Trapping with the Professor

The long days of summer are behind us, we set our clocks back last night. It's hunting and trapping season! Since we can't hunt on Sunday and our first party of deer hunters won't arrive until the 7th we used the day off to tidy the lodge and rake the grounds before snow arrives. Five truck loads later we had cleaned up all the leaves from around the lodge, along the driveway and in the ditches. I got the lodge windows washed and it looks as if there's no glass in them with all the dust and dog nose prints wiped away! We'll let the remaining leaves blow away... We continue working our other jobs trying to keep up with the ever-increasing costs of doing business. Propane, electricity, taxes, and insurance all continue to go up yet there is also increasing demand from the tourism market for "affordable" lodging. We have to keep the cost of lodging down in order to retain our current client base and attract new visitors. This juggling act makes it impossible to operate "in the black". Thus, our jobs away from the lodge allow us to remain open. We've watched as one local sporting camp closed last year, unable to keep up with their mortgage payments and another is facing a similar fate. We will do all that we can to keep Fish River Lodge going - "failure is not an option". We got a dusting of snow on the 6th and Wayne got to hunt on the 7th - there's a big buck on one of the beech ridges in Pennington; Wayne is determined to find him. I started trapping with Jerry and Sandy Whitcomb. I've nicknamed Jerry "The Professor" - he is my trapping instructor, teaching me the skills I need to successfully to trap beaver, pine marten, and fisher. Trapping is something I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember but, growing up on the coast, the only trapping I knew how to do was for lobster! Wayne and I met back at the lodge at noon on the 7th so we could get groceries for our first deer hunting party - Jeff Wagner, and Tony & Joe Fiala (PA). Jerry and Sandy checked our first beaver set as they came out of the woods at dark - we'd caught one! After a day of instruction from The Professor, I worked in tandem with Sandy on the 8th as we set our 120 and 16o conibears...one of us would attach a "box" to a tree while the other set the trap and wired on bait. Once the box was in place the trap would be set in the box and safety latches removed. As we became more proficient as a team we could get in, set, and get out before The Professor - quite a feat for a tam containing a rookie! Sandy was always watching to make sure I was setting the traps correctly and safely. We both were mindful of following the complex Maine trapping laws. We put out 35 marten/fisher traps and another 15 beaver traps. I caught my first beaver - a 48 lb. "super"! After serving dinner I got my first beaver skinning lesson from "master skinner" Sandy - she can skin a beaver in under 20 minutes while it took me almost an hour to do my first! The larger beavers will be sold on the fur market. The smaller ones we will make in to decorative wall hangings, stretched on willow hoops. Joe and Jeff bought our first wall hangings as we were skinning!

The days are long when deer hunters are in camp. Up early (3:30 a.m.) to start breakfast and set out lunches, clean up in time to go to work or check traps, home to bake and prepare and serve dinner, clean up and skin, then bed time. We continued working, feeding our hunters, and trapping right through the week and had our schedules down to a science by the time the Bombara family along with Charlie Sayers and his buddies Smitty and Bob arrived for the third week of deer. A tradition at Fish River Lodge is for Gloria Curtis and Diane Chouinard to join our hunters for dinner mid-week. They bring dessert (this year apple dumplings - yum!) and catch up on the year that passed and reminisce about the good old days of deer hunting with Gloria's husband Nick at Crooked Tree Lodge and Chubby Ricciardi at the Michaud Camps. It is a visit we look forward to every year. As the week came to a close is was evident the declining northern Maine deer herd presents a challenge to our hunters, yet we appreciate their willingness to return and share in the nostalgia of Aroostook County big buck hunting. On the 23rd, after checking traps all day, I headed in to a new beaver flowage to take my final exam. Jerry left it entirely up to me to "read" the flowage and set my traps. It was a small and tricky flowage to set, at first look. I almost missed the culvert, an obvious place to set a trap, because all our beaver trapping was being done off logging roads and although there are culverts under those roads, I'd not yet encountered one in a beaver flowage! I set three 330s (one at the culvert, two in a channel to the beaver lodge and feed bed, and a 220 where the water was shallow. Only time would tell if I could trap a beaver on my own. It was dark when we got home to serve the dinner Wayne had prepared. Next day (Monday) I had to go to work. The flowage I'd set was about an hour's drive away so Jerry and Sandy "graded my exam" while I was at work...I got home to learn I'd caught TWO beavers! They pulled my traps since I'd taken two large beavers from the small flowage. The Professor wrote me a note (my "diploma") giving me an "A". Who would have thought, a month ago I'd never trapped but I'd learned enough in three weeks to set a flowage myself and pull two beavers out in less than 18 hours! We checked our traps before heading south on the 25th to spend Thanksgiving with Miranda, Tyler, Acadia, and Nellie in their new log home in Bowdoin, ME. I got to spend some quality time with my grand daughters Acadia (7) and Nellie (7 wks). We visited with Aunts and Uncles, Nana Pat and dear friend Mary Demers and her daughter Tess. Mary and Tess invited Acadia and I to meet their Morgan horse "Velvet" We were invited to ride but 50 m.p.h. winds that day and torrential rain the night before created conditions unsuitable for riding. But we certainly enjoyed cleaning the mud off Velvet to reveal the beautiful mare she is! We got back to Eagle Lake on the 29th. Another deer season and Thanksgiving had come and gone. I learned how to trap - the highlight of November for me! No deer were tagged at Fish River lodge during the regular firearms season so we'll have to see what muzzle loader season brings next week... And the trapper in me is excited to see what December brings - the best month to trap marten and fisher, and more beavers!