austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 14, 2012 20:51:38 GMT -5
AJ, please check your PMs in the other site
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Post by mikeb on Feb 14, 2012 20:58:38 GMT -5
Hey austin we are keeping the biggest 1 to taxidermy with my 5 pound muskrat from last season-should look cool.Have put a post on this site as well as trapper man-yes you are correct-it has taken me 35 years to catch my first black rat and i may never catch another.I hope scott has a big freezer for all the female rat carcasses!!LOL
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 21:08:33 GMT -5
AJ, please check your PMs in the other site Austin, no need to send me a pm apologizing cause you thought I was Alan. Probaly the correct thing to do is to apologize to him, and since he's not on T-man, this is probaly the place, after all, you started a thread about him on a sight he's not even on.
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Post by ztbowtech on Feb 14, 2012 21:26:04 GMT -5
i ended with 26 rats, 3 mink, and 5 coon. last year which was my first i got 5 rats, 1 coon, and 2 beaver. im already up to 11 beaver and am still going.
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austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 14, 2012 21:40:41 GMT -5
AJ, please check your PMs in the other site Austin, no need to send me a pm apologizing cause you thought I was Alan. Probaly the correct thing to do is to apologize to him, and since he's not on T-man, this is probaly the place, after all, you started a thread about him on a sight he's not even on. I'm perfectly willing to visit with anyone else about anything else in any other thread on whatever topic: this is the muskrat trapping thread and it will remain on topic. It is not my fault and not my problem who is enabled where versus who is banned where, now is it? Simple as that. I'll visit with anyone about anything in person, face to face or in other threads on-topic. This one is muskrat trapping specific
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austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 14, 2012 21:42:15 GMT -5
i ended with 26 rats, 3 mink, and 5 coon. last year which was my first i got 5 rats, 1 coon, and 2 beaver. im already up to 11 beaver and am still going. that's excellent progress, ztbowtech! as others have suggested to you before: work on honing your trapping skills and your fur-handling skills each year forward. Both will reward you very well in equal fashion
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Post by sthet on Feb 14, 2012 22:59:58 GMT -5
NIce take with the 500. Been a good year for me also, averaging double digits everyday of the season. I really hammered them when the ice came on, but that didn't last to long. Been running out of the canoe for the past week. Busting ice some days. Getting a big batch of glands too. This year has also been my personal best for beaver.
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austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 15, 2012 6:07:58 GMT -5
sthet, I never caught one beaver. Those around here all got hammered at season's open in November or soon after... which is a little earlier than I care to take them. Same with fox, I never set for them purposely until two weeks after land season comes in. Personal choice concerning primeness, that's all.
Great to hear you did well on rats! We never had ice I could walk for more than one day. I tried, I fell thru repeatedly... maybe next year will be colder:)
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Post by mikeb on Feb 15, 2012 6:47:28 GMT -5
wow austin i did better than you i had ice i could walk on for 2 days before it went out!!!!!Great catches zbowtech-congrats!
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austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 15, 2012 7:08:27 GMT -5
you are colder up there nearer the lake than we are down here, Mike. I'm actually in a true Zone 6 scale area in the valley. The hills around me can hold six inches of snow and ice on water... but the Naples valley here will be a trace of snow and open water. One reason why Widmers ringed the area with grapes at turn of century
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Post by herm on Feb 15, 2012 16:08:07 GMT -5
Trapped some of everthing around here,but I have to say I still enjoy rat trapping the best.The problem is just about every place I used to trap them no longer has any rats.
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Post by creekboy on Feb 15, 2012 16:56:00 GMT -5
opps must be the alan claycomb hour again - so its not mike spring or your second guess AJ - thus far you have printed false information now twice -third times a charm -maybe its the 11k stalker
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austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 15, 2012 18:25:39 GMT -5
30 rats coming off the boards... final 20 going on tonight. grade, sort & bundle on Friday... off to the GVTA show on Sunday. Almost time to get ready for some spring season fun up north, and then several month's to prepare for one helluva push next year! Attachments:
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Post by timwilcox on Feb 15, 2012 19:36:33 GMT -5
Creekboy, give it a rest will ya. For god sakes you seem to be taking this way out of context. Stop already !!!
