I’ve been a sportsman all of my life. As a kid, I would trap gophers, rats and raccoons around my rural neighborhood wherever my neighbors needed help. As I got older, the state that I lived in made pursuing the trapping tradition almost impossible, but I kept trapping, navigating the silly rules laid out to clearly discourage the activity. Eventually, as if to stamp that historically important interest out completely, they banned the practice of trapping altogether.
Socking away enough funds to retire early, I moved my entire family to southern Idaho and started enjoying everything the Gem State had to offer an outdoorsman. Three weeks after I relocated, I took both the Idaho trapping and wolf-trapping class, receiving my trapper’s permit later that same weekend. Finally free to trap once again, I hit the ground running.
I somehow fell into nuisance trapping on private land. Property owners that wanted to enhance habitat for game birds and waterfowl would hire me during the trapping season to remove egg-eaters like raccoons, opossums and skunks. Many of the local ranches also have a healthy population of feral cats, a species I was more than happy to remove from the landscape. And almost all of
