www.patrappers.com

President — Brian Mohn, 138 Farview Road, Hamburg, PA 19526; 610-562-1790; papatrees@aol.com

Vice President East — Joel Whitehead, 845 Snake Hill Road, Thompson, PA 19526; 570-756-2714; JFRED@nep.net

Vice President West — Ned Weston, 120 Swope Road, West Sunbury, PA 16061; 724-894-2239; nedweston@gmail.com

Secretary — Don Klinger, 522 S. Pancoast, Reynoldsville, PA 15851; 814-371-1170;
advantage16@verizon.net

Treasurer — Donna Spittle, P.O. Box 708, Hummelstown, PA 17036; 717-239-9267;
spittlefam@paonline.com

Editor — Ed Price, 3833 Old Newburg Turnpike, Union Dale, PA 18470; 570-679-2318; pricee@nep.net

NTA Director — David Shuttleworth, 5452 Tamarack Drive, Sharpsville, PA 16150; 724-962-4260;
dianeshutts@aol.com

FTA Director — Mark Kasten, RR2 Box 2287, Hallstead, PA 18822; 570-278-2553; willsher@epix.net

Public Relations Director — Barry Warner, P.O. Box 223, Dallas, PA 18612; 570-675-7041;
beavernbass@comcast.net

Website Designer — Barbie Breckenridge,
barbiebreckenridge@gmail.com

 

Membership Options:

Individual membership including subscription to Trapper & Predator Caller — $25

Individual membership without subscription — $10

Junior, age 16 and under without subscription — $5

Lifetime membership with subscription — $300

Lifetime membership without subscription — $100

 

Complete membership application on first page of association section and send dues to:

PTA Treasurer

Donna Spittle

P.O. Box 708

Hummelstown, PA 17036

 

PRESIDENT’S REPORT

The PTA’s Officers and Directors held their meeting Saturday March 2 in Clearfield, PA. Our agenda held a variety of topics, but it is the reports from all the officers that I find most important to understand the diversity of our state’s weather and topography and the effects on our trappers. An example would be, in the Southeast we may be trapping with little ice in the beginning of January. Move to the Northwest part of the state and most likely they did not see open water or bare ground for a month or more. This is why setting seasons and bag limits is a complex task to satisfy everyone. Some trappers suggest we should use the Wildlife Management Units (WMU) described by the Pennsylvania Game Commission to set season and bag limits. I believe WMU’s are a valuable tool for setting harvest quotas but I remember when the state had a North /South starting dates and even non-resident starting dates for raccoon and I certainly don’t want to go back the problems this created. This all boils down to long discussions at the district meetings for the members input, than reviewed at the state level and forward our recommendations to the PGC Commissioners. I need to remind myself that “Good Things do Take Time” and now I know also a lot of hard work. We had numerous members working for over a decade to get the Cable Restraint season we enjoy today. Let alone the Bobcat and Fisher season that is still new to us.

By now you should have received PTA newsletter and sweepstakes. If you have not received one please let me know. I am glad for all the new members that have joined, but maybe we printed the mailing before you were in the system or perhaps we need to update your address in our data base. Either way don’t hesitate to call me at 610-562-1790, or email papatrees@aol.com.

Our rendezvous is fast approaching and I invite you all to the foothills of the Poconos in June. I know motels are booking but may I suggest you stay south of the fairgrounds in the Wind Gap area. This will give you a better rate and avoid the NASCAR traffic. 2014 we will be hosting a joint rendezvous between the PTA and FTA. Dealers will be signing up at this year’s rendezvous. Please let any dealers you do business with of our policy and help them any way you can. We will be implementing a new policy of only one dealer sign up for each person in line. This change will make it fair for everyone.

“OUR IMAGE OUR FUTURE” — Brian Mohn

 

VICE PRESIDENT-EAST REPORT

Your Vice President East has had a busy Month and a busy past year. I’ve almost learned how to use a keyboard. I have attended most of the D-9 meetings, the County PFSC meetings, and the PFSC convention in Scranton. This year is an election year and I hope all interested parties will submit resumes. If you do not make the office you seek, do not become discouraged, but, try, try, and succeed. The directions are included elsewhere in this month’s reports.

Thanks for reading, and see you soon! — Joel Whitehead – VP East

 

PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTOR’S REPORT

OUR IMAGE OUR FUTURE

Our trapper training programs will begin within the next several months. These programs will continue throughout the year and obviously will include our state rendezvous with demos going on throughout each day. I know most of you reading this will be involved in these events. The challenge is getting those individuals involved that desperately need the training.

