2006 - The Hutars have trapped a new family tradition
Eleven-year-old Jared Hutar got chicken pox last week. Chickens, however, are not the animals on his mind.
December 26, 2006 • Voyageur Press
Jared and his father Steve got into trapping game animals this fall and have found immediate success.
The first week of December, during his first year trying, he trapped a raccoon and two other animals that impressed Wayne Thom, his trapping mentor—a giant fisher and an incredible bobcat that could put him on the cover of national trapping magazines.“At first he tried for mink, otter and weasel, and after a few weeks he hadn’t caught anything,” his mother Shari said.
By the time the bobcat, fisher, and pine marten trapping season started November 25, things were still pretty slow for Jared. According to Steve the goal for Jared was to trap a bobcat and a fisher this year. Two weeks into the season he had done both.
On the same day, a week into the season, he trapped a 14-pound fisher with a 35-inch pelt length (tip of the nose to the base of the tail) and a raccoon.
Six days later he caught a trapper’s dream. “When we drove up to the trap, we could tell there was something in it,” Steve explained. “Dad, you better come here. There’s a bobcat in there. A big one,”
Jared said when he got close. It was a 28-pound bobcat. A bright white belly and a myriad of spots, combined with the shear size, signified it as a rare cat. Wayne noted it as one of the best he’s ever seen. “It felt like the first deer I shot,” Jared said.
That feeling is fresh in his memory, because he shot his first deer this fall as well. “He would have also had a pine marten last Sunday, but the trap malfunctioned, and it got away,” Steve said.
Bobcats are mostly nocturnal animals and are a relation to the lynx. “They travel their territory in big circular routes. So when you find their tracks, you set the trap,” Steve explained.
Jared and Steve have seven traps in about a four-mile radius near their home in Cromwell. By checking the traps every three days, Steve described the sport as a “waiting game.” It takes the bobcat between five and seven days to travel the territory and come full circle. “It’s about being in the right place at the right time.”
Most trapping success comes from word of mouth. “Trappers pass on useful methods to other trappers,” Steve noted.
Different animals take to different lures. In the case of trapping, various scents are used. “Freezer burnt venison works really good,” Steve noted. “Deer scraps from hunting also work really well.”
Wayne kids around by asking Jared to give him trapping lessons. “It’s like taking your kid hunting for the first time and they shoot a trophy buck,” he said.
Now that Jared has gotten a handle on the trapping portion of the sport, his next step is to learn how to skin the animals. This time Wayne skinned the bobcat and fisher while Jared watched.
“The next one he is going to skin, and Wayne is going to stand over his shoulder and watch him do it,” Steve said. “The only way you get good at it is by practicing.”
Wayne has an assortment of fleshing knives the kids need in order to learn how to cut the tissue off the hides. Once they’re comfortable, they can then do the work themselves.
Two days after the fisher and pine marten season ended, the Hutars attended a fur tagging meeting at the DNR station in Cloquet where they look at the hides and check trapping certificates. “They want to know what township you caught it in, and then they tag it, which makes it legal to sell or mount,” Steve said.
The DNR also takes the bobcat carcasses for testing. In February, Wayne and Jared will be going to a trapping convention in Isle. Seminars are held at the convention for trappers to communicate about what methods of trapping are working for certain animals.
The Minnesota Trappers association is aggressively working to get kids involved with the sport of trapping. “They don’t want the old guys to quit and have no one to pass it on to,” Steve explained.
As of March 1, anyone born after 1989 must take a trapping class from a certified instructor, much like gun safety requirements.
Jared started the sport this year after signing up and completing a November trapping class taught by Wayne, a longtime trapper from Cromwell. Wayne presents trapping methods to students at the Cromwell High School environmental days, and offers the class which they can sign up to take. The course entails three Sundays of classroom studies about trapping ethics, as well as spending time out in the woods identifying tracks and setting traps. “He’s wanted to do it for a couple years now, but I wanted to wait until he was older so he could do more of it on his own,” said Shari.
Thirteen other students took the class with Jared. The fisher will be getting a full body mount, and Jared is giving the bobcat to his uncle John for his help. Jared has contacted The Trapper magazine about a possible story in response to Waynes enthusiasm about the impressive bobcat.
Steve and Jared’s success has given them both a lifelong interest in trapping together. “It’s a good way to start out,” Steve concluded. “It gets you hooked right away.”