A Year In The Life - Day 255, January 31, 2015

First ever wolf pee post set.  Placerd alongside a snowmachine trail on a frozen slough.  We'll see...

A Year In The Life - Day 254, January 30, 2015

An abstract shot today of some windgrooves in a drift, covering our trail over a large lake.

A Year In The Life - Day 253, January 29, 2015

Wanna catch a fox?  A prime example of an 'outstanding object', and how it can make them deviate from the easiest path...in this case, a pee post.  The fox never left this trail for at least 100 yards in either direction, until they/he/she saw that grass pod.  And it was visited twice.  Hint, hint...

A Year In The Life - Day 252, January 28, 2015

The makings of a baited trigger set for beaver, which usually work better as we round the corner towards spring...but put one in anyway...a post on that coming up soon.

A Year In The Life - Day 251, January 27, 2015

A shot of the classroom closet, as we have run out of room keeping furs and unskinned animals alike out of reach of Ada, the roaming dogs, subzero temps outside, and full freezers inside...

A Year In The Life - Day 250, January 26, 2015

Today I have crossed a line...the trapline selfie.....

A Year In The Life - Day 249, January 25, 2015

More bitter cold today, once again -33 just before sunrise.  Haven't had precipitation in a long time, but everything is covered in frozen condensation, like this bush I walked right into today while setting another wolverine set.

A Year In The Life - Day 248, January 24, 2015

Temps have finally gotten around to winter-like, and it has held around -20 to -33 every morning for a while now.  When it gets like this, the open holes in the river ice (any ice) betray themselves by sending up a cloud of vapor, which always intensifies as the sun comes up.  Bad ju ju.....

A Year In The Life - Day 247, January 23, 2015

Well, we may have been foiled by the wolverine this time, but the fox keep on coming as usual...Warren was happy to help dad on skinning this one.  A proud little boy...

A Year In The Life - Day 246, January 22, 2015

Perhaps the most discouraging pic of the day I have posted yet...Uppa went and checked sets today and found this.  Yes, that's the spruce teepee the wolverine set is on.  Just BEHIND that mess of backing.  Today's temps dropped down to -25 and no wind.  Scent apparently did no good in those conditions, and he was on the blind side...but those are wolverine tracks in the foreground paralleling our trail.  Grrrrrrrr....

A Year In The Life - Day 245, January 21, 2015

A pic of the wolverine cubby set, redone.  Spruce limbs left on for backing, hopefully guiding him to the open log.  110 set between the 330 and the bait to hopefully snap any marten that get there first...

A Year In The Life - Day 244, January 20, 2015

A sled dog yard in the afternoon sub-zero glow.  This one has been 'abandoned' for the winter - the dogs are moved to a more sheltered spot in the truly cold weather - but they'll be back come spring and summer.

A Year In The Life - Day 243, January 19, 2015

Today we have an odd pic, but one I found amusing.  The twisted sort of stuff bush folk can find amusing... So, we have undergone a shrew epidemic in the house.  They are everywhere...all of a sudden.  We have been catching them in all corners of the house ever since the cold came back to the Great North.  WIth our now extensive experience trapping them, I have learned something.  They are INCREDIBLY cannibalistic.  I.e., when we catch one overnight in a mouse trap, by morning another one will have drug the deceased AND the trap over to some miniscule hole and tried to pull the whole mess through!  This, repeatedly.  So, I decided to capitalize on this.  I came up with what Sarah appropriately calls the 'Graveyard set'.  How great a moniker is that?!  Here's the set:  Take a caught (dead) shrew still in a mousetrap, and place it shrew side down on top of a Glue board mouse trap.  His brethren will come to take a bite out of him for dinner, and voila!  Another dead shrew.  One at a time.  Repeat.  Quite literally, until the glue board is full.  Then replace.  This can be only minutes between one victim and when a newcomer comes to join in the fray.  Pretty soon, you have an entire glue trap full of shrews.  Hence, the 'Graveyard' appropriateness.  Think I'm kidding?

Well, first, check out the (I thought so) hilarious set of texts we sent back and forth this morning.  Just glancing at them makes me laugh out loud. Including the following one about the moose, which I could see from the window at school, but anyway: S's in white, mine in green...

And here is a pic of what she was describing:  Wowza!  That's right, 5 on there, including the one in the original trap (BAIT), without much room for a sixth.  Yeah, I know most would find shrews in the house disgusting - and yeah, it might be - but here in the bush, it's just another winter full of the same old stuff.  And they always come back when it gets cold.   So far we have caught red-backed voles, lemmings, and now these guys in the house this winter.  Just think, if we get a field mouse, we'll have hit the mini-rodent-trapping Grand Slam!! 

