Doug Reeves remembers his first time as though it were yesterday.
“The first thing I ever caught was an ermine, a white weasel,” said Reeves, assistant chief of the Department Natural Resources’ Wildlife Division and a lifelong trapper. “I sold it for 50 cents to a traveling fur buyer. To me that was big time.”
He was 9 years old. And he was hooked. The next year he got three traps and starting chasing muskrats. He progressed from there.
“Back then you had to be 12 years old to trap beaver,” he said. “The first one I got I brought home in the basket of my sister’s fat-tire bike.”
Now, 50 years later, Reeves is still trapping – muskrats, raccoons, coyotes, fox – just about everything.
“You have to learn a lot,” Reeves said. “The learning curve is very steep. The element of exploration and discovery is a lot of fun. It’s a blast. I just love it.”
Reeves isn’t alone. In Michigan, trapping is growing in popularity.
According to DNR records, just more than 10,000 people bought a fur harvester license in 1994. Two decades later, that number has tripled.
“It’s been increasing,” said Adam Bump, the DNR’s furbearer specialist. “Some of it may be because of pelt prices. When you have generally increasing pelt prices, you have an increase in trapping and the last three or four years the pelt prices for muskrats have been near or at record highs. But price for every species varies on its own, so just because ’rat prices are up, that doesn’t mean they all are.”
Indeed, it’s not all about fur prices, said Dale Hendershot, president of the 1,200-member Michigan Trappers and Predator Callers Association, one of three fur-taker associations in the state. A 64-year-old retired diesel mechanic from Gladwin who’s been trapping since he was 14, Hendershot said “the vast majority of trappers are not professionals.” Read more