I received a call a while back from an individual that covered a road kill with his Christmas tree, placed a trap next to the deer, and stated he thought he was meeting the intent of the law with respect to exposed bait. Upon being cited, he called me for advice. My advice, attend training. Unfortunately, this individual lived in a populated area, the trap was set within sight of the highway, a fox was caught and observed by a passerby, the incident reported, and once again trappers are given a bad name.

Trying to provide training for those not actively involved with our efforts is a tremendous challenge, perhaps an impossible challenge. That does not mean that we throw our hands in the air and give up. We must do everything possible to protect our way of life. I am sure most of us know individuals that fall into this category. It is our responsibility to convince them that we can lose our way of life through one incident of ignorance or disregard. — Barry L Warner

 

STATE CONVENTION REPORT

Hello to all. The State Convention is fast approaching and we have a few last minute things to work out, but we will be ready. Dates for the Convention are June 6-9 at the West End Fairgrounds in Gilbert, Pa. The GPS address is 570 Fairground Rd., Gilbert, Pa. 18331

Do not forget that it is a Pocono race weekend. You will want to book your rooms now. Here are a few motels to try: Red Carpet Inn – 610-863-7782; Travel Inn – 610-863-4146; Gateway Motel – 610-863-4959; Ramada Inn – 1-800-441-2193; Best Western – 570-491-2400.

We will be doing a 50/50 money raffle in conjunction with the show. Tickets are $2 each or 3 for $5, and there will be five cash prizes. The more tickets we sell, the more winners will win. If you would like to buy any or take some to sell let me know.

Tailgating will be $50 for the weekend. Electric and water hookup will be #30 per night which goes to the fairgrounds. Primitive camping will be $10 per night. The 4 dealer buildings are filled up.

Here is a list of events for the weekend: Demo’s daily 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Friday night auction at 7:00 PM. Saturday night dance from 7:00 to 10:00. Saturday morning mountain man race and trap setting contest starting at 10:00. We are still working on some kids and ladies activities. Saturday is kids’ day with demos geared for kids.

We will have several commemorative items for sale: mink boards, t-shirts, yardsticks, and coffee mugs. For a full list of demo schedule and other info go the PTA website – www.patrappers.com.

We can use all the help we can get to set up before the show and during the show. That’s it for now. Hope to see you at the Convention. — Scot Mucha – 610-863-9759

 

DISTRICT 1 REPORT

Hello members,

As everyone knows, fur prices are looking good. I was up at the NAFA sale and was pleased with the 100% clearances and the good prices on everything.

The Spring Gun Raffle will be held on April 6, 2013 at Sparrow Pond Campground in Waterford, PA. The doors will be open at 3 PM. All attendees must be at least 18 years of age. The first gun will be drawn around 4 PM.

Our Spring Meeting will be held on April 20, 2013 at Conneaut Lake Sportsman’s Club, 11861 Sportsman Rd., in Conneaut Lake, PA. Doors open at 8 AM. The meeting will start at 1 PM. There will be vendors, food, demos and a cable restraint class. Participants for the cable restraint class must register online at the PA Game Commission’s Website. A link to the site is: http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=590352&mode=2

The state rendezvous will be held from June 6th – 9th this year at the West End Fairgrounds in Gilbert, PA 18331. For further information check the state website http://www.patrappers.com/

Mercer County Youth Field Days will be June 8th at the Harthagig Sportsman’s Club on Roger Hill Road in Fredonia, PA. Registration can be completed through the PA Game Commission website.

Tom Hardisky, Wildlife Biologist, is seeking beaver carcasses (male and female over 28 pounds). The carcasses need to be tagged with the management area, county, township, water course and date of kill. If you have any you would like to give him, please get them to me and I will see he gets them. Or you can contact Tom directly at (570) 725-3663 or thardisky@pa.gov.

I hope you all have a great trapping season. Don’t forget to take a kid beaver trapping.

God Bless. — Charlie Sykes

 

DISTRICT 5 REPORT

Winter continues on and we are all wondering if the groundhog knew what he was talking about, by the time you read this, we will know. I hope you had a successful trapping season and your fur sold well. I didn’t trap nearly as much as I had hoped to and the prices I received for my fur made me wish I had trapped more, maybe next year.

The District 5 fur sale was held on Sunday February 10th and I would like to thank everyone that helped with the sale and I would like to thank all who sold their fur at the sale. I am also very appreciative of the buyers that come to the sale and make it all possible. District 5 always has a good sale and this year was no exception. Following are the statistics from the 2013 sale:

Listed by Species, Qty., Average and High

Red Fox — 985, $47.62, $65.00

Gray Fox — 212, $36.61, $41.00

Coyote — 98, $31.79, $45.00,

Raccoon — 2036, $19.02, $36.00

Opossum — 265, $4.25, $4.75

Skunk — 5, $2.45, $2.75

Muskrat — 1750, $13.47, $20.50

Male Mink — 111, $34.93, $43.50

Female Mink — 45, $19.71, $25.00

Beaver — 89, $24.46, $42.00

Bobcat — 15, $81.93, $91.00

Fisher — 3, $80.67, $83.00

Otter — 8, $80.00, $86.00

Our spring meeting will be held on May 19, 2013 at the Gander Mountain in Winder, the meeting will be from 2:00 – 4:00 PM in the meeting room in the back of the store. Please come out and support your district. A postcard mailing about this meeting will also be sent out to remind everyone.

