The North Dakota sloughs always look so different in winter. During the October waterfowl season, the countryside is alive. Cattle are still in their fall pastures, combines are humming in the fields, and there is a barrage of semi-truck traffic hauling grain to the bins. Waterfowl wheel overhead, and the surfaces of the innumerable sloughs are filled with bobbing ducks, geese and swans.
Fast-forward to the middle of trapping season, standing on the ice, waiting for my buddy Chad Burrer to finish setting one last muskrat hut, I’m surrounded by a much different sight. The only sound is the moan of the incessant prairie wind. The ice pinged and popped around me, even though it was a couple feet thick. My boots scuffed on the snow-covered ice as I pulled the sled full of supplies behind me.
Muskrat trapping, in most of the country, is an open-water affair. Setting runs and hut
