Thread: Possum Trapping

Could of sworn the target was 2025 back when I was in NZ. Either way I do not see how it is possible to completely kill them off. Is there a plan on how to do it? I remember they dropped a bunch of 1080 when I was there.

I wish the government would try a different approach and invest in young people teaching them to trap in the masses, discount traps for them, give people extra dollar incentives for catching possums maybe through a tafe course or something...give them an easier route to make something out of possums. Then maybe they stay in the industry, move on to poisoning etc. It wouldn't eradicate them but if you had 10x more people killing possums that's 10x more possums leaving your country (once all these people get good at it). Its a win win for the government and the people who could do with opportunities and help.
There was so much poverty where I was living and people were stuck in holes without vehicles and too far from any jobs (me included.) I tried helping one younger guy to get into trapping that was in a similar situation as me but he just wasn't keen and he was probably thinking whats the effin point, its gonna take me ages to learn and I've no money for traps bait etc.
It was extremely hard for me to acquire traps while scraping a poor quality life from what I was making, let alone get a proper road legal vehicle. Although it was an AMAZING experience, surviving NZ from trapping was the most difficult thing mentally I've ever done. I'm not ashamed to admit i broke down a few times. And it tops the mental struggles of learning to shear merinos in the Australian outback!!!!! I'd like to believe I would of got there eventually but its next to impossible to go from having nothing to have decent accommodation, a vehicle, all the trapping gear and to be able to eat well enough from trapping on foot self employed in your local area. So I can see why no-one bothers doing it full time starting from the bottom...may as well stay on the dole - I'm not talking about people with vehicles and capital prior but people without this to start off with and are trying to get to that stage through hunting possums.

Sorry for going off topic a bit, never really shared what it was like behind the scenes in my situation and what I thought about it.

Also I have a lot of photo's and video's from my time in the bush. If people are interested I will try to put a few on this thread to give the story some more life.

Scotsman