The Trapper's Post Interview - Paul Grimshaw

By TP Staff

Paul Grimshaw, 68, of Champlain, New York, is an icon in the trapping industry. Paul has been a trapper, fur buyer, lure maker, and supply dealer for over half a century, and his supply tables and demos have been familiar sights at countless conventions for many years.

TP: What was your first trapping experience?

GRIMSHAW: I grew up in the country, about 2 miles from the town of Champlain, but nobody in my family hunted, fished, or trapped. When I was 15 my older brother Joey found 3 Blake & Lamb #1 longsprings at the dump. My younger brother Emerson and I set them under an oak tree and put corn kernels on the pan, and caught chipmunks. That hooked us on trapping. We skinned them and stretched them square, and gave them to our niece for her dollhouse. She bragged that she was the only girl in town with fur rugs for her dollhouse.

TP: What was your first actual furbearer catch?

GRIMSHAW: That summer my brother and I discovered Fur-Fish-Game (FFG) magazine at the drug store in Champlain, and we got catalogs from Dailey, Butcher, and F.T. Taylor Fur Company. We bought packbaskets and half a dozen #1 1/2 longsprings between us. In one catalog we saw a picture of a fish that clipped on a trap pan, to catch raccoon. We cut the picture out and traced copies of the paper fish on a flattened tin can, and cut them out with tin snips. We wired them to the trap pans.

That fall I shot a coon out of a tree while I was squirrel hunting, so I had 1 coon. In the woods we found where a spring overflowed onto the ground, and we cleaned out the runoff trickle until we had a straight run about 6 inches wide and about 50 feet long, with a few inches of water flowing in it. We set some traps with metal fish on the pans on the bottom of the run, and wired them to pole drags. I caught a coon, and we were pretty excited. We stretched them square on the garage wall like we saw in a catalog. I sold them to a local fur buyer named William Lebell for $1.75 each.
With $3 in my pocket from those coon I was the richest kid in the 8th grade. I told everyone I wanted to be a trapper and fur buyer when I grew up, but they just laughed at me.

The next spring we found rat droppings on rocks and logs in a small pond. I caught a couple of rats in the footholds but I didn’t know how to drown them so they twisted out. The Victor #110 Conibear had just been put on the market, and my brother had 3. He caught 3 muskrats in them.
It took forever to skin those rats. We’d bought the book A Trapper’s Companion from FFG, and we used instructions in it to make stretchers out of stiff, heavy wire bent to shape, with the ends stuck into a wooden base, and a short piece of wood sticking up from the base to tack the pelt to. We kept the pelts all summer for the fur buyer, but the bugs ate them. That fall we trapped red squirrels, and sold the dried pelts to a St. Louis fur company.

We studied the book, and the next spring we caught 17 rats. And that fall I caught my first fox.
I made a pocket set for rats in a wet ditch, caught a red squirrel, and put it in the pocket for bait. The next day there was a fox dancing around in the # 1 ½ longspring. I was really excited. I’d already caught 2 coon and some rats that fall, and I thought I was really harvesting the fur!
The fox was beautiful but it had no tail. The local newspaper printed a picture of me holding it, and I was really proud. People began to know of me as a trapper.

TP: When did you start seriously catching fur?

GRIMSHAW: I graduated from high school in 1960 and bought a car but I got a job at a hardware store so I could only trap part time. I got married in 1962. When my wife Bernie got pregnant she went to a doctor in the spring of 1963, but he wouldn’t see her because we didn’t have insurance. He was worried he wouldn’t get paid. I take my debts seriously, and it infuriated me that he wouldn’t trust me. I called another doctor and told him that if he delivered the baby I’d pay him and the hospital that fall with my fur check. He agreed. Our daughter Tammy was born that July. That fall I trapped hard before and after work and weekends, and caught about 400 muskrats. I averaged about $3 each, and I paid all the medical bills and had money left over.

We had 2 more kids, Paula and Timothy, each a year apart, and I trapped hard each fall to pay the bills. Paula was born at 2 a.m. on October 25, the first day of the trapping season. I left the hospital just before dawn and was setting traps when the season opened at 7 a.m.

The hardware store didn’t pay enough to support our growing family so we really needed the fur money. Muskrats were our bread and butter. We live in great muskrat country, the Great Chazy and Little Chazy Rivers dump into Lake Champlain nearby, and there are marshes around the lake, and a lot of farm ditches.

TP: You’re known for your mink trapping ability.

GRIMSHAW: The year before I got married I found mink tracks on the sand bar of a small stream. There was a stump at the edge of the water, and the mink tracks went down to the stump, disappeared, and reappeared on the other side, back on the sand bar. It was obvious that the mink went out around the stump into the water, so I set a foothold in the water with the loose jaw against it. The next day it held a big male mink. That got me going on mink.

Next fall I started walking the brooks looking for mink tracks and locations like the stump, and I caught 11 mink. That taught me a lot more about location, and the next year I caught 25, the next 41, and after that usually over 50 a year. They were all caught in blind sets. I never used lure or bait or spent time digging pockets. Instead I spent the time looking under root systems, in natural cavities and washed out holes around culverts, along bank trails, etc. During late winter mink mating season when the males were really moving, I’d catch a dozen or so in single spring #220s set on the bottom of streams, in the open water just below beaver dams.  

TP: What other furbearers did you trap?

