Late March Snow- Old 'Coon

How ironic it is to have the last day of SPRING break have snowfall, and not just a flurry but an accumulation of near three inches. Spencer, my friend, and I were going to go fishing for those walleyes on this last night as we at least knew that there was a large front coming in (yet we hadn’t heard the reports of snow). About an hour before we were going to go the snow really started falling so we ended up calling off that fishing venture. The snow lasted the night and the next day largely, but a lot melted off that day and the rest disappeared the next day after a rain. I think this weather with all of these fronts is really upsetting the walleye spawn and I know that it will be difficult to go fishing at a good time (when I might have a chance at catching some). This was quite the end to spring break I thought.
Prior to this eventful snowfall I had went down to the Ferguson farm for two days to help out my grandpa and say hello to my hound dogs and see how they were faring in the off- season. As I helped my grandpa tear out a very large stretch of fence and to care after the calving Angus in the pasture. At one of these particular pastures which to the west side of Barnes City, which is the farthest away from my grandpa’s house we were driving back into the pasture after we feed the cows to scout out some turkeys. Although we found a number of deer we didn’t spot any of the elusive turkeys (turkey season is less than two weeks away!!) and we also saw a dead ‘coon. As my ‘coon hunting blood starting getting stirred around within me I found myself unconsciously going over to investigate this ringtail as it was so unusual to see it like that in the water I thought. The dead ‘coon was in the flow of a small ditch which was about ten feet away from the tile that went under the road that we took to get back home. As I came over to the spot I noticed that he had one paw that was being forced under water and immediately I had suspicions about what this “crime scene” was. The ‘coon had died (and pretty recently at that from what I saw) from a trap from which the trapper (poacher) just left when the season closed. This is the kind of actions that give trappers a bad name and jeopardize the loss of our rights to harvest fur. I took the responsible action and let loose the ‘coon carcass from the trap and hid the trap so that this didn’t further the argument to outlaw trapping if this scene was observed by some kind of activist.