I’m a predator trapper.
But while I like the idea of trapping coyotes, bobcats or lynx, they’re just not a backyard commodity for me. I own perhaps an acre parcel near a subdivision. According to the new litter of eager young realtors, I now live in the Philadelphia suburban sprawl. But, I grew up far away in Appalachia and I’m a mountaineer at heart.
Where I live now, I do have a little spit of creek with a bantam piece of wildlife paradise. I have grown the vegetation high enough to have red foxes calling on me, but I still mow enough to keep the local constabulary from calling on me.
In the early 1960s I caught my first fox — a gray — when Pennsylvania paid a $4 bounty on every fox. Four bucks was a pretty nice payday for a young lad and fox season was open year-round. The bounty system went away, years passed, and college found me at Penn State when the price of a prime red fox was $50 or more. Fox trapping helped pay the college bills and more.
There I used the proceeds from one red fox pelt to buy an old 1964 Chevy Nova with a finicky clutch and a sticky “three-on-the-tree” shifter.
More years passed and these days I’m just a retired pensioner. So I roam the suburbs seeking out fields or woodlots in small farmsteads that are still hanging on, gaining a
