How I got started- my story - The Trap Line - The Trap Line

I’m frequently asked how I got into trapping-

Here’s my story – what’s your’s

I was about 9 or 10 years old and tagged along with the deer hunting party for a late season hunt.

This morning was the day all my anxiety was created for. I would get to walk a few miles back into the beaver swamps and deer hunt with Dad. Normally in northern Wisconsin, the week of Thanksgiving marks the true beginning of winter. A deep white blanket of snow covered the boughs; chicketies and finches’ songs filled the frozen air.

Every kid wants to be accepted by the elders and thrives on the chance to have added responsibilities. My chance had finally arrived. As everyone exited their trucks, my dad motioned for me to go with his Uncle Walter. An honor not given to many.

This 6’6″ Norwegian man has the gentlest voice you could ever imagine. He speaks very little; but when he does the years of experience fills your ears. With a smile he put his arm around me and asked if I was ready to walk. “Yep!” I replied.

He handed me an old beat up wooden backpack and adjusted a few straps to keep it on my back. We sat on the tailgate of his truck as everyone else vanished down Old Maids Road. Being the kid I am, I naturally started on the million and one questions. Everything from “why do you call the tagalder swamp Old Maids” to “how many deer are we going to get” spewed from my lips. He very quietly chuckled as if not for me to hear him. His only two responses I recall are “we’ll do even better” and “OK”

We walked into what became to look the same. After only walking a couple hundred yards, I was amazed at how much every direction looked identical. The poplar trees on small mounds, tagalders in clump after clump, and a few towering pines off in the distance. Not having a clue to where we’re going, I continued to step into this giant’s footsteps.

For absolutely no reason I could see, this man stopped and reached into a tiny creek along a log. From the near frozen water, he pulls this long slinky animal out with an old antique looking trap hanging from its back leg. “Mink” he says with a very discrete smile” He shook it off and placed it in my backpack. As I tried to about twist my head off to look down my back, he said “we’ll have more on the way out” I stood in awe as his massive hands set this trap and placed it just under the water next to this log.

We continued to walk making little noises and a random thump to the trees to let everyone know where we were at. Again, this giant man knelt down and pulled more slinky and fat animals out of the little creeks were crossing. Each time saying we’ll have more on the way out.

The further we walked, the more I began to feel like a man. He would utter out a short detail why he caught a rat here and a mink over there. Pointing out tracks and other details as we continued. In that time, I felt accepted and as an equal. WE were catching animals while everyone else was standing on a post freezing to death!

But what I saw next changed my life forever. In what seemed like forever, I could hear a gurgling sound echoing through the swamp. Finally, the sound grew louder as I stood before the neatest bridge ever created. Not of steel or cable; but of mud, tree limbs, logs, and grass. There were sticks placed like vertical piers driven into the muck, with perfect woven sticks and mud.

Walter took my arm and tugged for me to walk across with him. Guiding me across, I think I was nearly unable to comprehend the engineering skills these beaver have. My eyes were glued to the small frozen lake that spread through the tagalders. My ears took in every gurgle of water passing through a small dip in this amazing dam. As I walked across, I know Walter told me many things…of which I never heard a one.

He motioned for me to turn onto the lake down a faint path worn in by his previous tracks. Only a short distance in, he stopped and kneeled down; and I the same. As I held on to a huge stick projecting out of the ice, he chopped away with a tiny ax. He pushed a pile of slush and ice chunks aside and handed me a thin gray wire. “Pull it up” Walter whispered. With an adrenaline rush, I pulled that wire as I stare into the black iron rich water.

I still think I jumped a 100 feet into the air as this monstrous creature boiled up. Walter actually finished pulling this huge wet glob of wet hair onto the ice. Like an out of the body experience, I clearly remember my shocked expression on my face. This man just pulled a beaver out of a hole that he just chopped.

As the water repelled from the beaver, I could see the reddish brown fur begin to shine. Like all investigating little boys, I had to see the cartoon beaver teeth I had always imagined. Yellowish and ugly I thought as I turned my attention to this huge flat leathery tail. I looked at this big trap on its hind foot and the cable it was attached to.

Walter asked “Nice Beaver?” and I think for the first time I swore in front of an adult when I said “Hell Yea”

A number of years passed before trapping on my own. Walter is into his 90’s and still tries to make a few sets each season. His body has begun to give into old age. Every Christmas I believe he has a burst of youthfulness as we exchange cards with short hand written stories of the trapping season to date… how fat or small our fur check is…..and most importantly..how well my daughter is trapping!

If you have not figured it out, Walter is my hero in life. He gave me the key to unlock any door of life. Knowledge! On that deer hunting drive that day, I was taught how to learn!

May every youthful person be given that gift!

FYI- I wrote this some time back, and share it every once in awhile. Walter Rosenlof RIP my friend, you taught me more than I ever could have imagined 1911-2009

Thanks guys! I can never thank my Father enough for the advantages in life he gave me. Ironic, that at the time, we were just living life. Never really knew the life lessons that would come out of it until I became a father myself. Now that I have two daughters, my eyes are much more open to all the things I don’t like. I hate to dwell on the negative, since all it does is draw you down. But try to teach them a better way than the examples they see at friends and at school.
My escape was always the outdoors. If I was fishing or hunting, my dad just let me go. My families (both mother and father) both came from farm/farm hand backgrounds and very small towns. Population of 450 was a lot of people! But we had families that didn’t have natural gas or LP. Just burned wood for heat and cooking up through the 90’s. Its just the life I grew up with and what I want to contribute back to.

So, lets here some other stories. I broke the ice, so lets read’m!