YATES CENTER — The outside world of trapping fills the exhibit hall at the Woodson County fairgrounds this weekend with the 44th annual state convention of the Kansas Fur Harvesters.
Ambling around are men wearing camo shirts, slouch hats and stubbly beards. And do I smell a skunk?
Indeed.
The smell attracts coyotes and bobcats, though rural legend has it repels fleas and other pests. Most lures have a hint of aroma de skunk.
Scores of bottles line the tables of vendors.
JIM POWELL, who farms and ranches near Atlanta, southeast of Wichita, promotes trapping and is quick on the draw when anyone asks about the age-old occupation turned sport.
At age 73, “I’ve slowed down some, but I can still get up and down a creek bank with most anyone,” he said. He proved his nimbleness and expertise with a photo of 147 coyotes pelts, all caught last winter, in the back of his pickup.
“Buy a raffle ticket, $5 each or six for $20, to help us support efforts” to keep trapping from going extinct, he told a full-bearded fellow sidling up to his table. He allowed some states already have outlawed trapping, usually those with “three or four big cities where people don’t know what tapping is all about.”
If the right button were pushed, Powell would continue to explain that trapping had as much to do as Lewis and Clark in exploring and opening the West in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Powell began to trap small animals when he was a small lad of 7.
“I caught a few possums and skunks,” but didn’t get into trapping in a big way until several years later when his daily route from the family farm took him across several culverts. “I thought, ‘Why not set a few traps to check on the way to work.’”
Dropping down to inspect such a site, Powell spotted unfamiliar tracks in the soft mud.
He set a few traps. The next morning two were holding mink.
He was hooked tighter than the mink were.
Last winter he took the 147 coyotes from his ranch and in excursions to southwest Kansas and Arizona. Also succumbing to his expertise were 26 bobcats.
One coyote was particularly memorable.
A rancher near Liberal asked Powell to thin the coyote population, and soon after arriving he and the rancher noticed a cow obviously looking for a newborn calf. They looked, too, and coming over a rise a big dog coyote bolted from where it had eaten part of the calf.
“I caught him that night,” Powell said.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better life, or a better wife,” Powell said, explaining his spouse was handy at fleshing and stretching furs. “When you catch as much as I do, it takes a lot of skinning.”
He takes in $5,000-$6,000 most winters from fur sales.
TRAPPERS from Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota and elsewhere in Kansas were to give demonstrations on how to make otter, bobcat, coyotes, coon and predator sets this morning. This afternoon at 2 o’clock women will test their arm strength in a skillet-tossing contest, followed by a trap-setting contest.
All will wind down and close up by noon Sunday.
