Thread: Possum Trapping

Dont think I have even tried skinning a possum since the 80's

I was never fast at skinning anyway but I can pluck them reasonably fast.
I was averaging 10 to a kilo early in the winter last year. Big blacks and reds down Haast ways. I have one spot I hit once a year where I can with my sons help make over 500 bucks in a nights shooting even with fuel and stuff taken into account.
Always try to do a few runs on the possums and put the money towards other hunting related stuff.

Have to travel now to get to them as locally it is a very rare event to see a possum due to all the dairy farming. All the handy country is poisoned heavily.





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on the outskirts of chch so not sure if there are any easy ones out here. If its like back on the coast any easy ones shot already or poisoned. More worried about cocking it up and shooting in the wrong place and having coppers after me.

Not sure if anyone will remember me. Just wanted to update this with a-bit more about what I ended up doing regarding possums. Its been almost 3.5 years since I had to leave NZ and i’m back home in Scotland now. I did spend a couple years in Aus learning then working as a shearer in that time but thats another story.

Ive not really got great dates etc written down but ill try piece together another 6 months of updates without boring people.

So to take it back to my last update which was late 2017 I believe this is what followed.

I pulled all my traps from the bottom of the land i was on and went to the top of a big hill. I was there for about 2 weeks and I done really well.

I had started skinning any skin i thought was good for it. When i went on hols with my family when they came to visit I went into a good few shops that sold products made from possum fur and skins and seen all what they making and doing with the fur. And i also seen the price tag. Cushions 2 skins 200. 4 skins 350, moccasins 1/2 skins 100+.
Meanwhile i was getting $10 on a good day from 2 plucked possums. And honestly it hurt seeing that.

When i came back I ordered my first tanning kit and picked out 6 skins. Used a 20l bucket. It was chrome and something sulphate tanning. Made some boards with nails. And made a wee workshop for it all in this old building.

Took about 20 days for the process. And they turned out alright tbh. Nowhere near the quality from the pros but it did tan them. Played about with them a-bit and asked a few folks opinions. Then started another cycle of 6.
This time they came out quite a bit better still along way to go but definite progress from the first batch.

In the mean time of doing the tanning i was still trapping and tbh I was skinning alot of possums i caught and rolling them in the freezer. (This was a mistake as alot of them were ‘reds’ and had rubbish skins) But i had my sites set on making more money im not gonna lie so i focused more on this than selling the wool. At some stage I ended up trapping with a mate we bought more traps and he used his truck which was really good. Although i wouldnt recommend trapping with someone it is much funner but the spoils are way less. I think we had 80 traps. Best night was between 35-40 possums in a night. Id gotten fairly decent at trapping but had defo realised there wasnt a great future in trapping youve gotta move a lot and set a lot of traps to make end meet from that solely. Although poison i think you could wipe out areas much quicker than traps but you need land available and a good set of wheels.

Back to the tanning… id been really thinking hard about what to make and i know my skills are really poor in arts and crafts. So I went for something easy. And something i never had to spend much capitol on as i was broke.
So I tried to make Insoles for your shoes.

Printed off shoe sizes done a bunch of research on what type of backing to use and which glue/adhesive. And bought the basic tools.
Also researched prices of people selling them. And checked out their quality.

must of taken me 1.5hrs to do my first one. The glue process was a pain in the backside i remember that. Ended up making a few pairs gave them all away to people close to me they weren't good enough to sell. And i was getting feedback on them. The whole process was much harder than i thought it would be and took longer.

My third tanning cycle i ramped up the production a bit bought a 100l odd bin and tanned 30 skins. Before doing this i bought probably my best ever purchases. It was a water blaster and a staple gun. Scrapping the skins etc and using possum boards were gonna be difficult with too many possums at once. The waterblaster took everything off in under a minute and you could stretch the possums out quicker with a staple gun.

I made many sets of insoles out of the 30 hides, it took ages to put them together and I still hadn't found a good adhesive but I was getting a bit neater and i managed to sell a good few pairs between $20 and $40.

