District 3 (2/08) 

District 10 (10-07)

"Turn Them In"  - Scott McAuley

 Photos 9/03

BOD & Membership Mtg Minutes

District #3  2/08

It has been somewhat of a normal winter this year here in the northwoods. Southern Wisconsin has sure seen their share of snow though. Regardless of conditions and fur prices, I hope that you’ve all been able to get out and do a little trapping. As always, I am sure that Mother Nature will throw us some ugly weather in March.

I apologize for not recognizing a couple folks in my last reports. Our district was the recipient of the 2007 membership drive traveling plaque. Collectively we got 72 new WTA members in 2007! The top 2 individuals to get new members to join were both from District 3. Ron Sromek received the 1st place award followed closely by Jeff Anderson. Great job guys!

I want to remind all of you who your county directors are. These are the people who you should contact if you have comments, concerns, or issues that you want the district to deal with. You are always more than welcome to contact me too. Iron County-Jeff Wilson(715) 776-0081, Vilas County-Robert Parsons(715) 479-9106, Oneida County-Dan Nimsgern(715) 356-1329, Lincoln County-Ken Crass(715) 453-2457, Price County-Doug Hilgart(715) 762-8304, and Taylor County-Ron Sromek(715) 785-7595

By the time you read this we will have had our winter meeting. It was held on Thursday February 21st at The Taj Mahal in Rhinelander. I hope that many of you were able to attend and that you found it beneficial. Your input is what makes the WTA and our district run the way you want it to. I appreciate your involvement. This may be my last year as the district director. So if you have interest in leading the district please keep it in mind.

Klondike Days was held in Eagle River on February 16-17th. WTA was there to show what we do and tell people how important trapping is. I appreciate the help that some of you lent by working at the booth.

Remember that the WTA spring banquet will be held on Saturday March 15th at Stoney Creek Inn in Wausau. This is a great event for the whole family. Be sure to make your reservations early. Call Ken Kasper at (920) 446-3815 for tickets. Lots more information about this event is in this issue of the Wisconsin Trapper.

Be sure to get those new trappers into a Trapper Education course and schedule your classes early. You can view the upcoming scheduled of courses on the DNR and WI Trapper websites. Feel free to contact me if you have questions or if you are planning on holding a class. Be sure to let Nicke Schumaker know when your class will be held so that she can get it posted. You can reach her at (920) 737-2826. Remember that education is the key to the future of trapping.

Our District summer rendezvous, combined with Districts 1 and 2, will be held on Saturday June 14th at the Lions Club Park in Hawkins Wisconsin. Hawkins in right off of HWY 8 about 20 miles east of Ladysmith. Be sure to attend if at all possible. This is a new location for us, and I think it will be a fantastic location for our event. We plan to put together a lot of great activities and demonstrations for the day. Raffle tickets for the event are available. We have 7 guns on the raffle this year: #1 WTA limited edition Henry .44 rifle, Weatherby Vanguard .223, Savage .270 with scope, Benelli Nova 12 gauge, Savage .17 HMR, CVA .50 Cal., Ruger 10/22. Tickets are $5 each or 5 for $20. Be sure to sell lots of tickets. This is how we make much of our money for the district. Call me if you need more tickets.

That’s about all for this time. I hope you all have a good spring!
John Gillen
 

District 10 chose dates for our winter and summer rendezvous at our summer meeting. We will have our winter meeting again at NAFA on March 1, 2008. Last year Greg Schroeder showed us how coon, rats, and coyotes were graded. This year we will see grading on a few other species of furbearers. We voted to raffle 3 Ruger 10-22’s and rumor has it there will also be some really nice door prizes for those that attend the meeting. We had a good turn out last year. Mark it on your calendars again for this year. It is a good time.


We will be looking for a location around Brodhead for our summer rendezvous. Members want to move the summer rendezvous around the district, so all have a chance to attend meetings that are close to their home. I will update you as we find a spot. The date that was chosen was August 23, 2008.



Our district will hold a 50:50 coon raffle at NAFA this coming fall. We encourage each trapper in the district to donate at least one coon to the raffle. Just drop the coon off at NAFA and specify that you want it donated to the District 10, 50:50 coon raffle. Proceeds will be split between the district and a drawing will be held to select the lucky trapper that will take home the other 50% of the proceeds. It is a fun raffle and will allow our district to do more good things for trapping in Wisconsin.

Scot Stewart






 

District 3 -

John Gillen,  August 07 Report

What a spring and summer. Life has been busy for me. Fist off I want to let all of you know that I do not have an email account right now so you will just have to write or call me. I have also moved. We are currently building a home, and sold our old house so we are back to apartment life for a few months. We will be in our new home around deer season. My new mailing address is 2276 Rangeline Road, Rhinelander 54501 and my phone number will remain the same 715-362-8943. 