GRIMSHAW: I’ve caught all the legal New York furbearers at one time or another, including fisher and marten. I played with canines somewhat, after the water froze. I trapped beaver every year after they became legal, in winter and spring. In the winter of 1990 Neil Olsen and I partnered in the Adirondacks. We did a lot of snowshoeing in deep snow, but we caught 153 beaver and 36 otter in 6 weeks. We’ve partnered on beaver every year since, and we’ve become good friends. My only problem with Neil is that Bernie packs us a lunch every day, and Neil wolfs his down early and keeps trying to steal mine. Bernie’s a great cook.

But my real money has always been in the water. I’d catch 50-plus mink, 70-80 coon, and my rat catch kept increasing with experience. My best year was 1994, with 1,704 rats. They only averaged about $2.50, and it took me almost a year to sell them!

TP: How did you get into fur buying and lure making?

GRIMSHAW: From 1962 to 1965 I worked nights and weekends with fur buyer Glen Rowe. He showed me how to put up and grade fur, and I traveled with him buying fur, from Johnny Thorpe among others. Rowe took me to meet E.J. Dailey, and we became friends. I wanted to start my own trapping supply business, and in 1965 Dailey gave me $360 credit in supplies and lures. That summer Bernie and I rented a small store to run a retail supply business in, and we printed our first mail order catalog. I only made $38 a week at the hardware store, and when I came home one night that fall and Bernie told me we’d gotten an order in the mail for $55, we were pretty excited.

The next summer we started selling fishing tackle and supplies out of the store too, to supplement during the off season. The first convention we set up at was the New York State Association meet at Lake Pissco, and after that we went to more and more shows every summer.

At first I sold just Dailey’s lures, but I experimented with my own formulas, and when I came up with something that worked he’d mix and bottle it for me, and I’d put my name on the label. As demand increased I started mixing and bottling my own lures. To do this I had to buy ingredients in quantity, and eventually I started selling lure ingredients, too.

Our lure business was strictly retail at first, but as our volume increased in the early 70s we started wholesaling too.

TP: How did you handle your job, the supply business, and the gardening too?

GRIMSHAW: It was a family affair, we all worked. Bernie took care of the kids and cooked and packed orders during the day, and in the summer she and the kids, as they got older, worked in the garden. In the fall and winter I trapped before and after work and all day on the weekends, and bought fur after dark. In December Glen Rowe let me thin evergreens on his woodlots, and we sold Christmas trees for $1 and $2 apiece at the store. It was a 7-day a week job, from before dawn until sometimes long after dark in the fall and winter.

In 1969 I quit the hardware store and we went full time. As the kids grew and could help more, and needed more to eat, so did the garden. At one point it was 200 feet long and 15-20 feet wide. We canned and froze everything we needed for winter. We had plum, pear, apple, and cherry trees, and we picked wild blueberries and black and red raspberries, and ate beaver, squirrel, rabbit, grouse, and pheasant. In the spring we picked fiddleheads to sell in the store. One year we picked and sold 3,000 pounds in 2 weeks. When the mail order got busy the kids helped with the housework and tended the store while Bernie and I packed orders. The kids went with us to the conventions and helped run the tables, and in the fall they trapped a bit too. It was a team effort.

During trapping season it was like a mini-trapping convention in the store in the evenings. There was always a bunch of guys there selling fur. We had 2 guys scraping fur, and I graded while Bernie wrote checks. Lots of kids trapped then, and they’d hang out and get advice from the older trappers. It was a nightly social event. You don’t see that anymore. By the mid-70s the Fur Boom had really started and there was money in fur. People bought supplies, and 4-wheelers, and clothes, and Christmas presents, and Bernie and I paid state sales tax and IRS taxes, and the whole economy benefited. I was even able to contribute to an IRA with the fur check, and we paid for our own health insurance.

TP: Your supply tables are a familiar sight at trapping conventions, especially your huge book display.

GRIMSHAW: We’ve done 10-12 shows a year all over the Northeast: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, but in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana too. Usually I’ve got about 350 book titles on display. I do demos at most of the shows, too.

TP: Your lure-making demo is always a big hit.

GRIMSHAW: I give the audience some simple recipes and mix up some bottles. Like for a good rat lure I’ll use 1 ounce of apple essence, ½-ounce of rat glands, and 2 ounces of lure base, either glycol or glycerine. I’ll mix a batch of that and put it in 1-ounce bottles, and label it “Muskrat Lure,” and pass it out to the audience, especially to kids. I mix up and pass out about 6 or 8 formulas during the demo.

I always tell people about tonquin musk. It’s a universal attractant. Bear, beaver, canines, fisher, coon, cats, rats, they all love it. Otter really love it. Get it on your fingers and try to wash it out, it actually gets stronger when wet. That’s why it’s a great beaver and rat lure ingredient, it gets stronger on rainy nights, when they’re moving. All you can get now is the synthetic musk, but it works fine.

TP: You still do things the old fashioned way.

GRIMSHAW: I don’t use a computer, I believe they’ve caused more harm than good. All our records and correspondence and labels are typed or handwritten and we still cut and paste our catalog. No GPS, I study landmarks. Write the number of a telephone pole at a location works good for road trapping. I use a truck, but no 4-wheeler or snow machine, I walk or snowshoe to the sets, and I cut the ice with a chisel, not a chain saw.

I’m 68, I’ve been trapping for 53 years. It’s supported our family, and it’s kept me healthy.