November has come and gone and was one of the more fun (and busy) months I’ve had in the woods. In Mississippi, November sees the opening of trapping season as well as deer gun seasons.

The first gun season is for so-called “primitive weapons” on private lands. Really a misnomer since it includes single shot cartridge rifles as long as they have an exposed hammer and are at least .35 caliber. I spent some time carrying one of these while checking raccoon traps and had a couple sits to no avail. A couple close encounters were all I could conjure.

The main event happens the Saturday before Thanksgiving. That is the opening day of general gun. That day has always been a big event in our household. Normally one or two family members come in from out of town plus my brother and I are both back in town. Only a couple deer were even seen on opening weekend and I got to the party late due to some family obligations. I did have a few close encounters later on in the week during a weather shift.

While checking traps, I walked up on a group of deer that included one nice buck. He was tall and wide with deep forks and at least 6 points. As I waited for him to step out from behind a tree, the wind swirled down the hill toward some of his does. They alerted and everyone bolted. A little while later, I jumped another deer and had a shot but was unable to ascertain spike or doe before it too disappeared.

A more successful endeavor was trapping. I’ve never trapped before. But we wanted to experiment with taking out some meso-predators as we are trying to improve conditions on our property for quail. I ran six dogproof traps. These are a restraining trap that consists of a tube with the trigger mechanism enclosed in it and a spring. Bait goes inside and the whole thing is staked down and secured. These traps are highly selective to things with hands that can reach into the trap body.

I ran the traps in two different lines for a total of 11 days. My first set produced three opossums in four days. Set number two yielded two raccoons and one opossum in seven days. All three animals from the second set came from one trap. I case skinned the raccoons. But when I went to flesh the hides, I put so many holes in them that it looked like they were shot with a load of #6. I’d like to start putting up a few hides to home tan or possibly sell. We will see where this goes.

Trapping was definitely the highlight of the month. I’m having a ton of fun learning some new skills and as long as I have traps out, I’m getting out in the woods.

In other news, our chickens are growing out of their current accommodations. I finally completed a larger coop that will be able to hold them. I used an A-frame design and mostly scrap wood and some materials given to us by friends. It turned out pretty good after some guerilla (or gorilla) carpentry.

I’m planning another article series as I dive deeper into trapping. Until then, the first week of December brings some hope of getting some deer in the freezer. It’s been consistently cold since opening day and another weather front is due later this week.