One year there were 20 roosters shot on the first day of hunting on our farm. The limit was 2 birds per hunter per day, and sometimes 9 hunters got their limit in the first ten minutes of hunting. When I was 14 years old I purchased my first shotgun, a 12 gauge single barrel. On the first day I had numerous misses when I finally hit my first one. I was 13 years old when I got my first 22 caliber rifle. I used to shoot a lot of sparrows out of trees on our farm. Sparrow hunting helped Don VandenBosch and myself to qualify as experts on the rifle range while in army basic training later on.
My dad used to talk about his trapping days during the “Roaring 20’s” when furs were in style in the U.S. and Europe. Muskrat hides were bringing top dollars in those days. When I was 16 years old I asked my dad if I could use the 36 traps that were still hanging in the barn. He agreed to show me how to set them on the first day of the season which was December one. I asked him how many muskrats I could expect to catch in a season. He said you could usually figure one for every trap you set out. I went out and purchased 6 dozen more traps. The first day of the trapping season we spent most of the day setting the traps in our local drain ditches. We decided to go out and check the 100 traps on Saturday night. That night there were 21 muskrats in the traps, many still alive. There was no trapping on Sunday so we waited until Monday morning to check them again. This time we had 19 more. I didn’t go to school and instead spent the skinning muskrats with my dad. We made out good that year with 100 muskrats.
Thinking back on those days, I can see where the animal rights activists would not agree with our method of trapping with the steel jaw traps. These folks would often demonstrate in the big cities protesting the use of fur. Sometimes the female demonstrators would remove their own “furs” to make their point.
Bob Essenburg