TRAPS: Time to ban them
I’m a hunter, and I am all about hunting rights, but trapping is non-discriminate. You never know what will wander into a trap. It is equivalent to setting up a shotgun in the woods with trip wires and a string on the trigger. You should be required to identify your prey before dispatching it.
Leg hold traps were bad enough because the animal suffers for as long as it takes you to check your traps. But at least if your dog gets caught in one and you happen to hear them yelp and find them, you can release them unharmed. That trap now hangs on my wall.
I have never believed in trapping because of this cruelty. Conibear traps kill quickly but there is still the problem of dogs and cats getting trapped. And I cannot believe that these “accidents” are tolerated. The state requires that your name and address be on your traps. That’s good, so when you find your dog dead you know who to visit in the wee hours of the morning.
It’s all about the greed of the Fish and Game Department, and selling more licenses and tags. They say that trappers must set traps 5 feet from any trail. Since when do dogs stick to the trail? I think Conibear traps will be the death of trapping after more pets die. There have probably been a lot of dogs that just disappeared and now we have a good idea why.
There were even states so greedy to sell tags that they considered legalizing blind hunting. No, not hunting from a blind, but blind people hunting. They were to have a rifle with a laser, and a spotter to see the dot on the deer. This denotes the extent of the Fish and Game greed.
Trapping is just like blind hunting: You never know what that bullet is going to hit, and you never know what you will find dead in your traps. Mark my words, one day a child will die from a Conibear trap. It’s too bad it will take that to happen for people to get some common sense.
This is not the 19th century. People and their dogs cover every part of this country hiking and camping and hunting, and now we have to worry that some idiot has his Conibear booby traps all over the rural recreational areas of our state.
If you want a coyote or a fox or a marten, get out there with a rifle and shoot one. It is time to ban trapping.
EUGENE SANT
Arimo