Bounty Hunter!

Did my Dad ever hear of the word 'allowance'?  Maybe.  Didn't mean anything if he did, never mentioned  it or suggested giving one to the kids.  He had total control of the $.  Everyone else had to beg for it and justify the proposed usage thereof.  I HATED having to ask for money!

So, what's a farm kid gonna do to get some cash?  One answer: trap pocket gophers.  Pocket gophers are like moles, rarely seen above ground.  Farmers hated them because their large mounds of dirt damaged equipment and crops.  Our northern Minnesota township placed a bounty on the critters, a whopping 25 cents per.

So Trapper Mike, on summer nights after the chores were done, traipsed off into the fields to check and reset his traps.  We only had 4 traps, not much of a trap line by Hudson's Bay standards.

The traps needed to be set in active gopher tunnels, evidenced by the freshest mound of dirt.  The tunnels were about 8" deep and formed a T with the vertical hole used to haul dirt to the surface.  You had to dig down to the tunnel and set the trap so that the trigger plate was even with the tunnel floor. 

Pocket gophers don't like daylight.  If any light leaked down to the tunnel, the gopher would close the leak by packing the area full of dirt - packing it so tightly it was difficult to pull the trap out of the ground.  I used a piece of asphalt shingle to cover the hole, and piled dirt around the edges.  Despite my best efforts, the doggone critters sometimes detected light, did their thing, thereby avoiding the trap.

My trapping career ended after the third season because the township opted to discontinue the bounty.  Don't know why they did that.  Highly doubtful that the bounties they paid me were a major drain on the coffers.