Our district is made up of Blair, Bedford, Cambria, Fulton, Huntingdon, Indiana, and Somerset Counties and if you know of any trappers or anyone interested in trapping please encourage them to join the association.

Our district officers are as follows: Don Sager – Director, Jim Griffith – Assistant Director, Pat Wess – Treasurer, and Deborah Sedlmeyer – Secretary.

Please feel free to contact Pat Wess @ (814) 262-9455 or me with any information you would like to see in this report or any questions you might have. I can be reached at (814) 686-0497 or e-mail me at bdstern@atlanticbb.net Thanks for reading. — Brian Stern

 

DISTRICT 7 REPORT

April 4 to April 7 we will have a booth at the WNEP Outdoor Expo at the Lycoming Mall near Muncy. If you can help out please let me know. Also on April 7 is our fur sale at Hillsgrove, starting at 9am. There will be a 4% commission charged and you must be a PTA member to sell. All members of D-7 will be getting a card about all of our events for this year sometime in March. Also next year we will be hosting the PTA State banquet. If you have anything to donate for the auction or raffles let me know. Also let me know if you can help with the banquet. — Pete Rake— 570-437-2679 or minkman46@aol.com

 

DISTRICT 9 REPORT

District 9 sponsored the Northeast Regional Coyote Hunt on Feb. 1-3. The top coyote weighed 46.95 lb. and was killed by Tim English of Frenchville, Pa. The Kimber Montana in 243 Win. Was won by Tom Schaeffer of Allentown, Pa. 845 hunters took part in the hunt this year, with a total of 58 coyotes being harvested in the 2 ½ day event. Thanks to all who supported the hunt, and a special thanks goes out to all who worked on the days of the hunt. We’d also like to thank Triton Hose Co. in Tunkhannock for allowing us to use their truck bay for the weigh-in, as well as making the excellent chicken dinner for the event.

District 9 also held its fur sale on Feb 9 at the Triton Hose Co. We had 61-sellers and 3-buyers, with a gross sales of $ 40,700. I know there were many happy furtakers walking out with fat checks that day. The results of the sale are as follows:

Red Fox — 216 pelts, High $55.00, Avg $37.95

Gray Fox — 126 pelts, High $36.00, Avg $29.50

Coyote — 85 pelts, High $35.00, Avg $18.96

Raccoon — 645 pelts, High $27.00, Avg $14.65

Opossum — 96 pelts, High $3.00, Avg $2.17

Muskrat — 516 pelts, High $13.00, Avg $11.36

Mink — 97 pelts, High $35.00, Avg $23.38

Beaver — 206 pelts, High $49.00, Avg $32.90

Bobcat — 9 pelts, High $90.00, Avg $74.44

Skunk — 12 pelts, High $6.00, Avg $5.00

Weasel — 1 pelt High $2.00, Avg $2.00

Nick Forman, a graduate student from Penn State University, is conducting a study of river otters in Northeast Pa. His study aims to estimate river otter abundance, with the final goal to understand populations in the area for a possible otter season. To this end, he is going to collect scat along rivers and lake shores, and take DNA from the scat to identify individual otters. If you know of any otter toilets in your area, you can contact Nick at 814-769-1584, or by e-mail at nsf110@psu.edu. You can take a GPS reading on the toilet, or if you have time to show Nick where the toilets are, he’d be very appreciative.

Our April meeting will be held in Pike Co., and our May meeting will be held in Susquehanna Co. at the Harford Fair grounds. We will be holding District elections in May, so if you’d like to step up and run for office, please be at this important meeting. — Ed Price – pricee0503@hotmail.com

 

DISTRICT 10 REPORT

Hello to all. By now most of you should have sold your fur. I think everyone was pleased with the prices. Prices were very good at local sales throughout the State and good quality, well-handled fur commanded top prices.

District 10 fur auction was held on January 19 and things went very well. We had 3 buyers and 42 lots of fur. I want to thank the buyers, workers and people who sold fur for making the sale a success.

