'POSSUM TRAPPING

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 52, 29 August 1925, Page 7

'POSSUM TRAPPING

DIRTY, BUT REMUNERATIVE

The excellent prices for 'possum skinß are reflected in the absence this season for any concession for extension of the period during which it it lawful to have opossum skins in possession. The season ended on 11th August, and until 11th September there is no penalty for the possession of skins. Usually at this time there are numerous appjications for extensions of time, but none have been received so far by the Wellington Acclimatisation Society. Already 40,000 skins have come in, and a. record season seems quite possible.

Prices at auction have reached 18s, and the average is not less than Bs, while private buyers are paying 9s 3d to 9s 6d, taking the good with the bad. All the veteran trappers have done well, only novices failing to make a good harvest. Two- seasoned men in the Wairarapa took ' £640, £320 apiece for six weeks' work, and three others £480, or £160 apiece, Hvhile even those novices who took only 70 skins during the season have cleared wages equal to what they could have made at any other form of labour. Many of the novices do not Bet enough traps, and do not realise that trapping is such hard work as it is. The experts use from fifty to seventy- traps. • The licenses are.subject, in the State forests, to a permit, or a letter from the owner, in tha case of private property, the trap lines being laid on surveyed plans. The old hands generally avoid any olosing of each other's trap lines, but novices frequently clash in this matter, when the rangers act as referees. Time is valuable in the short season, and experienced men make thorough provision for their comfort bofore the season opens, even down to food supplies, using every minute of the season in trapping or drying the skins.' Trappers are no longer allowed to kill trapped 'possums by shooting them through the head with a pearifle, as it is thought that the presence of poarifles in the State forests may be a menace to the pigeons and other native birds. 'Possums have now to be killed with "a olub, and in the. hands of a novice, it is apt to be a painful death. Only Bmooth-jawed traps nre permitted, and there is a feeling amongst experienced trappers that this is a mistaken philanthropy. The teeth hold the limb firmly, whereas the smooth jaws enable the animal to strip the flesh off the limb in the course of its struggles. "It is a filthy, wet, and disagreeable form of very hard work," said the secretary of the Wellington' Acclimatisation Society (Mr. C. I. DasontJ, from whom the above information w,as gleaned, "but it pays trappers well."