Outdoors

Montana FWP still training trappers

Posted: Jan 20, 2013 10:20 AM by Jonathan Kershaw - MTN News

BUTTE - Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks officials are trying to educate people on safe and ethical practices of animal trapping.

"We're trying to make a standard course so that if you take the course here in Butte, it'll be pretty much identical to what you would take in Glasgow," says Robert Sheppard, a trainer with the Montana Trapper Association. "So if it comes to a mandatory trapper education, then it will be standardized course where everyone gets the same training."

The trapping course also offers training in how to extract pets from snares without injuring them. Trapping trainers say it varies from city to city but, for Butte, most people come for the trapping information as opposed to saving pets, though they can learn both here.

"Some of them are educated trappers already, they almost always learn something. The ones that come for the pet part of it are I'm going to say less than 1%."

The U.S. is a prominent producer of fur products, but only about 5% of fur comes from trappers, the rest mostly come from fur farms, according to FWP.