The Author's Introduction

In offering you this book, The Trapper's Partner, I hope it will be a real partner to you, and that it will help you solve some of your problems as a partner should and I hope that it will make you a more efficient trapper, for I am giving you the boiled down experience of my 38 years, following long traplines and studying wild animals and their habits; however you must never allow your efficiency to denude your traline, but always remember that you will be as anxious to trap in the coming years as you were this season and be sure you are leaving ample "seed" and some to spare.

The successful trapper never misses an opportunity to study nature and animal habits for your food and existence depends not only on how to make good sets, but how well you know the very life of all the animal species you trap, and you should "know your trapline" equally well, for once your sets are established you will use them year after year, and you must know where the "runs" are, breeding places, dens, how to tell the tracks of one animal from another, when the animals change feeding grounds, where they hibernate, etc.

The “call of the trapline” and the thrills of the trail were handed down to us, for our forefathers existed in this, our country by the taking of wild, fur-bearing animals, and so it is but natural that we long for and enjoy this life in the open.

When I started trapping 38 years ago I found it the greatest sport known, and yet the remuneration made it possible for me to make and save money, and while at that time I was told by friends that trapping held no future, I can still make more than a living on the trapline, and partly due to better protection at present, many fur animals are as plentiful today as when I first set out my number one traps, and some species are actually more plentiful.

And while we have plenty of wilderness left, and many sections that were formerly settled are now abandoned and going back to their original state, it is a fact that settled sections often produce more fur than strictly wilderness, and throughout farmlands and settled regions a greater variety of fur animals can be found, and the trapper who is willing to prospect can often locate very desirable traplines right in settled sections, that will produce plenty of furs year after year, and with health and sport thrown in.

And to be a good and successful trapper you must also be a good woodsman and educate yourself to the highest degree of wildcraft, and you will find your association with the outdoors will be pleasant, and nature is like a great book that unfolds its pages day by day so that he who wishes may learn.

And you as a trapper today must remember that you play a great part in whether trapping is to be perpetuated, and you should never trap too early or too late, and never destroy dens of any wild animal, and you should encourage others to do likewise.