A fur trapper is a person who is involved the capture of wild mammals for their fur. Trapping was a popular trade particularly in colonial times of North America. Many locations at which fur trading took place were referred to as trading posts.

Trapping continues to be a profession although few people make a full-time living from it. Fur harvest by trapping is the most effective way of controlling predator species. Without it, many predators would quickly overpopulate. In farmland areas coyotes and foxes are beginning to really hit the livestock hard. Especially the coyotes, with their nasty habit of killing valuable milking cows and calves, are being poisoned, shot, or shot at. Unless you are completeley insane, you would see the poisoning of coyotes as a terrible deed. Healthy coyotes can turn to sheep or cows and foxes to poultry or piglets if their wilderness homes are not big enough to contain their rapidly growing population. Not enough prey can cause the starving carnivores to come in closer to people in search of food. A big male coyote can weigh over 60 pounds, and their jaws can snap a cow's leg off wit one crushing bite. Coyotes are potentially dangerous animals, and although no attacks by coyotes on people have been recorded, many small household pets have been snatched practically out of the very arms of their owners. To solve this problem and make it easier for wild coyotes to find food, a number of them must be killed in order to make room for the others. trapping by leghold metal traps (properly called foothold traps) must be used to catch the clever nocturnal hunters. Hunting of coyotes is never a humane or effective way to harvest coyotes. Too many animals are shot and wounded by an off-target hunter, often crippling the animal and forcing it to hunt easier game. Unfortunateley, pet dogs, cats, livestock, poultry and other domestic animals usually fall into this category. Trapping is indeed neccesary to control the predator populations, but many smartass hunters and trappers take it to an abusive level. Some individuals overtrap certain small populations and family groups, wiping out the animals in that particular area. Especially effected by overtrapping is the North American lynx, which had smaller original populations than prey species like rabbit. Binomial name Canis latrans Say, 1823 A coyote (Canis latrans) is a member of the Canidae (the dog family) and a relative of the domestic dog. ... A Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) A fox is a member of any of 27 species of small omnivorous canids. ... Sheep are commonly bred as livestock. ... Binomial name Bos taurus Linnaeus, 1758 Rainbow arching over a paddock of cattle Cattle are domesticated ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. ... Categories: Animal stubs ... Poisoned is a free peer-to-peer computer program for Mac OS X. It is a frontend to giFT, and currently supports the OpenFT, FastTrack and Gnutella protocols, using the third-party gift-fasttrack plugin. ... The term shot may refer to: Look up shot on Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... INSANE is a proprietary INteractive Streaming ANimation Engine developped by LucasArts. ... Species See text. ... Ducks amongst other poultry The Poultry-dealer, after Cesare Vecellio. ... Species Sus barbatus Sus bucculentus Sus cebifrons Sus celebensis Sus domesticus Sus heureni Sus philippensis Sus salvanius Sus scrofa Sus timoriensis Sus verrucosus Pigs are ungulates native to Eurasia collectively grouped under the genus Sus within the Suidae family. ... Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana, United States Wilderness is land that has not been significantly modified by direct or indirect human activity. ... Prey can refer to: Look up Prey in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A prey animal eaten by a predator in an act called predation. ... The range of the lynx. ...

Some trappers still (and illegally) use foothold traps with teeth or serrated edges on the jaws. These traps were banned years ago and are just one way to make a perfectly fine way of trapping into a bloody massacre. I, as a trapper, am against this type of device, and the animals' honorable life should end honorably as well. The traps that I and every other good-hearted predator trapper use have smooth jaws that do cause a cut on the paw of thin-skinned animals, like foxes, but keep blood to a minimum. Any trapper is required to check his sets at time intervals that are set by the state's police. The check time at the area where I trap is 24 hours. During the trapping season I get up at 5 o'clock am to check the traps. This method lets an animal that was caught at night struggle for at the most 5 hours, but seldom that long. an hour or two would be my estimate for the time a predator would spend with one of my traps on it's foot. The smooth-jaw design numbs the foot of the captured animal, and so the animal only feels pain for two or three minutes. I have seen pictures and video-recordings of coyotes, foxes and raccoons sleeping while in the trap. Probably the most argued detail of trapping by animal-rights personnel is the death of the animal. True, the animal needs to be killed to take the skin, but an honorable trapper will kill his quarry with a minimum of struggle by the animal. The fastest and best way to dispatch a captures predator is to shoot it's brain cavity with a .22 caliber rifle. This offers a painless death to abeautiful creature that deserves a painless passing. Another widley used method is the striking of the animal's snout, whick will paralyze the captured animal's sensutive nerves in the nose, rendering it unconcious. Then, immediatley following the animal's faint, another strike is directed to the animal's skull, right over the brain, causing as fast a death as the shooting. Again the animal feels no pain in it's death, and this method canbe used where laws prohibit the use of a firearm. But alas, some smartass trapper comes along and obsessed with the idea of killing. This kind of trapper commonly makes the animal suffer, like using a shotgun, a knife, beheading the animal, knocking out the animal and letting it bleed, or simply leaving the catch in the trap until some other predator comes along and rips it to shreds. These trappers should not be allowed to trap.

Pressure from animal rights groups has led to restrictions on trapping, usually in the favor of the animals. The idea of trapping is not to kill, but to make the animal experience a painless death. But sometimes they go too far, saying that the sport is inhumane. Well, suppose we did stop trapping. Suppose the trappers all just gave up and stopped. How the heck are you going to control coyotes, foxes, raccoons, opossums, skunks, muskrats, mink, marten, fisher, beaver, bobcat,and ermine? Are you going to hunt them? GOOD LUCK! Almost all of these animals are nocturnal, are secreticve and are small, being hard to hit. and how many do you think you are going to take by hunting? Not enough to make a dent. The only time that an animal will have a gory, inhumane death is when one of those smartass trappers come along. It is the prohibition of these cruel methods that will stop the suffering, not the prohibition of trapping itself! The logo of the Great Ape Project, which is campaigning for a Declaration on Great Apes. ...