A Year In The Life - Day 242, January 18, 2015

Life is tough in the wild.  So tough, that when your dinner has quills in it...you STILL eat it anyway...

A Year In The Life - Day 241, January 17, 2015

Into the storm we went...

A Year In The Life - Day 240, January 16, 2015

A shot of a trail to nowhere...

A Year In The Life - Day 239, January 15, 2015

Even the white spot on the end of the tail was, well.... Red.  A beauty.

A Year In The Life - Day 238, January 14, 2015

There used to be some moose around here... (there are no less than 9 rubbed trees in this pic, all made back in the Fall...)

A Year In The Life - Day 237, January 13, 2015

Today is a sequence of pics of Abram strolling around in his hand-me-down parka that Sarah made from fox that I trapped a few years ago in Pilot Station.  Originally it was for Warren, but his arms never caught up with his torso while it still fit him, and so he didn't really get to wear it.  It seems to fit Abram just fine, however.  Fully lined with fox, it surely can roast him out in all but the coldest temps...if we would ever get any that is...

A Year In The Life - Day 236, January 12, 2015

Warren making his way up the hill on some ice where water has been seeping with all this warm weather.  They are some serious crampons, that is for sure.  He calls them his 'raptor' feet - as in 'velociraptor'...

A Year In The Life - Day 235, January 11, 2015

By this point in the season, to make a mink set you basically have to catch one investigating a beaver dam or find a hole in some ice where the water has dropped down and left a gap between the creek and the bottom of the ice.  Not this year, though...the creeks are still open, you just find sign and set on it...My pocket set is in under the tree in a flowerpot, and Uppa's is up under the grass pod at right.

He left us a nice trail for evidence...we fully expect to have him when we check next.

A Year In The Life - Day 234, January 10, 2015

A shot from the line today.  Hardly a dusting of snow.  Travel was horrible, and due to Uppa's overheating machine, we only made about 5 miles in as many hours over one stretch.

A Year In The Life - Day 233, January 9, 2015

Well, back-to-back sledding pics may not be the greatest, but this shot of some brotherly love is worth it.

A Year In The Life - Day 232, January 8, 2015

A sledding shot for today.  Lately this is the boys' preferred method of travel.

And so the line goes...

Been a while since updating, so figured it was time to catch up.  Classes have begun again and so time is shorter than it was earlier in the Christmas break.  Checks have been regular, usually on a two day run.  Sending my machine for a swim delayed things a mite on one gap in there, but as the pics of the day showed a bit ago, she is purring once more.  Here's some of the recent fun.  Some are repeats from recent pics of the day, but I'm sure that not everyone is checking all of those out...

The scene, when there is basically no snow on the tundra:

Got so warm (40-ish) for a spell that the beavers were coming out from under the ice to forage...they better get back in before that hole freezes...the following cold front moved in quick...

The mule...

Traps won't fire when they're frozen...damn rain, followed by frigid below-zero temps...

Sun hits ice, melting water vaporizes in the -15 temps, then freezes, and voila.  Game of jacks, anyone?

One toe is all you need...gotta love a snappy little # 1...

Oops..this was as she was being drug out...

This is what it looks like when a fox gets into one of your marten tip-up sets!!...

Porky-pine slayer!

Frosty Red.  A great way to be greeted on ANY morning...

 Marten tip-up set before:

Marten tip-up set after:

He's a beaut!!

Uppa's first fox = happy trapper!!  Good thing he got it, too...I got skunked that day..again!!

More pics to come.  Due to trapcheckers (other than us that is) we pulled most of the southern line and will be shifting north.  Posts to follow...

A Year In The Life - Day 231, January 7, 2015

One of the weasel trapping locations we have a set is under a building here in town.  I noticed today that the warm air escaping out of the panel we remove to check the trap was growing some nice ice crystals.  No weasel, so I had to take a picture of something... :D

A Year In The Life - Day 230, January 6, 2015

Another sundog greeted us this morning...snow in the near forecast usually does it...those rainbows aren't on the camera lens...they were down on the river.

A Year In The Life - Day 229, January 5, 2015

The pic says it all.  Well, the two of them. :)

A Year In The Life - Day 228, January 4, 2015

The recent warm spell had beavers actually leaving their lodges and underwater domain to forage on land.  Even now that the cold snap has come back, the evidence is undeniable: