District 4
Director: Buzz Neprud
Co-Director: Wayne Thom
District 4 Director of Minnesota Trappers Association
Director Report
Greetings District 4,
By the time you read this, Beaver trapping will have ended. I can’t remember a year in my part of Minnesota where we have had 8 weeks of open water trapping.
We had our District Meeting March 6th in Brainerd on a Friday Evening, had a full house 61 members. Looks like I will have to find a bigger venue for our next meeting.
New Business Discussed
1. The DNR wants support to bring back site validation tagging, no attaching to animal, but better control of the resource. District 4 attendees voted in support, possibly will be implemented 2011.
2. It has been proposed to lengthen otter season to March 30th with restrictions such as shortening beaver season to April 30th or earlier. Our District voted this down.
If you have any concerns on these items send your comments to Con Christenson, Legislative Liaison.
Information only: DNR is discussing letting us keep up to 10 muskrat during spring season with trap restriction size. No decision yet. A couple requests from district 5 were brought up at the meeting.
1. Consider raising snare height to 20"
2. Open raccoon and Fox snaring same as trapping opener.
Both items where supported by our district.
Now we are going to talk about the fun time of year - convention time. We are having our annual summer get together July 30th-Aug 1st in Barnum Minnesota, with the usual Demo's, Dealers, Auctions and fellowship. District 4 duties are Gate Duty Saturday 3:45-7:00pm and MTA booth Friday 1:45-5:00pm. It would be wonderful if some new faces would help out. Contact Wayne or myself if you are willing to help. Important- Incentives prizes, traps, etc. for people who have bought or sold raffle tickets must be picked up at the convention, or have someone pick them up. This is due to the high cost of postage. The Board decided this was the most constructive way to do it so please make arrangement to pick up your incentive, or better yet, attend your convention.
Also if you are planning on holding an education class, please let me know so we can get it on the website.
Last but not least on June 21st the 2nd Annual D.U. event at Lakeshore Rod and Gun Club is holding a kids event that we participated in last year. We need volunteers to help out, if you can please give me a call 218-851-5989 so I can pass your name on to Don Rasmussen or give him a call 218-534-3244 for more information.
Till Next Time,
Buzz
District 4 Co-Director Report Minnesota Trappers Association
Co-Director Report
Our spring District 4 meeting in Brainerd was well attended. There was standing room only and a lot of new faces. Thanks to Deb VanDriel for getting the meeting notices out, to my wife Liz for taking the minutes. See Buzz’s report for these.
The MTA summer convention is in Barnum July 29 – August 1, 2010. Hope to see you all there. Let me know if you could help man the NTA booth sometime so I could work the main gate and do my part in helping at the MTA booth.
The NTA Convention is at Marshfield, WI from August 5-8. We did some checking and Marshfield is 298 miles from Brainerd, 263 miles from Blue Earth and 350 miles from Fergus Falls. There are some good tours set up for the ladies. I hope to see some of our members at both conventions.
Spring beaver trapping has been slow. The good news is that the beaver price went up $2.50 since I sold in late March.
Wayne