Duane Poupart Sr. traps animals because it connects him to wild country, his family, and helps keep animals in balance.

Higher fur prices are drawing more trappers into the woods.  But, besides the money, Duane Poupart Sr. from the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwa reservation traps because it connects him to the land and a way of life.  Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network joins Duane Poupart Sr. on the trap line. to listen to the five minute story, click here

 

 

There’s snow on the ground as Duane Poupart Sr. walks into some thick, overhanging woods on the   Lac du Flambeau Chippewa Reservation.

 

He’s wearing green wool coveralls, and carrying some traps, along with  a small wooden box, and a hand ax  in a white five gallon bucket.

 

“This is the last of our woods here country that we have on the reservation. We’re down in the Bear River Country right  now. As you can see there’s just blow downs here.  It’s tribal land. So. Nobody really gonna bother your stuff back here. That’s why I come down here. You know. There’s a lot of stories down here. My grandfather used to bring me hunting down here when I was a kid. Pick berries, cut our basswood for carving decoys down here.  There’s just a few spots to find that the river here. But it’s here.  We’ll get rolling now.”

 

Nobody has logged this territory on the west side of the reservation.  And Poupart hopes nobody ever does. Poupart is concerned because the east side of the reservation has been  almost completely developed. 

 

“My prediction.  I think this’ll be good, but the rest of the reservation, the lakeshores, all our hunting areas are gonna be gone maybe  within fifteen years you know. I’ve seen it go really bad here in six-seven years.  So I figure maybe ten years there won’t be any hunting around here."

 

But the swamps and heavy cover in these woods still offer sanctuary to smaller animals.

The fisher lives here, too…a large and dark and ferocious member of the weasel family.

 

Poupart explains why he’s trapping the fisher.

 

“One of the reasons I’m  trapping this year is, well, the price came up, and over the few years I like to snare rabbits and hunt grouse, and I haven’t seen too many porcupines around, and this gives me the opportunity to maybe control this a little bit, to knock down this population around here. It’s a very serious killer out there in the woods. It’s a predator.”

 

Poupart has been trapping since he was sixteen and got his drivers license.  Now he’s forty seven years old.  It takes awhile, he says, to learn the habits of animals, like the fisher.

 

“He’s always running around.  Kind of funny.  Sometimes when they come in the woods sometimes  he follows me right in there. You know, right from the main road. There’re up and down the roads looking for food. They’re following…I had tracks right on my tracks.  And that was a good sign for me because I knew I was going to get something, see.”

 

Poupart learned about trapping and attention to detail  from his grandpa and his father-in-law Pete Christiansen.

 

“I learned a lot of stuff off him. You know.  I used to go down there and look at his catches muskrat and mink.  You know that kind of got my blood going. My wife came along t0o and checked my stuff.”

 

Poupart checks a trap he put up in the air on a log to lure in a fisher.  It’s empty. 

 

So he chops some balsam for poles to anchor another trap in a ground set.

  

“Wanna get that in there aways.  Make sure there’s no knots to slow you down and trip your trap.”

 

He sets a Conibear folding killer trap inside the small box he brought along.  He baits with a small chunk of deer meat and covers the set with balsam boughs.  By enclosing the trap in a box he can avoid trapping other creatures.

 

“That’s why you gotta take a little time hiding your stuff, not only from humans, but others, eagles, owls, you don’t want dem guys to get caught, so you gotta cover this up.”

 

Set this way, inside a box, Poupart says the conibear is an effective and deadly trap on fisher. Poupart demonstrates the trap by setting it off with stick.

 

“This way here I’ve got a chance to crush his ribcage. Or get him around the neck. And it’s all over with. You know. There ain’t much suffering.  I’m gonna snap this here.  You're gonna hear  and see how it sounds. Like I said now it’s kind of slow.  But once they’re waxed you really gotta respect your trap. I had the triggers set a little wide in case that ermine comes through there.  But here’s…SNAP.  Now, that’s probably a one inch stick there.  A three quarter inch stick and see how that don’t come out of there.  Now that’s a bad trap right there. About three quarter inch of closure.  There’s a lot of force there in a short spring.  That’s why you use body traps.  You’re not going to lose any animals.  Once they snap or get by there, then you gotta go to Plan B.  Probably won’t get’em again.  Like a muskie you know.  Hook him a little bit, pick his mouth, or whatever, he’s gonna learn.  That’s just the way it is.  But that’s some power there.”

 

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network.

 

web design by Sandy Lyon