A snared double

Got these last season, snared them in a snare cubby I use, first ever double I have caught on the same cubby.

Nice belly on the 1

Yes and that is one reason I took those pictures, really shows the big differences between the Toms and the Females.

Perfect eaxample of what 1 is looking for. Its hard to turn 1 loose, but when you are in a state with limits you definately want to go after the Toms

Great pic Trax, I thought you lived in the banana belt, some mighty good snow or did you go further north for those kitties.

Nope those kitties were taken the same place I always trap, but I went further onto the mountain this past season to try out some new country, should have been there all winter, caught 3 cats in a matter of 15 days, you can bet I will be up there early this season.

Good work and I bet you had no company, since he doesnt have a quad.

I would love to have cats to trap. Great pics!

I don't have limits here and I still release the females and young of the year cats. They aren't worth as much as the adult toms. By letting young males go, they can get to be mature cats and those are the ones that I like to trap the most. If it is an really old female I will also keep it, the rest can go free until next year when I will probably catch them again.

Kind of hard to play catch and release with snares, we have a lot of country yo can't get into to trap, so our cat pops stay pretty good, I have seen them way down before, and that was when the prices were low so I know it wasn't over trapping back then.

If I am setting a snare, it is in a area that I stand a high percentage of catching an adult tom, the rest of the time I normally set live traps or a soft catch trap. In my part of the world, it is too easy to trap out a whole population of cats. The cats in farm country aren't as nomadic as mountain or desert cats are. Because of their smaller home ranges, once a population is trapped out, it can be years before the population gets high enough in the surrounding areas for other cats to filter back into the trapped out areas.

Thats the difference between the high mountain cats and the midwest cats I guess, cause there is square miles of country your not going to get into that has cats to trap, some places I wouldn't even take a horse into here.

Trapping cats in farming country vs out west in the open range is like the difference in trapping coons around here vs the east. Around here I trap family groups of coons, so if I leave my sets out for three days, I will wipe out all of the family group. That isn't a problem, because the coons will filter back into the areas I trap during the summer when crops are growing. If I was back east, I would be trapping along creeks or rivers and I could leave the traps out all season and keep catching coons, because the creeks and rivers are travel routes for them. Trap the cats out in this farm country and there aren't enough of areas where trappers can't get to, to have an untouched refuge of cats to restock the areas where I trap. That is one of the reasons I prefer to release young cats and females. I have seen guys that have found a toilet and set on it until they have caught every tom, female and kitten. The next year they can't understand why they can't catch anything nor why there isn't any tracks. I'm just thankful that these guys aren't very good at finding toilets..............Phil

I hear you on that one. I have areas where I could go every year and catch 1-3 cats and that is what I would rather do.I know other guys who will go to an are with their buddies and catch 10 cats 1 year. Then it takes 7 years for it to recover.Maybe I am wrong but 21 cats over 7 years seems like more than 6. And in the end when you are giving the other area a rest you are probably going elsewhere and catching more cats so the difference is even larger.