Memory's abit hazy but Somewhere around this time a brother from the rugby team asked me if i wanted to come try penning up in the shearing sheds and i went for the day. Ill never forget the first time i walked in the shed i honestly fell in love with it right there and then. Id never seen anything like it before and i really enjoyed the hard work. Had a great day out and he asked me if i wanted to be his presser for the up coming season that was starting in 4 or so weeks.
For the next few weeks i carried on trapping and was keeping alot of skins. I also bought alot more tanning gear and ended up tanning 100 skins at once which was way too much i wasnt ready for it and they basically went to waste I couldnt work with them.

I also had my final year of a working holiday visa coming to and end. And much to my disappointment I couldnt get a visa that would allow me to continue trapping and my vision of building a business selling products. I also for sure needed more capitol to make it. If i could of found someone to make better quality items for me and if i was in a position to pay them upfront id of liked to of seen where i could of taken this. My short term goal was to get enough products to have a stall at a market where the cruise ships come in then see where that took me from there. But sadly and always regrettably I didn't and my possum journey basically end there. Maybe it will start again one day I do miss it the hunting side of it.

I always plan on going back to new zealand its a special place theres nothing quite like it that ive seen.

I wanna thank again the people in this thread for their advise and I hope that my story helps someone looking to get into trapping and can show what can potentially become of that.

Scotsman

That's a cool story, glad you sorted the trapping out, it's a great lifestyle even if you don't make a fortune. It's a crazy world we live in at the moment with Covid so I suppose it's nice to be back in your home land. Possums will still be here if you decide to have another go in the future, all the best.

Thanks Mooseman great to see your still on here I was hoping you’d see this. Your inputs where priceless throughout my journey. Many thanks for all the advice it really was top quality knowledge you were dishing out on this thread, you could write a book.
Scotsman

When you look at the tallies Scotsman was getting, it makes "NZ- Pestfree by 2050" look like a Tui ad.

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

There is a huge difference between controlling a population and eradicating it. With current methods eradication is not an option.
When I was still in the pest control we were trying to eradicate wallabies from the BOP, that was 12 years ago, at best they are still trying to eradicate new populations which have established . Back when I was doing it eradication meant an area that had been controlled or worked had to have three clear runs using trained wallaby indicator dogs before it could be called wallaby free.
Using this method for monitoring the control for all pests in NZ will be basically impossible to achieve . Can you imagine three clear monitors over the whole of NZ using trained dogs for ever species of pest? The cost will be prohibitive for one thing.
Unless the Government has some silver bullet up there sleeve the 2050 deadline is impossible. Just take rats for an example all around the world they have been tapped , poisoned , hunted and still there is just as many about, imagine the nightmare of trapping/ poisoning cities like Auckland then going through and having three clear monitors using trained dogs .
The whole Pest Free Government pledge for 2050 is nothing but a vote grab, idiot greenies will think what a marvellous idea and vote them in only to find it is a pipe dream.

Definitely remember you scotsman.
Glad you had a good time in NZ and would love to see some photos

Post them up

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Some of the insoles I made



Brought a girl down to my wee workshop to help me with ideas of what else I could be making from the skins as I was clueless lol




Got right into pig hunting from the first time I ever went. Couple pigs from the land I started my trapping journey on, knew it like the back of my hand so always got invited out when hunters came to go pigging

Struggled to get them to post on here so i've put them on imgur... will add more to it later

link below

these traps were the beginning of my journey it all started with these
various pics
https://imgur.com/a/GA46QQ0

a vid of when i tanned 100 skins

https://imgur.com/a/EcafIWD

Scotty

Just need to locate my hard drive then I’ll post some up! Tried finding it last night but to no avail.

Have found a few from Facebook while I keep yous waiting!

Walking my trap line, I believe it was on the way to when i was in the pines…one of my furthest hikes but it was defo worth it

As a kid I used to snare them. Put a branch against a tree. Aniseed oil and flour and a steel wire snare.