Trap thief riles Momma bear
December 31, 2013
Folks in Boundary County love the outdoors and all it has to offer, from watching a glorious sun set over the mountains, to hiking and riding through some of the most beautiful and idyllic scenery anywhere.

We like watching deer, elk and myriad other critters large and small.

We also enjoy, both for aesthetics and necessity, the toil and endurance it takes to derive from the wilds around us those things needed to survive and eke out a living.

You will never find anyone who appreciates, enjoys and loves a healthy forest more than a logger who relies on the woods for a living, nor will you ever find anyone with a greater love of healthy and diverse wildlife population than a hunter or trapper raised from an early age to learn the ways of the woods and the creatures it contains to put food on the table.

It's the way our forebears from time immemorial sustained themselves, their families, their clans and their communities; it's the foundation of who we are.

And from time immemorial, such people have had a downright loathing for thieves.

Learning the ways of the woods starts early for many raised in Boundary County, often before a toddler can toddle. Like Mom and Dad before them, they are guided to progress in steps; as they grow, they learn, both the beauties and the dangers.

When a thief steps in and disrupts that progression, taking away as candy from a baby that which was earned by slow, toilsome increments over a span of years, the acolyte is most often dismayed.

Such is the case today with a Boundary County family of generations. And as since time immemorial, when the cub is threatened, Mom is livid.

This particular Mom doesn't want her name used nor any but the most vague details given ... she'd rather, she said quite honestly, take matters into her own capable hands. She'd like to sound a warning to others, though, to be on the lookout, lest other cubs be threatened.

Pity the poor fool should he offend more Moms.

What happened is this.

Her young cub, 13, has spent all his years learning from Mom and Dad, gaining knowledge and skill to hunt, set a trap line and more. Over the years, through his own time and effort, he's learned and earned to make or buy the tools he needs to match his growing prowess.

When he went out recently to walk his trap line, not an easy endeavor, and discovered sign that someone had gone before him, taking his hard-earned traps, he was rightly upset. He was facing a beast he hadn't met before.

Mom and Dad do know the sort of beast who stole not only a string of traps, but knocked an indelible chink in their young boys' trust, and the retribution, while lawful, is apt to be swift and painful for the miscreant, be it a simple thief or a self-appointed protector of nature.

Theft is theft.

And irate Momma bears are not likely to make such fine distinction.