Free Trapping Course With Meals
 

Sorry, not in Alberta.....in Tennessee. :sHa_sarcasticlol:

These guys are serious about promoting trapping and getting people involved in it. Obviously not concerned with profiting from it.
Kudos to them. :happy0034:

https://i.imgur.com/kCHrHEC.jpg

Thanks for posting. Be sure to take lots of photos.

Looks like a good deal. Are you going to put on a free course here...with meals included? It would be a great thing for people that wanted to get into trapping/snaring but don't have access to an RFMA. Keep us posted.

We could be so fortunate

Maybe go get certified to be an instructor and put on some free courses Dave

Tennessee is too far. It would make more sense to go to Manitoba for their free mandatory trapping course BUT students may have to divy up to pay for the actual expenses for the instructor if there are none in the immediate area. RIPOFF! :lol:

http://www.manitobatrappers.com/education.html

The free Trapping course in Minnesota would be closer as well.

http://www.mntrappers.org/mtaclasses.html

Unfortunately I don't think that either course is recognized in Alberta so you'd still have to pony up $420 for a course to trap here. Alberta is special. :)

I can't help anyone out with qualify them for a trapping license in Alberta but you, and anyone else, are ALWAYS welcomed to spend time in the skinning shack. There's always coffee and if you get really hungry I can get my Wife to make you a sandwich if you want.

I'm big on mentoring, pay it forward, and I've put numerous new trappers through the shed this year. Many are right on this forum. Just last week I had a Dad and his ten year old Son in the shed to show them how to put up a coyote from start to finish, including sewing a bullet wound. Very rewarding. As it turned out the fella was a mortician and he could have taught me more about precision sewing than I'd ever know. I'm not sure that he ever used a hammer to tap down the stitches on a corpse's head though. :lol:

Only in my opinion...

Free trapping courses may sound good but I think it may compromise the standards to which trapping needs to be held.

Trapping is like any other trade, you have to invest into the education and equipment before you reap the rewards.

👍

I don't follow that logic, Red. Are you saying that the quality of instruction would be lower on a free, or less expensive course, as opposed to an expensive one simply because of the cost of it? If that is the case, do you think that all of the associations offering free or affordable courses are actually doing a disservice to the trapping community by qualifying more Trappers? I always figured that the more Trappers the better and collectively the greater numbers would give us a stronger voice on issues.

Maybe you mean that by making the course accessible to low income earners and kids they would be less qualified to trap after taking the course......although they received the same instruction?

When potential Trappers need an RESP or student loan to take a trapping course things have gone way beyond ridiculous.

Trapping Course
 

Just my thoughts, the first "Trapping Introduction 101" course should be low to modest cost to encourage more young people into trapping. The more advanced course for serious professional trappers would make sense to be higher cost in $500 range to cover instructor expenses etc.

Absolutely! My thoughts exactly and it would be very easy to do. Now that the association has made an official request to AEP to eliminate the snaring portion of the basic trapping course and make it mandatory to attend a Snaring workshop in order to be licensed to snare in Alberta :sign0068:, that shortens the course. It could be shortened even more by eliminating the class A furbearer portion that the majority of Trappers starting out will never trap anyway. That portion is a total waste of time for most new trappers.

The basic trapping course is now mandatory (another one!) to attend for any Trapper that hasn't attended it in order to buy an RFMA or trap on it. That's where the class A furbearer portion ought to be placed, perhaps even trapline management and survival techniques, to an otherwise useless course for an experienced trapper that has cut his teeth on trapping muskrats and weasels. Does anyone actually think that teaching them that serves any purpose? It's embarrassing!

The problem is that the people profiting from the current costs and empire builders won't willingly give up their cash cow to make the trapping course more accessible to kids and lower income earners......it's not in their best interests and their priorities are skewed. It's in their best interests to create even more mandatory courses and generate even more profit. IMO it'll take the AEP to force positive change for the sake of the future of trapping in Alberta because it's not in the best interests of the association to do it on their own.

Trapper training generates big bucks, more than $430/day for instructors and in excess of $130,000/year from mandatory courses and workshops for the association. Private trapping schools make tens of thousands of dollars off it as well and they don't want to see the association lower the prices and make their business less competitive price wise. The cost for a course at the association, a supposed advocacy, is exactly $1 less than the cheapest business.:lol: When there's that much money involved it's easy for some people to rationalize that it's okay for kids and low income earners to be shut out of trapping. Honestly, even if trapping instructors need to be paid in excesses of $430/day, does anyone think that the association needs to profit about $200/student on a basic trapping course while kids and low income earners are shut out?

My train of thought is that we do not need to make it easier for people to learn about trapping. If they are serious about learning trapping they will need to pay a price. My analogy is if I wanted to become a welder to earn some money I don't think some free courses would qualify me for the trade.

I do not agree with the fees that associations and instructors charge. When I was teaching the trapping course it cost about 40 bucks for 28 hours of instruction.(that is only 18 years ago). That works out to a buck and a half an hour for the course. It is obvious that today the instructors and associations are all about lining their own pockets.

Also, it just seems to me that if more people are out trapping it will eventually lead to more quotas of various species. If we look at trapping historically there was a time that beaver trapping was stopped due to the fact that there weren't many beaver left because of overtrapping. If more and more people get into trapping then this will likely be the future outcome. And the more fur available on the market will probably lower fur prices.

I believe if low income people and youth can prove financial hardship and have a genuine interest to learn trapping there should be concessions in course prices. We need to direct our concerns of exorbitant prices for courses to the associations and instructors.
Instead of free courses our associations should have one on one mentoring programs for individuals available for our youth to get some experience.

Well Red, for the most part I agree with you. As for having too many Trappers because of lowering the cost of the mandatory course to make it more accessible to kids and low income people, I don’t. It was only a few years ago that it didn’t cost $420 to legally trap in Alberta. Prior to that, people could study the manual, pay $10 to challenge the test, and IF they passed they could buy a license to legally trap. It never had a negative effect on quotas (that only effects RFMA holders) or the markets then so I highly doubt that having to attend a more reasonably priced course would cause that to happen now.

I don’t know anything about any beavers getting trapped out or a ban on trapping them but I’m willing to bet that the amount of Trappers had nothing to do with it. I’ll bet that there was either a widespread desease that wiped them out or their value had every Tom, Dick and Harry chasing them for the money. I just averaged $17 and change in the last auction for big, fully prime pelts so that certainly isn’t much incentive for that to happen.

Dave, during the times of Hudson Bay beaver numbers were devastated in most of North America. Many single bachelors had no job during winter so went trapping ( PS had no lady to keep them warm and company) so went trapping beaver. In todays dollar probably getting around a few hundred $$ a pelt. Many trappers had quota of only a few beaver per season on their lines in 40's and 50's in Alberta. Main reason brought in RFMA system in 1930's.
I may be aging myself but still remember almost no beaver dams in foothills and Boreal forest in Alberta when elk and moose hunting.