On the morning of my fourth day my focus turned to trapping. I had prepared all my traps by dipping them in a drum of boiling water to remove any human smell and completing the process by dipping them in melted bees wax to seal in any steel or rubber smells. Marten are inquisitive creatures and are considered to be fairly easy to catch, but this dipping process had greatly increased my success in previous trapping endeavors. Land Otter are a completely different story. They have a well-developed sense of smell and very acute hearing. The first time I went after Land Otter with traps it took me four months to catch one. In my frustration I started writing down everything I did in order to find out what I was doing wrong. It turned out that when I came and went from where the traps were set or being checked, I was not entering and exiting the area the same way. A single path was much more manageable to limit the human scent left behind. Also, I started wearing de-scented gloves, boots and leggings and touched nothing other than what was absolutely necessary. The slightest brush of my cloths on a branch or a bush caused the otter to leave the area for months. Patience was key and also, the observation of any fresh otter activity in the area. Their range was as great as 100 square miles and they re-visited elaborate tunnels and feeding dens by way of developed well-defined trails. On Yakobi and the surrounding islands the trails were usually fairly short, so I learned to look for water slides where they entered and exited the salt water. I think it was the intelligence and the playfulness of the Land Otter that greatly influenced why I would later lose some of my appetite for trapping.
I did not and do not now think of myself as an accomplished trapper. More often than not, I gained pleasure in observing animals while they went about their business. I didn’t even consider harming them in the hours that I lay hidden, watching their every move. From Brown Bear and Deer, to the smallest Marten and Mink, they most often did not come to harm by my hand on the frequent occasions I observed them in the Alaskan wilderness.
I loved watching marten and their adventurous curiosity. They would run and poke and sniff along a mossy covered embankment overlooking a creek or ravine below. A favorite place of mine to set a trap was where a tree trunk grew off this drop off and extended out and up, which created a perfect table to place the trap. A piece of herring was placed in a gap I made with a small hatchet, in the bark above the trap so that the marten would have to step across it to get to the bait. The anchor chain ring was nailed with a fence nail on the bottom side of the tree. In this way the trapped animal would fall off the table and hang in mid air below the tree. Without leverage it was very difficult to get out of the trap. I decided to use this method for the first few strings and by sundown I completed a string of traps at the head of Baker Bay, Pinta Bay and Didrickson Bay to the south.
As I opened up the motor on the skiff and headed back to base camp to the north, I marveled at the explosion of colors dancing across the western sky. “Yeah God!” I exclaimed, as I reluctantly pulled my gaze from the sunset to the darkening waters ahead of me. The darkness from the forest spread relentlessly out across Portlock Harbor, reminding me of another time when my beautiful world came crashing in.
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