Let’s step back in time to just after World War II, to a December setting along Coal Creek east of Humboldt. I TRAPPED for years after Beverly and I were married, and often Christmas gift-giving depended on the size of my fur check.
Limbs bare of leaves fork into an overcast sky like bony, arthritis-ridden fingers; underground tangles grab at legs. The stream, its water dark from decomposed hardwood leaves, flows at a snail’s pace, its nature in the doldrums of winter.
A man dressed in overalls and with hip waders pulled high trudges along, followed by a lad warmly dressed, topped by a woolen watch cap that was a gift from his dad, just home from the war.
At a shallow spot, the man hoists the little boy onto this back and wades across to the other bank, where a drowned muskrat is held by a single spring steel trap.
Thus was born my infatuation with trapping.
My great-granddad Oliphant spent several months a year buying pelts along the Mississippi River in the late 1800s and granddad Oliphant, who first introduced me, began trapping muskrats and possums when he was a kid in southern Missouri. Dad never had a hand in trapping until after the war, but caught on quickly.
In the 1950s muskrats seemed to take up residence in every farm pond in the country and were such a nuisance some farmers offered a bounty to anyone willing to deal with the pests. Muskrats are burrowing animals and when they dig dens it weakens a pond dam. Also, cattle have been known to suffer leg injuries from stepping on dens, shallow enough that they collapse under the animals’ weight.
Then, raccoons were relatively rare, and it was unusual to catch more than a few in a season. That changed when farming became big business and scores of farm houses — quarter-section farms became a rarity — were abandoned. Given access to easy living, the animals’ numbers quickly increased.
Nowadays a bum back and arthritic shoulders have taken me from the trapline, but I still recall seasons of catching a good many bobcats, coyotes, fox and mink, as well as muskrats and coons.
Even so, when cold weather arrives, trees shed their leaves and gray skies are the norm, I still have a hankering to pull on a pair of waders, throw some traps in the truck and head for the country.
Running trapline in my blood
