Is animal trapping a legitimate sport or cruelty to animals?

Sport

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by Rebecca Brown

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To anyone who has not been around trapping, this looks like an obvious, cut-and-dry answer. How could it not be cruelty to catch animals in snares and traps that snap around their feet or suddenly close cage doors around wild creatures? This, I will explain. However, being raised around trapping, I don't see it as a sport either. Trapping has a number of uses and can be very profitable, but today it most commonly functions as not only a means of generating extra income, but as a means of keeping the population of vermin species down.

Trapping goes back hundreds of years in the United States alone, the first instance of trapping is long lost in the dusty pages of history. Many people use trapping as a means of obtaining food and hides for warmth and shelter. Native American tribes used the hides of animals for everything from clothes to footwear to transport equipment to their homes themselves and it was not all the hides of large animals. Many people trapped rabbits, coyotes and other small animals for their clothing and even stitched many hides together to create blankets and shelters.

Today, most animals are trapped for either economical reasons, whether it be for selling the fur, thinning vermin populations or a variety of factors. Whatever the reason you're trapping for, the determining factor in whether or not it's cruelty often comes down to the expertise of the individual trapper. Yes, improperly-rigged snares, the wrong size of con-a-bear or other such snap trap or someone who doesn't check their live traps often is being cruel to the animal. Is trapping in general cruel? No.

It is essential to not only ensure that you have the right traps for the right job and know how to successfully lure the animal you're after and ONLY the animal you're after, but also to take note of the weather and type of trap you choose. If the weather is unseasonably warm or extreme biting cold, any kind of trap that will catch live has the potential to be cruel and inhumane. If you live very near your trap line and check it at least once a day, the chances of inflicting much discomfort on the animal is minimal.

Check your equipment. Make sure everything is functioning properly and that all snares are slipping and holding the way they're supposed to. Killing traps should always kill very quickly and efficiently to minimize the potential for animal suffering. Any firearms carried on the trap line should be sighted in properly and you should know how to use it with deadly accuracy. Snowmobiles, four-wheelers or other trapping vehicles should be reliable and suited for the work they need to do to ensure you can check the traps regularly.

Finally, there is an ethical duty to kill only types of animals that are in surplus in an area to ensure the population stays healthy, though not overburdened. I am also of the strong belief that if you're going to take the life of an animal, you should not only do it as humanely as possible but should also reduce waste as much as possible. Where some trappers take the animal's skin and dispose of the entire carcass, I've always tried to eat any meat off of animals that are safe and palatable to humans, grind up others meat to cook into dog food and milk scent glands where there's a market or it can be used for lures. I do not see trapping as either sport or cruelty, but when it's done properly it is definitely not cruelty and so vote for the option that is not cruelty.

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