District 8 Chair & Co-Chairs - Minnesota Trappers Association

Greetings Trappers:

I sit here looking out my window at the “Great Minnesota Winter Wonderland”.  We have two plus feet of snow along our sidewalk at home and drifts and pushed snow maxing out at six plus feet.   I am sure those of you up north have much more and deal with that every year.  Southern Minnesota has been dumped on the last three plus weeks with major snow, high winds, ice and bitter cold.  Schools in the area have had closures and early releases for almost 10 days now.  

With that said, I have been doing very minimal trapping this winter. With the ups and downs of the weather and my ability to get to those stops I have put my winter trapping on hold.  I am looking forward to doing some spring beaver river trapping.

Trapper Day On The Hill was February 5th.  I have been told it went well with about 24 trappers that were in attendance.  They had the opportunity to visit with legislatures and make them aware of a bill(s) that were introduced that week – SF 842 regarding written permission - that we do not support that bill.

We as trappers are under attack once again in St. Paul with several bills HF 1327, SF 842 several others.  Please take the time to contact your representatives with your concerns with these bills.  Especially your desire to keep trapping alive.  I have been in contact with my representatives by email and they have been very receptive to conversations.

I have included the links to search for bills in both the House and Senate.  You can set up an account and then save these bills to “My Bills” and then you can easily keep track of their status.  Or you can use key word(s) such as trap and you should be able to search for those bills.

The “Dog Lovers 4 Safe Trapping” also has a bill that they say is “authored in both the House and Senate”.  They said the “The Chief Author in MN House is Representative Peter Fischer and the Chief Author in the MN Senate is Senator Chris Eaton.”  This is another example that we all need to contact our representatives.

If you feel a certain bill or direction that trapping is not going with legislature or anywhere else - such as written permission, non-resident trapping, etc., please know that we can’t solve it by complaining on forums, phone calls to fellow trappers, personal conversations and members who are “ok” with it as long as others do the work.  Myself as well as others have brought things up and if we don’t get the support from our other elected leaders and members it loses a lot of steam and therefore dies, etc - we need to be either up at the Capitol and/or contact your representatives, the Governor and especially any newly elected people.

In regards to non-resident trapping, I have been told, “it is not the right time to try to get it passed” and “possibility of other language could be attached to it”.  If you have questions regarding this, I suggest that you contact the MTA President and/or our Attorney.

By the time this newsletter is printed, District 8 will have had their spring meeting.  I want to thank Gabby Hayes for making the arrangements to have our meeting at the new location - Stewartsville Sportsman Club.

I would like to extend my sympathies to the Arnie Peterson family.  Arnie passed away February 24th.

On a good note, our daughter, Maddie and Mitch will be having their second baby girl in early March.  We are looking forward to that very much - this Grandpa is taking a liking to pink camo - times four girls.

Brad Wobbrock

Progressive Trapper

----------------------------------------

-------------------------------------

No Report at this time.