 3 of them, in a MB550. Hurt like the dickens but didn't break any bones.

Bet it didn't hurt as bad as a cow biting it...

Fur all of my traps are offset also and I've added laminations to increase the width of the surface that actually holds the foot.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do things and it's the guy that buys a couple stock traps then uses tie wire to secure them to trees that gives trappers a bad name!

norh40 you and jon hit the magic words right there .the thing is once trapping gets a bad name that's a problem that is hard to fix.it don't take much to stir the pot when it comes to traps and pets . the public eye is always watching the trappers and the anti's will use any and every thing they can to stop trapping.thats why proper education on traps is needed.when I first started 50 years ago there was no free info out there and no one to teach me . all hard knocks and mistakes but I learned from mistakes. now with todays free info there is no reason for a mistake when it comes to using traps, no reason what so ever.
now in the old days trappers was tight lip and I beleave lead to a lot of sloppy trappers because they learned it that way because no one would teach. not so in todays world . there is always free info if they only look. now I will add this not every thing you read is good, one must pick out the good and toss out the trash. the trappers goals should be teaching the right ways and exsplaining why you don't do some thing you know is wroung , as a example take 22o conibears illegal here on land but legal in other states but just the same we as a trapper knows that trap will kill a dog or cat in a heart beat. just because some thing is legal don't always make it right.

we as sportsman need to pull togather and work togather before we all lose every thing.

my point is

there will always be a few bad apples but it is up to us to toss out the bad apples so the rest don't ruin. mean the more we teach the less sloppy trappers we have

record
my land traps are off set and now have four swivels,unless they are for water then it is two on a drowner.

I caught my 8 year old last year. Didn't hurt at all. I let him loose cause he hasn't been killing my deer too bad. [img:center]http:// [/img]