CRIME SCENES
Every time I’m doing something that I enjoy, I always try to learn from the experience. Trapping is one of those things, especially when I’m chasing predators like coyotes. Every set I make, every catch or miss that I have or even the days when none of my traps were visited, I find something I can learn. It’s funny, but we can learn more from our misses or failures than we can from our catches or successes.
Many years ago, I learned one of my most valuable lessons when it comes to missing a catch. I used to walk right up to the trap, scan an area around the set about the size of a hula hoop, and mostly decide that I was just unlucky. Then my trapping mentor taught me to survey the whole big picture; look where the animal came from, where it traveled to and what it did while at the set. In short, look at the whole scene — just like a “crime scene.”
One thing that really helps me is if I think like a coyote,
