Editor’s note: This commentary is by Tamara Burke, who writes a column for the Stowe Reporter, in which this was first published Oct. 29, 2015. She is an amateur 18th century experimental archaeologist, and sheep farmer. She, and the sheep, have recently relocated to Craftsbury Common from Stowe.
[M]oving (adj): involved in or caused by a change of residence, sold to the unsuspecting middle-aged homeowner as an excuse to “downsize,” when in reality “moving” results in a precise duplication of every critical item one owns. The lost item will remain lost even after unpacking, only to reappear again once reacquired.
The frazzled owner will swear the inanimate objects are giggling among themselves.
The latest lost items, which I know I packed, are the dogs’ neon orange bandanas for hunting season. I’d like to say my canines are well mannered, well behaved homebodies, but that would be patently untrue. My dogs are irrepressible roamers, loping from one end of the property to the other, questing endlessly for windblown apples.
If apples under leaves were truffles, my dogs would have valuable sniffers, but, alas, all we have to show for their endless questing is the production of sufficient methane to power a small town, if only it could be captured before it escaped the living room.
So we wrap the dogs in festive orange, tie sleigh bells to their collars, and crack a window if the apple collecting has gone particularly well that day.
We can light them up with orange and bells to identify them as, if not dogs, at least “not deer.” What we can’t protect them from are traps, and the alarm was raised recently on a local forum that it’s trapping season and all pet owners should be vigilant and concerned, lest their dogs stumble into one of those vicious, maiming killers.
Now, I’ve owned leg hold traps. Even ancient and rusty traps have a nasty lethality about them. They were designed, depending on the trap, to leap upward and snap prey in two — although unlike the mousetrap, which operates on the same principle, these things have fangs. Or to snap down on a leg and break it, incapacitating the animal until the trap is, to put it euphemistically, cleared.
Neither of these is something you want your dog wandering into. And neither is legal in Vermont. Modern traps look and perform very differently from my rusting antiques.
In 2014, a total of seven animals were trapped in Stowe. Two fishers caught on poles, and five otters caught underwater in November or December, during their open season.
Yet, in all my years of living in Stowe, the only time I’ve met anyone using any kind of trap is when I invited a licensed trapper onto the property to do a specific job: get rid of a fisher that was preying on my pets and livestock.
The trapper did set traps, high in the trees, well away from where a dog would be. Unfortunately for the trapper, because there is a market for pelts, the fisher made the strategic error of attacking the cat before hitting the trap, and while the cat sustained considerable damage requiring vet repairs, the fisher didn’t survive the encounter.
Traps do not rate high on my list of things to worry about, but the concern expressed on Stowe’s Front Porch Forum made me wonder if perhaps they should. So I reached out to the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife to learn more about trapping in Vermont in general, and Stowe in particular.
You’ll be comforted to know: You’ve nothing to worry about. Your dog is not, even if he’s an avid apple hunter and roamer of places wild, going to find himself in a trap. Not unless you’re in the habit of taking him swimming in November.
In 2014, a total of seven animals were trapped in Stowe. Two fishers caught on poles, and five otters caught underwater in November or December, during their open season.
Scratch “leg hold trap” off the worry list.
There is still, and I understand this, an objection to trapping wildlife. Massachusetts, yielding to this sentiment, banned trapping by anything other than cage traps in 1996. In one year, complaints regarding beavers soared 500 percent.
Beavers, without the constraint imposed by trapping, exploded in population, and landowners, increasingly frustrated by the property damage, have taken matters into their own hands. It’s suspected more beavers are dying today, their meat and pelts wasted, the animals taken out of season with other implications for the environment, than were ever taken when they were managed by professional trappers.
Trapping, and the professionals who maintain this traditional form of hunting, play an important role in the culture and economy of rural areas, in addition to providing a necessary service in removing nuisance animals. Thirty percent of trappers use fur-bearing animals as a source of table meat, 20 percent rely on the income as a safety net for their families, and there is a healthy barter economy in rural areas as trappers trade pelts and trapping skills for goods and services.
But more importantly, trappers have an exceptional knowledge of area wildlife and habitat. They have to; otherwise, they’d be unsuccessful at what they do. They also have a strong sense of stewardship for the lands they work, a knowledge of the ground few casual users of recreational paths will ever have.
My grandmother left to Stowe a forest, 150 acres of woodland to be preserved as a wildlife refuge and managed forest in perpetuity. She also left a collection of leg hold traps and encouraged hunting on her land. There is nothing contradictory about that. Wildlife, unchecked, can become diseased, destructive, or invasive.
Happily, there’s one thing we don’t have to worry about as hunters and trappers take to the woods for the annual cull: The dogs being caught in a leg hold trap.
Unhappily, I’m going to have to go buy three new orange bandanas.
