9-12 November, 2010 Clear, Overcast, Wet, Dry, Snow and Rain ...

Went to Kalispell for the day on Wednesday.  Picked up a few things for the Uhaul.  We found a used countertop at the habitat for humanity store.  We'll use part for a counter top and part for a table top in the Uhaul.  I pulled my traps from the lake on Thursday.  It's beginning to ice over and I didn't want a repeat of last year of chopping through the ice to get to the traps.  We checked out another lake on the way to Kalsipell and may camp there for a week or so and trap on it.  It's larger with bigger waves so it should stay open longer.   It had several muskrat houses visible and a decent but deserted campground.  The fishing is good there too and there's a couple of good hunting spots there as well.

I saw a deer swimming in the lake Thursday when I pulled my traps and was paddling back to the landing.  It was on the cattail marsh between the lagoon and the main lake.  It jumped into the water and swam across the lagoon and got out at the boat landing.  On the way home from the lake I saw a nice buck whitetail at the crossroads.  All I had with me was my 22 pistol.  Not my idea of a good deer getter.

We went to Eureka to get some car parts and other things today.  I need U-joints for both front axles.  They had the more expensive ones in stock but we had then order the cheaper brand and we'll pick them up Monday.  We had a little snow on the ground this morning but it all melted off by noon.  When we got home we had a message from the UPS guy.  My traps are in.  They'll drop them off at the Post Office tomorrow.  UPS won't drive up our road.  They have an arrangement with the post office to drop packages off there for local delivery otherwise they call us to arrange for a time to meet them down at the pavement.  Only FedEx delivers up our road!

Susan is making gravy for biscuits and gravy.  The jar on the microwave has sausage patties she canned when we butchered our hogs a couple of years ago.

We pour our bas of rice into plastic buckets for long term, rodent proof storage.

As the tomatoes ripen we slice and dehydrate them.

Our onions have never kept well so we dehydrate them for long term storage.

These two pictures were taken on the way to look over the lake I mentioned in the first paragraph.

This is the river that feeds the lake.

The campground has poles with ropes and pulleys so that people camping in tents who don't have a vehicle to store food in can raise their food up to where the bears can't reach it.  This is grizzly country.

A scrape below my tree stand.  This is an annual occurrance here.  There have been scrapes here every year for the seven years we've lived here.  Several trails intersect about 10 feet to the left of the photo.

One of the open areas to the north of my tree stand.

6-8 November 2010 Beaver skinning

Susan's been transplanting raspberries from the garden to various locations on the property.  We did a bunch of plants last pring and are doing more this fall.  They keep spreading into areas we don't want them to be in the garden.  Hopefully they'll do well outside the garden.  Other than that it's been business as usual.  The routine stuff is to take the goat and tether him out every day for a few hours to eat.  I have to keep finding new places to tie him out.  The chickens are fed in the morning and in the afternoon the eggs are gathered and we let them out to roam and find insects and seeds to eat.  We take the Cherokee and canoe down to the lake every day to check traps.  The catch is taken to the shack where I wipe the water off them with paper towels and hang them to dry overnight.  In the mornings I fire up the barrel stove in the shack and warm it up and skin and place the previous day's catch on fur stretchers.  I leave the stove burning all day to dry the pelts.  The dog and cat are fed twice a day.  We go for  a three mile walk almost every day usually feeding the buffalo at that time.

When you prepare meals from scratch every day there are always dishes, pots and pans getting used.  We save them up until we have a load then wash them. (About every third day.)  It conserves water that way.  We keep a kettle of water on the wood stove to have hot water when we need it and also to add humidity to the air.  We've had plenty of rain so we use rain water in the kettle for bathing and washing dishes.  It's always brought to a boil while on the wood stove so we don't worry about any critters growing in it that might cause problems for us.

That's our daily routine.  Other projects are in addition to that.

Some of the raspberry plants Susan transplanted.

The goatling doing his best to eat everything he can reach.

Susan drained the puddles on the road coming in to our cabin.  This is just one of them along the mile she walked.

Some of the muskrat pelts drying on the stretchers.  I drive nails into the ceiling joists and hang the pelts high to dry.  I ordered more stretchers and traps today.  Total came to just under $100.00.

The beaver and muskrat hanging to dry overnight.  When I bring them in from the lake they're soaking wet so I dry them the best I can using paper towels then let them hang overnight to dry the rest of the way.  I hang the paper towels to dry them and re-use them again (and again and again and again ...).

