As a trapper it irritates me to read this over and over on this forum. Why do people with no experience assume things and consider it fact. Besides all the reading I have done I have first hand experience. Lets start with Research studies such as Guthery and Beasoms Texas study in 1978. They reported neck snares were about 12 times more selective than foothold traps for capturing predatory mammals. Look it up. Now someone is bound to site some other study but how experienced were the trappers? I have found that I can avoid most all unwanted catches. It is a measure of success. If every morning when I walk my trap line I had a bunch of skunks and possums I wouldn't have much to sell at auction come March. Here is a copy and paste from The National Agricultural Safety Database Snaring is a useful technique to capture animals that cause economic loss, such as coyotes that kill livestock and beavers that cut trees or plug irrigation ditches. Snaring also is popular for harvesting surplus furbearers, one of our renewable natural resources. Snares are effective for capturing target animals, but may capture non-target animals such as deer and dogs if used improperly. Heavy on the "if used improperly". The point is when I am Bass fishing I catch bass not trout. Due to the fact I am at a bass pond using bass lures. Is it possible to accidently catch a trout....yes. However not likley. If I do I let it go if possible, if not guess I am eating trout tonight. In closing just because you don't think it is selective or you lack the ability to be selective does not make it so. When I read things like this it concerns me to think about all the advice people recieve on this forum and its merit. Are you irritated by the arm chair experts? Whats your 2 cents?
3rd, if we hunters left the antlers in the woods, then the anti hunters would jump up can yell for waisting antlers!
yeah, we hang them on the wall, or use them for rattling...you cant eat them..what else to do with them?
its just a bunch of know nothings acting like they know something so they can throw it at us to try and make us look bad...when they are wrong!
maggie-
do you know what the cow goes through before you pick it up in drive thru at burgerking?
Traps are non selective
It is the skill of the trapper that will determine how many non targets he gets
No opinion on snares I don't use them in my line of work
But what you sat is interesting enough to me to research them to see if I can
The problem is any stupid idiot can buy a trap and leave it where it should never be - and when some poor doggie gets caught they blame the 'professional trapper'. There is no other profession in the world with this problem.
If an idiot buys a surgical knife and tries to do a home abortion - notice they do not blame surgeons, do they?
Yet someone buys a trap at a hardware store and puts it in a bad place - bam! - it's those darn trappers who are at it again.
99% of the time the person doing it does not have a trapping license. go figure.
If a person hops into a small plane with no training and crashes it - you would never read in the paper how pilots are poor fliers, would you?
Here in Oklahoma, they just legalized otter trapping for one reason: Beaver trapper were accidentally catching them, and wardens were tired of ticketing the trappers, who didn't INTEND to catch them.