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I have returned home from my time in the wild north. I came home and surprised my family and friends for Christmas and what a wonderful reunion it was!

I've decided to stay here in NC and will not be returning to the Realm after the new year. I have enjoyed my time there and learned so very much and do not regret the amazing experience one bit.

Time for my next adventure.

X Jeremiah

A Christmas Special

Nothin says Christmas Eve like bein out on the trapline all mornin settin and checkin snares! I just got back from runnin steel with ole Tim! He had a beef to go kill this afternoon, so I decided to head on home and have some dinner and then do my barn chores that I skipped out on this morning.

Wednesday and Thursday night this week I've been goin to Tim's to work on furs. He showed me how he fleshes his raccoons and beavers and I got a weasel in the set I made and he showed me how to skin that! I also went with him on Wednesday night to help him kill a bull. I'm learnin a lot about all this killin and skinnin business!

After we took him home and washed him up and let him dry, it was time for skinnin! After he was skun and fleshed I put him on a stretcher to hang up and dry the hide.

He's a little fella but he'll probably bring in $6 or $7. Every fur counts!

Here's a little video of the fur shed and how Tim fleshes and boards his coons!



I guess we'll take a break and not go check sets on Christmas. I'll give him the day off haha But we'll be back to it next week!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope ya'll are having a great Christmas weekend!

Until next week!

X Jeremiah



Trapline Chatter - La Deuxième Partie

I've finished editing the footage from the weekend on the trapline! I'm about to go out with Tim to check traps and set some more and then its supper at his house and workin on furs the rest of the night! So I wanted to post this before I left for the evening!

I know the vid is kind of scattered and there's not much narration, but it's just to give you a visual of the locations I described in part one. And if you compare the pictures from part one to the video, you'll see that the order of trappin spots is the same.

The second vid is one that Tim filmed of me making a weasel set. He told me not to edit it down and to leave in EVERYTHING. He has to pretty much walk me through the set step by step and I look like a complete greenhorn. But, for the amusement of those checking this blog, I decided to follow what he said and not edit the video. It's quite funny to watch me not know what the heck I'm doin. But as Tim says, "If nobody shows you how to do somethin, how you ever gonna learn?" 

I hope you enjoyed the vids! I'm off to woods! I'll be uploading footage of the fur handling process tomorrow night!

Until then!

X Jeremiah

A Cattle Drive, Among Other Things

Today was a nippy 10 degrees F here on the mountain. Cold winds blew in from the Northwest and brought some rain and snow flurries throughout the day. Gordon was here at his usual time this morning and before we cleaned the barn, we had our small and relatively easy cattle drive. It was time to move the herd from their summer pasture of rotational grazing, down to their winter pasture that has a shelter for them to get in out of the cold, as well as a water tub with a heater in it to keep their water from freezing. I wasn't sure how easily they'd move to their new winter home, but they pretty much just followed Gordon all the way down as he led them with a bucket full of feed, that he shook, while he walked. I brought up the rear just to keep the herd moving, but I don't even think they knew I was there or was any kind of threat, for that matter.

The rest of the day was spent bringing in all of the electric rotational fencing and cleaning up all the old and dirtied hay out of the summer pastures, with the tractor, and taking it down to the manure pile.

I got a Christmas card in the mail today from my dear mother and she was nice enough to include a little something special!

That's real great ma. Thanks a bundle. I appreciate that! I dunno what the exchange rate is on that particular type of currency but i'll see what I can do!

When I came in this evening from chores and farm work, I decided my Charlie Brown tree needed a little sprucing up before the big day!

Nothing says Merry Christmas like a snare set in the lower branches of my tree! Hopefully when Santa comes he'll have a few of his pet wildcats with him and one of them will get snared while they are helping Santa put out presents under my tree. I'm sure Santa's not familiar with snaring and trapping equipment and how they release, since most boys and girls these days don't ask for such things, so he'd just have to slap a "From Santa" sticker on the dead cat and be on his jolly way! What a great gift under the tree to wake up to Christmas morning!

I went to Tim's last night to do some fur handling. We skinned a coyote, two beavers, and a muskrat. I gave him the mink I skinned a few weeks back, and he fleshed that and the muskrat while I was there. He showed me how to take the castor sacs out of the beavers. Castor goes for $60 a pound, up here, which makes the castor itself worth more than the pelt! Castor is used in a lot of women's perfumes. Now I get why I like the smell of women so much; Reminds me of the trapline!

Before I left his house he showed me how he makes his snares and he gave me two ready made snares, a wooden muskrat stretcher, and a bottle of beaver lure we extracted from the scent glands on the two beavers we skun! It's like Christmas already!

I'm still editing the video footage from the weekend but I'll have Part two up soon. Hopefully tonight but probably tomorrow. Weather permitting, I'll be goin out to check snares with Tim tomorrow night and hopefully we'll have somethin to put on camera!

Until then!

X Jeremiah

Trapline Chatter - Une Part

A weekend of runnin steel with my friend Tim. We were out settin for beaver, otter, mink, muskrat, coon, weasel, bobcat, and coyote. The weather was in the teens both days with a light snow falling as we walked the trapline.

Our day started at Tim's house on Saturday morning at 8am. I woke up early to take care of a few chores around the house and then headed off to Tim's. When I got there, I hung out with his cool dog in the front yard while I waited for him to get ready.

Before we left, I got to meet his milking cow. She's a real good lookin Guernsey who was creepin on me from her sleeping pen...

