October is a long month for trappers. Days are spent boiling traps, preparing equipment, scouting set locations and, hardest of all, waiting.
The season for most furbearers doesn’t open until Oct. 25, but the cold, crisp nights of early fall leaves many trappers yearning to string steel.
Still, even though the weather may feel like trapping season, it has little bearing on when the time is right to start running a line.
In nature, changes aren’t necessarily dictated by the time of year or even the weather. While we base things on a clock or calendar, wildlife depends on one element to determine when it’s time to transition.
Daylight.
Or, in the case of the fall, a decreasing amount of daylight.
The amount of time that the sun shines each day dictates what wildlife does and triggers biological functions that define their existence.
In my opinion, there is no force in nature more powerful than daylight.
Especially when there’s less of it as the days grow shorter in the fall.
In nature, photoperiodism, and not a calendar or clock, controls growth, development and seasonal behaviors in plants and animals. Photoperiodism is the reaction that plants and animals have to varying amounts of daylight.
With deer, it causes antler growth in bucks to subside once the hours of daylight decrease with fall’s approach. When the days grow shorter, a buck produces more testosterone, causing the velvet that nourished its antlers all summer to die and drop off.
The shorter days also cause estrogen levels to spike in does, generating estrus cycles and triggering the rut.
In fact, the weather has nothing to do with the timing of the rut. The breeding season for deer is determined by photoperiodism, and that’s why the rut doesn’t begin on the same date every year.
And it’s also why trappers must wait out the weeks of October before they can think about filling stretchers with fox and raccoon hides.
The only ethical time to start running a trapline is when the furs are prime, and that isn’t based on a calendar or even cold weather, but by decreasing periods of daylight.
In fact, one of the most common misconceptions among trappers is cold weather triggers an animal to begin growing its prime winter coat.
It’s simply not true.
If cold temperatures dictated primeness in furbearers, what would happen if we have a prolonged stretch of mild weather through fall and winter? Is it possible to have a fall season that isn’t cold enough to produce prime fur?
Of course not.
But how does daylight control when deer will enter the rut or when the hide of a furbearer becomes prime?
It’s all in the eyes.
The only way a raccoon, for example, is going to know that the days are getting shorter is to see the change. Daylight is absorbed through an animal’s retinas, and as it decreases in the fall the change is transmitted to the brain, triggering the appropriate seasonal response.
In the case of furbearers, shorter days mean it’s time to start growing a prime coat, which consists of dense underfur protected by long guard hairs.
When I started trapping as a teenager, the season began earlier in October and I admit I couldn’t always wait for the fur to turn prime. Once trapping season opened, I’d start off with a small line to pick up a few opossums or raccoons to gauge how close the fur was to becoming prime.
If the hide of the pelts had a bluish/gray color, it meant they weren’t prime. But once the hides were white – which usually doesn’t happen until early November – it was time to get all the traps set.
Today, even though the opening day of trapping season is now later in October and closer to when most furs will be prime (with the exception of beaver, mink, muskrat and otter), it’s still a long wait for many trappers.
But ethically, it’s the right thing to do.
While the chilly nights and the pages of a calendar may tell us it’s trapping season, daylight determines when the time is right.