The beaver pelt fleshed and stretched.  The measurement is 48 inches ... about medium size according to the books I have.  This is the first one I've ever done and it took me three hours.  I need to do a little touch-up in places but it's mostly done.  I can't imagine trapping them on purpose unless they were bringing a bunch of money.

Tristan and I taking the doors off the Uhaul.  The center pin on this hinge is siezed up so we unbolted the door from the hinge instead of just removing the pins.

Me putting screws into the cieling panels.  We decided t use masonite sheeting instead of panelling sonce we are going to paint it white anyway.

Breaksfast in the skillet and supper in the cast iron pot.  I had to take off the kettle of water to make room.

Susan painting the ceiling of the Uhaul.  Tomorrow we can do the panelling on the walls.

I went out for an hour loking for deer after checking traps this afternoon.  Didn't find any.

5 November, 2010 Caught my first ....

Had a beaver in one of my muskrat traps today.  It's the first one I ever caught and was totally unexpected.  It got it's front foot in one of the #1 longspring traps I had set for muskrats.  It may have been the second time for this beaver because the trap was sprung Thursday with nothing in it.  A trap this small shouldn't hold a beaver nor should it be able to get it's foot inside the small jaw spread of a trap this size but this one evidentally didn't put up much fight.  It was sitting on the "ground" when we came up in the canoe.  It wasn't a large one and I'd have preferred to release it but that wasn't going to happen.  You can use a catch stick to hold them while you release the trap but we were in a canoe in ten feet of water and the critter was on a floating mat of cattails which wouldn't have held a person's weight ... especially this person's weight!  So rather than go swimming I shot it.  I'll be skinning it today.

This is the catch for the day.

This is a floating mat of cattails that's drifted into the "shore" (which is more cattails floating on the water but anchored ... somewhat ... to the bank).  The next time the wind comes up there's no telling where it will drift off to.

This is another floating mat that's drifting around the lagoon.

Susan took advantage of the sunshine to caulk the screws in the roof before winter to keep it from leaking.

I put up the first panel on the rear of the Uhaul.

The second one installed...

And now the door.  Susan caulked around the edges with silicone caulk.

Late in the afternoon we went over to the lake to check the muskrat traps. See, at the far end toward the front left corner of the hood of the car?  There's a carrot there that must have been in the canoe. It felt onto the hood while we were driving. Being somewhat tapered it rolled back and forth in a bit of an arch and worked it's way toward the edge, but never quite fell off.  We were watching it, enthralled, and started laughing at ourselves! Funny what you find for entertainment! Half a mile later it finally rolled over the edge and was gone!

3-4 November, 2010 Sunny days

Good weather the last couple of days.  Set out a few more traps and got more done on the Uhaul and around the house.  Susan and I went for a quick walk this morning .  When we went past the buffalo feeing area the hay we put out yesterday was still there.  We were more than just a little concerned that maybe a tree had fallen on the fence and they had escaped so we walked the fenceline around the 40 acre pasture.  Most of it is timbered so visibility was limited.  We made it about 3/4 of the way around when we spotted them feeding on hay the owner had set out either yesterday afternoon or earlier this morning.  He usually emails or calls when he's going to be up.  It was a relief to see them inside the pen.  I wasn't looking forward to a buffalo round-up.
We've been checking traps about mid-day but will probably start doing them in late afternoon beginning tomorrow.  I skinned and stretched the previous two day's catches this afternoon.  They're wet when I pull them out of the traps so I take them to the shack and dry them with paper towels and hang them to dry overnight before skinning them.  It takes several days for the pelt to dry once I get them on the stretchers.  I bought another dozen stretchers earlier in the fall and will order another dozen tomorrow.  Last year I only had six stretchers and had quite a back log waiting to get skinned and dried for shipping.

We're supposed to have one more good day for weather then back to rain again starting Saturday.  I'm hoping for snow instead of rain.

Susan made a venison pot pie for supper last night.  It was very good!

Tristan cleaned the chimney yesterday afternoon so I'm getting the fire ready to go in this picture.  I have a bunch of short 2X2 ends cut off from working on the Uhaul so I'm splitting one into kindling.

