Originally Posted by
Weak Kitten
I understand your point Xulld when it comes to trapping on private land. However this was public property, an open park where anyone from a troop of boyscouts to someone's grandfather could have stumbled into it.
I agree completely. In practice putting traps where people can unintentionally trigger them is bad mojo. Public or private land is really the same in the sense that most people do not know when they are on one or the other without fences and signage.
Originally Posted by
Weak Kitten
I will also point out that part of making a good trap is making it difficult for the animals to notice. If you made the trap well and didn't mark it for humans then it is certainly just as likely to catch a human as any other animal.
Animals are notoriously bad at getting used to anything that has been in there environment for many days on end. You could paint your trap bright orange with pink poka dots and use chrome and still catch any animal if the trap had been there long enough for them to become desensitized to its presence.
Originally Posted by
Weak Kitten
Do you expect people to spend all of their time in the wood watching carefully for hair thin trip wires, covered pits and bear traps buried under dirt and leaves? That seems unnecessary to me, trap hunting is not an essential activity and the benefits just don't outweigh the risks.
Not at all, but really as soon as I saw that picture in the OP I would have been on high alert. Traps for animals really do not need to be overly hidden to be effective, however some of the best traps use very little engineering and just by the fact that they are simple, they are often hard to detect, unlike the trap in the OP.
Like I said, I have very mixed feelings about traps when it comes to non-survival situations. Even with good signage, or warnings that is just no guarantee the hapless person will even see the warnings.
Given that hunting is sooo highly regulated anymore trapping has become mostly a thing of the past, and so has the skills used to avoid them, I think that is a problem. What to do, not sure.
Mostly my desire to post in this thread was really just to express my own mixed feelings, not take any given side.
Imagine for a moment that this trap was set and hidden under leaves.
I would have a much harder time even seeing this vs what was in the OP.
In some states you can still hunt with these traps.
Originally Posted by
Howie Felterbush
Not sure where you got this information, but it's
wrong.
Traps like the one in the picture are illegal, and some states have outlawed leghold traps, but just about all fifty states allow some kind of trapping for furbearing animals.
You know, I have only hunted in a handful of states, but everyone I have has regulated trapping to the point of scarcity. I guess I could have been more specific. Restrictive law to me is not far from a
ban. My statement was very poor, but I still believe the theme. Trapping has been restricted almost to death.
Good information, thanks!