Our Trapper Education Program has evolved a great deal over the past eleven years when a Minnesota Trapper Certification became legally required for first time trapping license purchase. I'm fortunate to have played a role in its progress and development.

However, my most daunting task as the Education Coordinator over the years has been connecting prospective trappers with potential instructors outside the regularly offered classes/field training sessions hosted across the State.

Although certified instructor names and addresses are available through the website, in order to guard against animal rights nuts (and persistent students) badgering instructors day and night, telephone numbers and email addresses are not available to the public at large through the site.

As a result, I have consistently acted as the go-between in connecting students with willing instructors. I first seek out a receptive instructor in that area/district and when successful with proper authorization, give the student's contact information to the instructor to initiate contact and plan training sessions.

Obviously, this avoided the legitimate privacy concerns shared by all, but it continues to be an extremely time-consuming task that unnecessarily slows the certification process.

Unfortunately, some students no doubt became discouraged and simply abandoned the pursuit of a trapper certification because of the substantial lag time in coordinating these successful introductions.

Sadly, this was simply unavoidable without a better system to connect prospective trappers with available instructors in a timelier fashion.

Now with better technology and the technical expertise of Carol our website professional, we propose a more streamlined and time-effective means of connecting students with instructors while at the same time guarding the privacy concerns of all.

Keep your skinning knives sharp,

Regular email addresses have their own, unique inboxes where you can send, receive, and access your email. You can access your inbox online or with an email client (like Outlook or Apple Mail).

Forwarding email addresses allow you to direct incoming email messages to another email address automatically. There is no inbox for a forwarding email address, and nothing is stored. It redirects email messages sent to your forwarding email address to your everyday email address.  The goal is to keep your regular email address away from spam or phishing apps. Your anti-virus also works to do the same. It is just another layer of protection.

All Active Instructors that want to keep their email private should inform me that you wish to have a mntrappers.org forwarding email in the following format: (trappername@mntrappers.org). This email will redirect messages to your primary email address.  As I must enter them all by hand into the “email forwarding” file, I would like to see the names no longer than ten characters. I would also like to have the instructor’s phone number if I need other information or if I need to make any changes.

I have entered several test emails, and all have passed. I created a “forward email” for myself, redfox@mntrappers.org, which sends to my regular email at mntrapweb@gmail.com account. It is working great!

The website also has an SSL, Secure Socket Layer, which gives the site some encrypted security. This SSL helps protect personal data anywhere on the site, especially the data belonging to customers in the MTA Store.