The results of our sale are as follows:

Listed by Species, Number Sold, High ($), Low ($) and Average ($)

Red Fox — 468, 50.00, 4.50, 32.70

Gray Fox — 18, 29.00, 10.00, 21.95

Raccoon — 693, 23.50, 1.00, 12.73

Muskrat — 352, 13.25, 3.75, 9.51

Male Mink — 93, 29.50, 3.00, 24.45

Female Mink — 74, 19.50, 4.00, 17.74

Opossum — 135, 3.70, 0.25, 1.62

Skunk — 8, 1.50, 1.00, 1.42

Coyote — 8, 25.00, 1.00, 10.75

Beaver — 15, 22.00, 4.50, 12.40

Deer — 38, 7.50, 4.50, 5.65

Squirrel — 10, 0.25, 0.25, 0.25

Bobcat — 1, 66.50, 66.50, 66.50

Tanned Bobcat — 1, 72.50, 72.50, 72.50

Tanned Otter — 1, 45.00, 45.00, 45.00

The next big event will be the State Convention on June 6-9 at the West End Fairgrounds. We will need plenty of help to set up on June 3-5, and also during the show. Please offer to help out even if only for a few hours. For more info and the demo schedule, check out the PTA website (www.patrappers.com).

Other upcoming events: Northumberland County Youth Field Day – June 1; District 10 Fall Convention – September 27 & 28; State Convention meetings at Belfast Club April 21, May 5 and June 2.

That’s it for now. Enjoy the spring weather. — Scot Mucha – 610-863-9759

 

DISTRICT 11 REPORT

Our February meeting was fairly well attended and we were able to accomplish the business that needed to be done. We voted on an incentive program at our October 2012 meeting that anyone that attends a district meeting in 2013 would be given a ticket for each meeting they attend. You put your name and phone # on the ticket and they are collected at each meeting. At our Oct. 2013 meeting we will select 1 ticket and that person gets a paid tuition to the FTA College in 2014. You may use it or give it to someone else, but you may not sell it. You could donate it back to Dist. 11 to be auctioned off. This is for Dist. 11 members only. Hopefully this will give you 1 more reason to attend the district meetings this year.

We reviewed the fur sale and went over the final numbers. We realized a total profit of a little over $5000 which is very good. This is our only real fund raiser so that money must pay a lot of our bills.

We talked about the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show and we all felt it was the right thing to do to pull out of this show. One of the many downsides to that decision is that no sweepstakes tickets got sold. Typically $3-$4000 is collected on ticket sales at that event. Please consider trying to sell some of the PTA sweepstakes tickets that you will receive by mail soon and are also available at any of the events throughout this year. If you do and put D-11 as the seller, turn the tickets and money in to Ralph or myself because D-11 gets to keep $1 for our district for each ticket sold and the balance goes to the State Assoc. So please help us out with this and sell some tickets.

We talked over some ideas for our all- day meeting at Millcreek Sportsmen’s Assoc that we will hold August 11th. Last year we held a trap auction and had a very good turnout. This year we are going to do a consignment auction at this event. Traps and trapping equipment in good condition that you have and would like to turn into cash can be put on this auction. If possible we would like to get as much collected ahead of time so we can let everyone know what is being offered for sale. We will accept items starting now and up until 10AM on August 11th. Dist. 11 will collect a 15% commission on the sale items which is in line with any auction house. Let Ralph or me know if you have anything you would like to consign to this auction.

Several events that are coming up in the near future:

• District 11 meeting at the Schuylkill County Fairgrounds will be Sunday, April 7 at 2PM

• The PTA State Rendezvous at West End Fairgrounds, Gilbert PA June 6-9

• FTA National Rendezvous June 27-29 Marshfield, WI

• NTA convention Lima, OH Aug 1-3

— Mike Spittle, (717)367-2637, spittlefam@paonline.com

 

DISTRICT 12 REPORT

Hello from the Southeast again. By now there should be a lot of happy people who sent their fur up to Canada, as of the February sale at least. These prices are certainly real money and a lot of you were probably real happy with the outcome. With these prices being the way they are and not knowing when it will come back down I suspect there will be even more trappers in the field next year. I’ve always heard that the average trapper is a year behind the fur market. Well I am not sure if that is so much the case anymore with the speed of information and what not. Even if it is, this was the year that they would have caught up. So my point is if you thought it was packed last year wait until you see this year. Even more reason to stay focused and committed to the cause so we put out a quality product and are successful.

We had a booth at the Oaks Sports Show Feb. 14-17. It was a real good turnout. I restocked very little leftover literature at the end of the weekend. My membership packet was almost empty as well by the end and it was full to start. I thank all of you that helped with the booth. I know several had to drop out due to sickness – the flu is bad this year – but we managed. We will be planning for another great school in the fall as well as several requests so far to attend other sportsmen’s meetings and shows. As the events come up I will post them on the State website, so please call and signup to help.

Keep in Touch. — Rick Ameisen, District #12 Director

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