Interview, 9/25

Ben, Christian, Renee, Douglas, and a representative from the Vermont Folklife Center interviewed a former trapper of Middlebury, Vermont. These are some of Renee's notes from the interview.

The trapper's father built trapping boats for family use years ago, and he helped build one for himself. There was no one way to build trapping boats, but certain things you had to have. There were as many different designs as people building them. Generally they were 12-14 feet, narrow, flat-bottomed, had a gun rack, and were poled with "push-paddles" standing up. A push-paddle is a 10-11 foot pole with a paddle on one end and a steel bottom with points for pushing off the creek bottom. Their family arrived in the area in the 1760s and farmed until the 1990s. He learned to trap. Trapping muskrats was good money. He was at the end of the era. Trapping 'rats was a spring ritual, and important income to a small farmer like his grandfather. He trapped by himself one season. The family had a trapping cabin on Tremble Creek in Addison County. The men of the family would sometimes stay overnight at the cabin, which is still there. His grandfather built it around WWI. They could get $1-4 for a pelt in 1950. His grandfather got 50-70 pelts a day. It was a big party that made money. The season lasted two to three weeks, when his grandfather would be at the cabin full time and other men would come out when they could, with usually 3 or 4 people there. Muskrat trapping season was also "shooting fish season." They would trap in the morning, then skin the 'rats, then shoot spawning pickerel for sport, which is still legal in Vermont.

During the spring, the muskrats are flooded out of their houses and are looking for high points to climb. A trap was set on an angled, floating log with a piece cut out of it just below the water line, where the trap sat. The log floated partially out of the water, so the 'rat would try to climb on the high end but would get caught in the trap. Muskrats instinctively dive for the bottom when trapped and then drown. The trap is chained to a pole sticking out of the water, so the trapper pulls the trap out of the cold water to retrieve the 'rat. You could use a .22 to shoot a muskrat between the eyes, but you must have good aim to avoid ruining the pelt. The hides would be stretched, then sold to a dealer who took the muskrats to New York. He says that the muskrat population of Tremble Creek collapsed in the 1960s, perhaps from a disease. The creek has changed due to eutrophication -- runoff from pesticides and fertilizers lowered the water quality, and vegetation now chokes the creek. The decline of the muskrat population coincided with a decline in the fur market. "We always felt we left a lot of 'rats," he says. The trapping boats that his family had are gone. But he has a dugout canoe that they used for trapping. It was very tippy, and never used for anything else. The story is that it was made by Native Americans in the late 1700s, and the family acquired it either by finding it or trading the natives for it. It is covered in tin to prevent the ice from ripping it up. This dugout is in his house, but the family's "newer" dugout is at the Maritime Museum. About the trapping boats, he says, "These are farm implements, and they're functional. If the cow steps through it upside-down in the pasture, nobody cares. They're cheap to build; they're simple; they're functional."

Photos to come.

- Renee