A bunch of crows and ravens were squaking up a storm yesterday so I went looking to see what had died. This is a young deer I found about 200 yards from the cabin.  It didn't look like it had been shot so I don't know what killed it.  We have a lot of wolves, coyotes, mountain lions and bears around or it may have died from disease.  At any rate it is being recycled nature's way.

A neighbor called last evening.  He had plucked a deer out of his pasture fence (the deer got tangled in the fence and died) and put it in the back of the pickup for dog food.  During the night a mountain lion had taken it out of the truck and dragged it about 100 yards back into the woods.  They keep their goat in a cage type shipping module at night.  It's made out of 1/2 inch steel rods.  It's probably the main reason their milk goat is still alive.

I'm down at the boat landing taking the canoe off the Cherokee so we can check traps.

A little closer view.

This is a floating mat of cattails.  I have a trap set on it but we have to look close because every time we check traps it's drifted to a new location.

A stop-loss long spring trap waiting for a muskrat to step into it.  Hopefully the water won't freeze and make it inoperable in something steps in the pan.

The insulation is going into the Uhaul.

Susan made donuts today.  They were ready when I got back to the cabin from peeling muskrats. 

She did some experimenting with a new recipe and they are the best donuts I've ever had.

Fresh dinner rolls tonight!

31 October - 2 November 2010 Trapping season begins.

Susan is vacuum packing shortening for long term storage.

Two down ... more to go!

If the socks have small holes we often repair them (under the cat's supervision, of course!).

The canoe at the landing loaded with 12 bodygrip traps and 4 foothold traps, a bucket with pliers, gerber multi-tool, wire, hatchet, carrots for bait, muskrat lure, and an assortment of wooden stakes.

Ready to shove off!  It's raining lightly as we head out.

We pull the canoe into the land (in this case they are floating mats of cattails) near a feeding site and I place the traps.

One ot he bodygrip traps set to go.  I set several with the triggers down to see how it worked.  I had several sprung, but empty traps this morning so it didn't work too well!  My carrots were too small also and came off the trigger wires too easy.  I used larger diameter carrots this morning when re-setting them.  I add a little lure at each site to draw in the muskrats.

This morning (2 Nov.) at the lake.  The water is glass calm!

This is one rat caught  in a foot hold trap.  The traps are set with a couple of feet of wire attached tot he anchor stake.  When it snaps shut on the muskrat's foot the rat automatically dives for safety from whatever attacked it.  The weight of the trap holds it underwater where it drowns.

This stake is too large for the spring eye to fit down onto the top so I worked the spring eye up from the bottom. It's the only one I set that way.

Muskrat number two this morning.

Another set waiting for a muskrat to sample the carrot.

Heading back for the landing area.  The 22 Ruger is for dispatching anything caught in the traps that might still be alive.  I've only had that happen once when a rat got the wire tangled up in some cattail stalks and couldn't get to the water.  I kept the rat back with a stick and freed the trap wire.  The rat dived into the lake and I left it there.  I came back after checking the other traps to retrieve the now dead muskrat.

It was raining yesterday afternoon (1 Nov.) when we set the traps out.  We were both wet to the skin and cold.  My legs were cold from kneeling in the water in the bottom of the canoe while making sets.  Susan had the stern position and was soaked as well.  The first thing we did when arriving home was fire up the wood stove, change into dry clothes and have some hot cocoa.

(Nov. 2nd) Susan with the take of the day.  Three muskrats from 15 traps set the night before.  Not a bad start.  I still have about 30 more traps to set out.  I'll take these home and dry them off a little then hang them up to dry completely before skinning and stretching them.

We went home and changed clothes then went out to vote.  We vote in a small town about five miles away as the crow flies.  We used to vote in Fortine but they changed it when they went to GPS addresses and found out they had us in the wrong district.  The problem is that you can't drive to our new location unless you drive through Fortine then back around to Trego.  The route is like a big "C" on the map.  It's about 15 miles each way.  They offered us absentee ballots but we have to go seven miles each way to mail them.  Then you don't get to talk to the people who help with the voting or those coming to vote.  (It's kind of a social event also.)  We looked into changing the voting district boundary but found out the taxes are lower in the district we're now in so we just decided to leave things alone and drive the extra miles every two years.

After we voted we drove out to another lake to scout it out for trapping potential then drove into Eureka to take care of some things there.  After that it was home again.   I checked the muskrats in the shack but they're still too wet to skin.  I guess I'll do it tomorrow after we run the line.  No rain today.  What a change!