April snow showers will hopefully bring May flowers as it seems that’s all we are going to get this year. The snow is going slowly, which is a good thing, and the ice around the shoreline of the lakes is punky. However, as of yesterday(4/3) there was still 18 to 24 inches out in the middle of Limekiln Lake
The birds evidently haven’t looked at the weather map as they are returning right on schedule.
I saw several Robins on my trip to Alder Creek yesterday, with twenty Grackles and Redwing blackbirds at the feeder.
I heard a Brown Tree Creeper calling as I walked up the Sump Trail from Limekiln yesterday. I also flushed a couple Ruffed Grouse and a Red-tailed Hawk.
I’ve had a light phase Red-tailed Hawk feeding on a carcass here for more than a week now. The Turkey Vultures have moved back into the Old Forge area as I saw twelve in one towering flight last week.
Finding the car of Kerry Young, the woman reported missing from the Syracuses area last week, was not what I was expecting when I checked my trap line on March 26. At the time the car didn’t seem out of place, but when it sat there for three days it was time to report it.
You never know what people are going to do today—park here and go there. But when the car is in the same place past the weekend it’s best to do a check on the vehicle.
The search brought back so many memories, but this one did not end well. It did bring closure for the family when her body was found. Thanks to all who helped locally and from far away to bring this search to a conclusion.
I thought I had lost my ice chisel the other day. When I stopped at Third Lake Creek Trailhead it wasn’t in the back of my truck. I had just gone to Old Forge and hit a few of those big bumps.
I thought for sure it must have bounced out or I left it in back of the Limekiln Campsite where I had pulled traps the day before. I took a six-mile ski trip back to the site but didn’t find it.
I thought I must be losing my mind for sure, but remembered I had made one stop before I went to Third Lake Creek. I went back and found it stuck in the snow nearby a place where I had picked up a bunch of baby diapers. So I didn’t lose it after all, just misplaced it.
I have had that chisel for over twenty years. It has saved me from dunking through the ice several times. It’s like an old friend and I sure would hate to lose it.
Some people collect maple sap in the spring, but I trap beaver. If you don’t catch them in spring you will get calls during the summer that someone’s trees are being eaten along the shoreline of the lake or their property is being flooded.
I take care of them before this happens, and their pelts are prime. It’s also good exercise. Walking six to seven miles each day on snowshoes will keep you fit and trim.
With the frozen crust the last couple of weeks you didn’t even need snowshoes, but I carry them just in case it softens up during the day.
I do a lot of skinning up in the woods and just bring back the hides. Carrying a thirty or forty pound Beaver is not handy.
As I’m clean-skinning a Beaver I remember my former partners Ed Schell, who I trapped with for several years, and Gary McChesney who instructed me on the skinning process.
Many who skin out in the woods use the quick method of leaving most of the fat on the hide and flesh it when they get back home. I clean-skin at home and out in the bush.
It takes about twenty-five minutes to clean-skin a big Beaver but only ten minutes when you get back home and put them on a board. If they are rough skinned it will take you a half hour or more to flesh when you get home.
Gary would say start right at the edge of the hide, leave no fat at the edge, and get all the jaw muscles as they are tough to get later. Ed would say watch out right in the thin spot in the middle of the back.
When we first started trapping together in the late sixties there were only twenty-five colonies in the Moose River Area. Now there are probably double that as there aren’t many big Beaver trappers anymore. On the trail to Brooktrout Lake the beavers have flooded the trail in four places.
Probably more Beavers are taken out of season as nuisances as are taken during the open season. Another season has ended with a few flat tails on the boards.
Deer and Bear take up some last fall, but that’s another story. See ya.
