Quotes About Trapping

Aside from the 48 known mountain lions reported to FWP as incidentally trapped in Montana in the 2 recent years and despite the Montana Trapper’s Association promoting the legal trapping of them, what else is happening to trapped mountain lions?

They are anti-trapping, anti-God, anti-hunting and anti-ranching.

I have recently accepted a Field Director Position with this organization and hope to use the heft of the USSA (US Sportsmen’s Alliance) to drive the anti’s out of Montana. – Toby Walrath, Presidents Report, Montana Trappers Association, October 2014 Newsletter

The days of trapping are over. It’s now time to preserve Montana’s wildlife. – Chuck Jonkel, renown wildlife biologist and former trapper

Our public lands are just that, PUBLIC lands and therefore every citizen has as much right to use those lands in relative safety without fear of traps and snares strewn across the landscape waiting for unsuspecting victims. – Steve Clevidence, 7th generation Montana rancher

FWP regulates furbearer trapping seasons for recreational harvest opportunities. Montana’s harvest seasons are not based on reducing or controlling disease. – Brian Giddings, fur-bearer coordinator for FWP (e-mail response to Footloose Montana, March 16, 2009)

We trappers do cause pain and suffering to animals and apologize to no one. – Dennis “Foothold” Schutz, former Vice President of the Montana Trappers Association (MTA) wrote in Missoulian guest column.

Fundamental to ethical hunting is the idea of fair chase. This concept addresses the balance between the hunter and the hunted. It is a balance that allows hunters to occasionally succeed while animals generally avoid being taken. – Beyond Fair Chase: The Ethic and Tradition of Hunting, by Jim Posewitz

Even when all regions’ quotas are filled, the poachers keep right on trapping; skin their bobcats, discard the bulky carcass, freeze only the skull and pelt, to be turned in the next year’s trapping season, for tagging; as if it has just been trapped. Some wardens, call those early season cats “freezer bobcats” knowing they were illegally trapped the year before, but hard to prosecute. – To many Illegal trappers, not enough bobcats by Larry Rose, Montana licensed fur buyer, trapper and licensed taxidermist since 1966. Ravalli Republic Letter to the editor, February 5, 2014

I’ve found leghold traps and snares set right across the border from Glacier National Park, where our densest and most robust wolverine population in the Lower 48 holds on. Those traps could catch a coyote or bobcat, whose future is not at immediate risk, but they could just as readily take out a wolverine, lynx, or ever rarer fisher. – Douglas Chadwick, author of The Wolverine Way

Snares around carcasses and exposed baits also result in snared eagles which will walk to and from carcasses through snare sets. Cold weather trapping WILL result in frozen feet on target and non-target animals and birds. Trapping in extremely hot weather will cause dehydration and death to target and non-target animals and birds – again requiring vigilance in checking traps and snares often. – Carter Niemeyer, former wildlife trapper and wolf reintroduction coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, author of Wolfer, A Memoir

Trapping is done with the use of leghold “soft catch” traps and is NOT done in the winter, in order to prevent frozen paws. – Montana Wolf biologist, Liz Bradley, personal communication

Take Action

Help us end the suffering.

DONATE