Our summer rendezvous with District 1 and 2 was great. We had great weather, food, prizes, and pretty good attendance. A big thank you to Mark and Trish Brown and Jim Miller for all their work! I hate to do a blanket thank you to the rest of the folks who made this event so good, but I also do not want to forget anyone. So THANK YOU to the rest of you who helped to make our 2007 rendezvous great! I especially want to thank the dealers who pack up all their goods and travel over for a short day. You folks really make our rendezvous nice.

One small issue came up this year at Jose Creek. There was an archery shoot at the same time as our rendezvous and so the camping area was nearly full before any of the trappers arrived on Friday. This also created congestion on the roads and near the boat landing. All of the trappers ended up being a little less spread out, which was OK but not ideal. The consensus was that we should look into a new location for our rendezvous for next year. 

One place came to mind right away, and that was the park in Hawkins. Hawkins is just a little further to the east of our current location and there are a lot of buildings there. One of these years we are going to get rain and having some buildings to get into will be nice. They also have plenty of areas to camp. The best thing is that we can reserve the whole area for our use and not have to worry about some other activities affecting our rendezvous. Nothing is set in stone but we need to decide on a location by early winter. If you have an idea of a location for our rendezvous please let me know and we’ll check into it.

 There have been numerous trapper ed classes in the district this spring/summer. I want to thank all of those instructors who have held classes this year. You folks are ensuring that we will have trapping around in Wisconsin for a long time.

 I attended the board of directors meeting in June which was held in Poynette. We had a good meeting and discussed a lot of issues. There are two things that I want to tell you about. The first is that I do believe that the WTA has submitted a bid for the 2009 NTA convention. If we get it then we will need a lot of help to make this even run smoothly. We’ll know more in September. The other item is that we are changing and updating our trapper education materials and program. Many of us attended a train the trainer class while at Poynette. We learned how to teach in a more effective manner and how to improve our training techniques. This type of training is the wave of the future for quality trapper education. Please keep an open mind when it comes to change and be sure to get involved in this process early. You will likely see a lot more information about this in the upcoming months. 

I am likely forgetting a few things but I hope I will run into you at the fall convention and we can talk there. Be sure to help out by working at the gate. We need all the help that we can get. Call me if you have questions or know that you can lend a helping hand.

 See you in September,

John Gillen

(715) 362-8943

 12/30/06 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ TURN THEM IN! $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

There are many reasons to turn in incidental catches. Number one it is a waste of a resource to just toss them over the bank. And I hate to waste anything. The WDNR also needs accurate numbers to do the population modeling and harvest predictions. My idea is if the animal is dead is was probably alive at one time, makes sense so far right? And the population of that animal was then higher than the population model thought, (so far so good) Right now they use a very high number (a guess) for incidentals, car kills and illegal animals that are dead. I believe we can get them to reduce that number. So, if we start with more animals, we should get more tags someday. After they are turned in the eventually make it to Madison and a really big freezer. These animals are used in trapper education courses thru out the state and several university fur schools that help train the next wildlife biologists. The warden recruits have a week of fur/trapping training where the critters are used for hours of hands on skinning and fleshing. The skins are then sold and now the proceeds are used in the trapper education program. This “extra” money will fund our trapper education program to the next level!

If you beaver trap in the spring, eventually you will have more otter than tags, turn them in. call the wardens in the areas you trap ahead of time, and ask them how they want to handle it. Or call the hotline 1-800-wdnr-tip. If you choose to use the 1-800-WDNR-TIP line, you should follow the procedures listed below before moving an incidentally caught animal:
• Contact the DNR HOTLINE at 1-800-WDNR-TIP and report the incident.
• The trapper must provide the HOTLINE dispatcher with your name, address, date of birth, home telephone number, license number and the animal that was caught. (Occasionally, the HOTLINE dispatcher may be busy and unable to take your call. In this instance, the trapper should either call back a short time later or leave all the information listed above on the voice-mail system.)
• Once you have contacted the HOTLINE, you may remove the untagged animal from the trap and transport it to your residence or a DNR Service Center. If you are stopped by a Warden, you should give the warden the date and time of your HOTLINE call.
• The HOTLINE dispatcher will relay your call to the nearest available warden ASAP for follow up. You should keep the incidentally caught animal at your residence until contacted by the warden with further instructions.
We all know phones don’t work everywhere, but it will save you time and miles. Just 3 years ago we turned in about 75 otter, last year about 200. I think that number is still low. So turn them in!

See ya, Scott mcauley