Mandatory education for trappers? Not just yet

Posted on: October 31, 2017 | Bob Frye | Comments

Trappers pursue beavers and other species.

Trappers target a variety of species in Pennsylvania, like the beavers working on this lakeside tree.

Would it be better if furtakers, and trappers especially, were required to take a mandatory education class in Pennsylvania before they were allowed to go afield?

Maybe.

Don’t necessarily look for it to happen, though. Not any time soon, anyway.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission – at least partly at the request of the Pennsylvania Trappers Association – spent some time looking into the issue recently.

Trapping or furtaking has been around forever. It played a large role in the nation’s early development.

Bryan Burhans, executive director of the agency, said it was asked to explore the idea because of the challenges trappers faces in modern society. Perhaps, the thinking went, training trappers not only in ethics, but in skills like how to make the best use of pelts from beavers, foxes, coyotes, raccoons and other species, would help.

Commissioners didn’t reject the idea at a recent work group meeting.

But they didn’t seem too eager to pursue it either.

Commissioner Jim Daley of Butler County pointed out that the commission already offers a variety of advanced skills courses, like a successful furtaker class. All are voluntary.

And all, he said, draw something less than big crowds.

There’s also the question of whether such a class is even realistic in terms of staffing.

Andy Hueser, hunter education specialist with the commission, said that with the current number of volunteer furtaker instructors on hand, the best the commission could do would be to offer 79 classes a year.

The maximum number of students per class, meanwhile, is limited to 24.

That means the commission could, at most, certify 1,900 trappers or furtakers per year.

“That would be our maximum output,” Hueser said.

Pennsylvania, meanwhile, has about 122,000 furtakers, some trappers, some hunters. So unless existing license buyers were grandfathered or exempted from mandatory training, the commission couldn’t handle them, Hueser said.

Daley said it might be best to leave things as they are now.

As things stand, all first-time sportsmen and women – hunters and trappers – are exposed to the need for and benefits of trapping in the regular hunter-trapper education course. A section on trapping as a wildlife management tool was added to that class years ago.

And, said Daley, himself an instructor, while it’s been ‘watered down” a bit since, it still has value.

“There actually should be some exposure (to trapping) for the average hunter education student,” he said. “So even if we went out and had a separate furtaking class, I think we would have to retain some portion of that in the general hunter education class.”

Hueser sees benefits to that, too.

For six years, starting in 1980, the commission actually had a voluntary furtaker education program. That reached 600 to 1,000 students a year.

Moving that training to the general education class got much of the same information before 40,000 annually, he said.

Bob Frye is the everybodyadventures.com editor. Reach him at 412-838-5148 or bfrye@535mediallc.com. See other stories, blogs, videos and more at everybodyadventures.com.

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