RIP Trapping 101

In case you haven't heard the news yet, our blog is about to get a whole lot cuter. But don't worry- if you come to our blog for your dose of Alaskan bush adventures, I'm sure we'll still be able to accommodate your fix. In fact, I haven't blogged for a few weeks myself as I've been busy out on the trapline. Back in December, I caught a few muskrat and a mink in the ponds behind the school. Rather than selling them for a few dollars in a down market, I gave them to a local woman, Anna Beavers, who sews some of the best fur in the village.

Last week, I went to visit her and she showed me my mink that she had tanned herself and was preparing to use in a project for a customer. I've been selling fur with my dad for years that no doubt makes its way to other countries around the world, but it's pretty wild to think that some of the fur I caught will be used in traditional Yup'ik artwork.

Anna is a great storyteller with many rich tales to tell (having grown up downriver before there were very many permanent settlements in the region), and the more I go to see her, the more stories she shares with me. She's fond of telling stories of growing up with her parents, hunting and fishing and truly living a subsistence lifestyle. This time, she pulled out a tool that she sometimes uses to scrape tanned hides. This tool was made by her father over 50 years ago. The handle is the bone of a reindeer (which used to roam this area) attached to a sharpened blade by seal gut. Wire has been added to keep the blade and the handle secure, but the tool itself is still in working order after all these years. 

The past few weeks, I've had the privilege to teach a trapping class to some of the high schoolers. We intentionally kept the enrollment low, since I can only safely fit three students on my Honda out to check traps (Nevermind that my quad has a sticker that says "Absolutely no passengers allowed on this vehicle." When you're living in the bush, just throw away the manual. We've seen families of 7 or 8 all pile onto a Honda). In the past month, however, I lost a third of my high schoolers to transfers, including all but one of the students in trapping. So, we decided to drop trapping as an elective and enroll the one student who was left in a credit recovery course she needed anyways. So here's to Trapping 101- we had some good times, caught some fox together, and called it a day. Take a trip down memory lane with me, won't you? (No credits were awarded in the harming of these fox.)

We caught a fox on this student's last day in Goodnews.

One of the girls caught this fox. Unfortunately, the crows got to him before we could.

Most of the fox I've snared tangle themselves up so much that I often find them hanging suspended from a branch or limb like this one. The pelts, however, are remarkably unharmed. 

Skinning fox in the cold room of our house. Christina has nicknamed this room "the fox mortuary." We get blasted with a foxy stench every time we come home!

Halfway through the writing of this post, I went out to check my traps and picked up my 8th fox of the season. Now I know what I'll be spending my Friday night doing!