Our first stop of the day was at his friend Jeff's house. Tim works for himself killing livestock for people on their farms and getting them (the animals, not the farmers) all skinned and cleaned and ready to go to the butcher. He kills chickens, hogs, lambs, cows, ducks, geese, anything. So on this particular morning, I was to accompany him to Jeff's to kill a beef. A good sized Jersey cow. It was quite impressive to watch him work and also to learn some of his tricks of the trade. 

After the job was done, we stopped and got some gas station pizza for dinner and then headed out to the trapline. We stopped at this one bog-type area where we were scouting for beavers.

We found old chewings all along the bank and a few slides, but we couldn't find their house. Tim thought it was further up river and could only be accessed by canoe, which we didn't have. So we moved on to one of his other beaver spots. It was here that we found many fresh signs and tracks. 

The only problem with this location was the water. Normally, when you set for beaver, you place a 330 conibear trap in the water for the beaver to swim through and be caught. The trapping law up here is that all beaver traps must be fully submerged when setting in water to prevent a dog or cat from running through and getting caught. So, although this spot was full of beaver activity and sure to be a dream spot, the water was too shallow to make any sets.

 So once again, we moved on. But it was still a cool little spot to see and explore!

Our last stop on Saturday was at a place he's been trappin for years. He had a couple coon box sets out and two muskrat submarine traps in the water. We did some scouting and found a couple places to set some beaver traps and we made two really nice sets in the water. When we checked the submarine traps, we had a muskrat in one! 

This is the spot where the submarine trap was set. You can see it on the right there, full of apples. The trap is open on one end with a latch door that swings open when the muskrat swims in, and then closes behind it so it can't get back out. It drowns in the trap and then you go collect your rat. Too easy.

Day two began with an early mornin start checkin and settin snares out on the south side of the mountain. Another cold morning on the mountain. The temperature well in the low teens with a light snow on the ground and more still falling. A perfect day to be out on the trapline.

Our first spot on the line had 3 bucket snares set for bobcats. Tim got his snare set and added bait to the bucket. For bait, he uses the carcasses of the animals he's already caught and skinned. A great way to use all of the animal and the perfect bait to lure in more.

A crafty fisher has been robbing the bait from some of his sets so we had to set a few traps nearby to try to catch him. Once that was done, it was time for me to set my first snare. I'd say it came out nicely. I call it a campfire set.

Anytime you set cat snares, you always want to set a few weasel traps nearby. Because, like the fisher, the weasel will slip in under the snare and steal the bait from your set. Either that, or they'll tear the set apart, knock over your sticks, twist your snare wire, and THEN steal the bait. They're dirty little suckers. So we set weasel traps. The way Tim does it is by taking a gallon milk jug and cutting a hole in the side. He hangs the bait inside the jug from the top and then sets a trap on the bottom. So when the weasel or fisher goes in for the bait, he gets caught in the trap instead of going and destroying the nearby bucket snare set.

 A clever and simple design using household goods! And we all know how much milk I drink so i'll be able to make TONS of these sets! 

We checked a few more cat sets he had down the line, set some more weasel traps, re-baited the cat sets and checked coyote snares in another spot. No fur to collect today but we should have somethin when we go check later this week! 

All in all, it was an awesome trappin weekend. I learned a lot and got a lot of hands on experience. Tim's a real solid guy and we had a lot of fun hangin out on the line. Tomorrow, after chores, I'm headin to his house to help him skin and flesh a coyote, a beaver and a coon he already caught earlier in the season, as well as the muskrat we caught on Saturday. I'm excited to see and learn more about that aspect of the trappin process. Making sets is very important, but the money's in the fur handling. And there's a lot that goes in to getting the fur from trap to buyer and i'm hoping to pick up on some of his techniques. He and I have already traded trappin dvds AND he bought me a coffee this morning. Looks like things are gettin pretty serious... haha

Within the next couple days I'll be adding "Part 2" to this entry where I will upload a lot of video footage from our trapline adventures, along with the fur handling we'll be doing tomorrow night. The footage goes into more depth about the sets we made and the spots we were working, so be on the lookout!

The woods up here on the mountain are incredible. And there's nothin quite like spending the weekend gettin lost in them.

X Jeremiah

A Quick Update

Another day, another dollar..or yen..or whatever kind of currency it is they're passin out up here.

It was a rainy, windy day up here on the mountain. But, the cows still had to be fed, the horses brought in the barn and the fields aerated before freeze up. So I thought i'd put my camera in harms way to show a few of the things I did today with my glorified lawnmower.

Tomorrow morning i'll be meetin up with my trappin buddy Tim to go put out some beaver and muskrat traps. We'll be runnin steel all weekend! I'll make sure to bring my camera along this time to document the fun!

X Jeremiah

Getting in the Spirit

To properly set the Christmas mood, one must feast their ears on somethin such as this:

Ah, much better.

So, it's been a busy busy week. We've had many visitors coming to look at Christmas puppies and we also just had another litter yesterday! Nine tiny pups!

A gorgeous Sunday on The Realm.

Today, I ventured into the woods to find a suitable Christmas tree for the house. I would've done it yesterday, but it was storming and not the best day to be out tree hunting. What follows is an account of my adventure.

So that's pretty much it! I'm all set up in my cabin-like attic bedroom for Christmas! And just because it's a small tree, doesn't mean you can only send small presents (mom)!

Tonight, I've been invited to dinner at Beth's house next door. I dunno what she's cooking, but long as it's free, it don't matter to me none. Then it's back to the grind tomorrow! 

Snow's on it's way this week and it'll be here to stay!

We'll be having a white Christmas up here for sure!

X Jeremiah