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Post by catlinkid on Feb 16, 2012 20:29:09 GMT -5
how come only certain areas have a spring season ? while others dont
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Woj
#3 Newhouse
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Post by Woj on Feb 16, 2012 20:45:03 GMT -5
how come only certain areas have a spring season ? while others dont The question of the century. . . .
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 20:48:11 GMT -5
I wondered that to?
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austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 17, 2012 4:25:42 GMT -5
per the spring seasons, I guess that is a dated law which goes back much earlier than my time afield. I think there might have been some later season end-dates here in the southern zone decades ago. I recall later start dates than current, and one or two years a long time ago had 16-day muskrat seasons end to end. Similar to the old ten-day beaver seasons before.
We don't have nearly the water in this part of the state that northern zone does, and much higher population of people. Maybe that (ill)logic of trapping pressure makes the difference. Considering some of the marshes around Lake Erie, the Iroquis and Montezuma complexes and various rivers here, I'd opine rats could handle a spring season if we had one.
Truth is, trappers only replace natural predation on rats... nobody can exterminate them from any general area. What was caught this year would have more or less died of other causes by or before spring anyways. It's not like trappers take numbers above & beyond predation, disease, etc. We simply replace those other pressures.
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Post by fingerlakesfur on Feb 17, 2012 9:05:17 GMT -5
anyone who thinks trappers affect rat populations is way off base...alot of theories are thrown around, but after listening to all the biologists, trappers & my own field observations over decades...it has to be the habitat factor.
Whether it be destruction of wetlands or invasive species such as foxtail...if there is steady water level & a healthy cattail crop, there are muskrat. In a nutshell...cattail=muskrat.
Maybe there is something else going on biologically with the animal, as Scott Smith's research may conclude, but I agree with Austin that it is habitat dependant.
One marsh I trap in particular, it always has a healthy cattail crop, but water levels seem to fluctuate year to year. If the water level stays normal for 2-3 years, there are hundreds of rats by the 3rd year. Next year it dries up...rats are gone. Now it takes a couple of years for the numbers to rebound. I can take 200-300 on those up years & never make a dent in 'em.
Another scenario....same type of marsh, only more mature in age. One year water, cattails & rats. Next, water cattails, foxtail less rats. Following year, water, foxtail, no rats. The invasive foxtail muscled out the food source & the rats disappeared.
Growing up in the '70's there never seemed to be a shortage of these cattail marshes & there were alot of rats around. Never saw foxtail either.
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Post by herm on Feb 17, 2012 9:43:30 GMT -5
The last spring season we had hear on rats,other than a beaver extension, which used to automatically include a rat season,was in 1976.However no matter what the date on the calender said,you had about a week after ice out and then the rats were to cut up.The season opener at that time was a later date opening in Dec. There is a marsh accross the road from my house that doesnt hold enough rats to bother with as far as trapping them.A few years ago the beaver flooded a feeder ditch to that marsh and flooded an old muck field which then became full of cattails and rats every where,but the main marsh remained the same as far as the rat population althow it always had a lot of cattails. A friend of mine let the state dig out ponds in a swamp he had in the 1960s.He told me the state planted foxtails there.At the time, according to him ,they were pushing that plant to improve wetlands for ducks.
