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Old December 1, 2012, 04:16 AM   #17
MLeake
Senior Member
 
Join Date: November 15, 2007
Location: Outside KC, MO
Posts: 10,128
grubbylabs, thank you.

To better describe the area, on my side of the currently shallow river there are primarily farms and acreages. Ours, at 15 acres, is one of the smaller places. It is very rural.

On the other side of the river is where the village lies. The DOC hunting area is only about a half mile from a residential neighborhood. Getting sheriffs or DOC officers out there isn't really a major challenge.

If this had occurred way out in the sticks, I could see where the trapper might feel his options were more limited with regard to how to handle a dog. Where this did occur, shooting the dog would have been completely unnecessary.

Again, please note that nowhere do I fault the trapper for having caught my dog. Not his fault, at all.

But, he really should check his traps at least daily. It is not right to leave a bobcat, coyote, raccoon, skunk, snake, fill in the blank in a trap for days at a time. The fact that this happened to my dog sucks, but the only part for which I blame the trapper is the duration for which ANY animal, in this case mine, was stuck in his line.

Somehow, that has turned into people telling me I need (or in my absence, my wife needs) to control my dog - which I acknowledged from the outset. This has also turned into a risk to trapper vs shooting dog argument, but like I said in this instance the traps were near a residential area, and a DOC station, and not far off the normal sheriff's patrol routes. So, the trapper did not have to expose himself to any risk, by any realistic measure, while still not shooting a trapped dog.

Next thing I know, somebody will produce an argument about cost of his time, or loss of potential trapped pelts, to which I would offer two responses:

1) I'd have paid to replace damaged traps, if they had been damaged; I'd have paid for time lost, if he'd had to spend time tracking down my wife and it had cost him out of pocket; if he had checked his traps on day 1, instead of day 3, I'd probably have offered him a reward.

2) I can't say I'd worry about potential loss of pelts, if the guy is only checking his traps at 3 day or greater intervals. Either he doesn't expect to find any, or else the bobcats will be dead and rotting before he finds them.

But going back to my original point, it is wrong to leave any animal in a trap for that long. Period.
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