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Post by walleyed on Feb 17, 2012 10:11:24 GMT -5
per the spring seasons, I guess that is a dated law which goes back much earlier than my time afield. I think there might have been some later season end-dates here in the southern zone decades ago. I recall later start dates than current, and one or two years a long time ago had 16-day muskrat seasons end to end. Austin, The last year the western southern zone had a Spring Muskrat season was only back during the 1975-1976 season. (you must be getting old) Biologists had noted a marked decrease in Muskrat take of -25.8% in Western Southern Zone (excluding Long Island)harvest from 951,457 rats in 1974- 75 season DOWN to 705,962 rats during the 1975-1976 season. Total State Wide Harvest in 1974-1975 was 1,237,965 Muskrat !!! 1975-1976 Statewide Muskrat Take was 911,133 Thousand !!! 1976-1977 Statewide Muskrat Take was 669,174 Thousand DEC Bureau of Wildlife Biologists eliminated the SPRING Southern Western Zone muskrat season for the 1976-77 trapping year in order to try to cut the muskrat harvest by 50%. This was due to a large two year decrease in harvest numbers from 1974 thru 1976. They did not succeed in cutting the harvest by 50% The 1977-1978 Southern Western zone season ran from December 10th thru February 12th. The new season dates established for the 1978-79 season ran from November 18th thru February 18th, and we have not had a actual Western Southern Zone Spring stand-alone Muskrat Season since 1975-1976. I guess conventional wisdom with Bureau of wildlife then, was cutting out a spring season would eliminate any chance of over-harvesting Western Zone muskrat populations, and that line of thinking has not been revisited since that date in history. I could find no historical data indicating where there was ever a Western Southern Zone Muskrat season that ran for 16 days end to end. I lifted the above quoted data not off the internet, but off the 1978-1979 Trapping syllabus pamphlet I got when I bought my trapping license that year and saved because of the interesting information on the muskrat, red fox, and fisher studies that were going on at the time while I was in college (CCFL)for An A.A.S. Degree in Fish & Wildlife management. seems they had all kinds of studies going on when DEC Bureau of Wildlife was flush with funding Cash under the NEW DEC created in 1972 to replace the old NYS Fish and Game Dept. They even had a Fisher trap and transfer program up and running (1976-1977) where they trapped and transferred Fisher from the Adirondacks to Ulster County in the Catskills. Oh, for the good old days. LOL walleyed
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2012 10:17:54 GMT -5
Good Post Walleyed!
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Post by fingerlakesfur on Feb 17, 2012 10:28:33 GMT -5
muskrat take decline coincides with the increase in urban/suburban sprawl projects that were going on in the early-mid 1970's...seems to follow the ringneck pheasant demise also.
habitat related?
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austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 17, 2012 10:31:03 GMT -5
heck yes I'm getting old... in 1976 I was twelve! <lol> That period of time is right when I was just getting started trapping. I seemed to recall a lot of talk about how the population was crashing, how the state was taking measures to stop that. I thought that one of the steps was a lone season where our zone was only open for sixteen days and that was it. Maybe some of the older trappers have clearer recall... Bob Hughes would be a great one to ask about history of such. Amazing how the state thought they had problems with dwindling populations back then... what a difference now. Just one more time in my life I'd like to face a wetlands system with rat houses far as the eye can see. For that reason alone, I'm researching the logistics of a fall trip to North Dakota this year. Even if the whole thing costs me money in the end, I'd like to hop from rat house to rat house without getting my feet wet just one more time before I die
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austinp
#3 Newhouse
the next fur season is never far from our minds :)
Posts: 3,008
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Post by austinp on Feb 17, 2012 10:35:49 GMT -5
muskrat take decline coincides with the increase in urban/suburban sprawl projects that were going on in the early-mid 1970's...seems to follow the ringneck pheasant demise also. habitat related? In 1985-1986 I trapped the Iroquois - Oak Orchard - Tonowanda network, which had so many guys in there that you could barely find a den hole without two traps on it. So being the new guy there I mainly worked the perimeters, roadside ditches, tiny side sloughs, etc. All marginal water compared to the main marshes. That year I caught 1,008 total rats... bulk of them from little spots that today no longer hold one drop of water. Last time I passed thru that area, some of those roadside ditches held zero water, nothing but mud.
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