What is the Texas Predator School

We hold a once a year trapping school in Texas. We call it the Texas Predator School. We have been doing this school for 5 years now.

Texas Predator School mission is straight forward. We teach other trappers the art of coyote, bobcat and nest predator control. Not only do we teach the trapping side of the game, we teach the business side of running your own predator control business.

So what does that mean? Well, we teach guys to run a predator control line for coyotes and bobcats using foothold traps, body grip traps and snares. We cover the gear, trap line management, sets, more sets, cage traps, lures, baits, blind sets, shooting (if wanted), making the High fence work for you and much, much more. Then we go as deep into the business side of starting and running a predator control company as you want to go. How to get customers that are willing to pay you. How to advertise to get the target customers you need to make a living, general tax understanding. We can help you build yourself a business plan once we get to know your goals and dreams.

Students at Texas predator school

Some guys come to the Texas Predator School for the purpose of becoming a better coyote or bobcat trapper. We can do this also. Since our class sizes are so small we can customize the week for you.

What makes this trapping school different ? This is the only school were you are trapping all day long, running your own line catching animals. We teach out on a real trap line, not in a class room. You will be setting traps and snare, checking them and handling the catch. No one does a school like this. Sounds fun doesn’t it, that’s because it is.

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Texas Predator School and personal instruction.

Welcome to Predator Control Group’s trapping and snaring schools, plus personal trapping instruction with Clint Locklear, information web site.

Our mission is simple with this site. Give you the trapper, Animal Damage Control professional, business owner or inspiring professional trapper a site that gives you the details of the several paths we have to help you save years of frustration and wasting money with your trapping career.

Every trapper, inspiring professional trapper or ADC trapper has to choices in life. The slow path or the fast path. Lets look at these very different paths.

Student putting in Blind Sets at School

The slow path – This is the path most trappers take. It’s the mindset that trappers takes to gain experience, skills and knowledge. This path is a slow and steady path. Let me explain this a little further. A trapper decides to learn everything on his or her own. The trapper may read some books, watch some videos and sit in on some free demo’s at trapping conventions. At the same time, the trapper learns from their trap line and the experience he picks up from trap line or ADC business. This is a rock solid way of learning. By the time the trapper figures everything out, he or she misses decades of lost income and profits. Here are a few examples of the slow path.

One – A trapper spends several years learning the ins and outs of out of state trapping. After several years the trappers nails down how to get property, road trap, boat trap, putting up fur, selling the fur, taxes, best way the set up truck, short and long lining systems and on and on. It does make the trapper feel proud to muddle though the process all by himself. The fact still remains, the trapper on the slow path missed tens of thousands of dollars figuring everything out all by himself. This is because the trapper on the slow path worked hard learning, but missed production and profits while giving himself a self-education. On the fast path, the trapper can learn from a experienced trapper is a short manner. It is cheaper and quicker to learn from another mistakes, wins, experience, thousands of miles trapping and the money spent on decades of learning. Sure the trapper on the slow path will figure things out, but will miss years to decades of profits and high fur catches.

Two – An ADC trapper decides to pull the trigger on self-employment and is a great trapper. The ADC man on the slow path has to spend years and thousands of wasted dollars trying to find customers, billings, advertising and all the factors that are as important than setting a trap a catching an animal. Most trappers find out that getting and keeping customers is harder to learn than how to catch a groundhog in a cage trap. Most ADC guys will figure it out some day, but the money that is lost is mind blowing. Now the ADC trapper on the fast path, takes the skill sets of a trapper that has already figured things out and goes to work and makes money much sooner.

Three – A fur trapper that wants to get into the predator control game, learns real quick that paying jobs are not easy to come by. Sure the trapper is good, he may be the best coyote trapper in the country, but with out paying customers, what good does the catching skill do this trapper. Like it or not, most Americans and trappers have not be taught how to go out and get clients, build those relationships and make serious profits. Now a trapper that is on the fast path, will learn from the past struggles and train wrecks of a profitable predator control trapper and hit the ground running.

So which trapper are you? Are you on the fast path or are you struggling on the slow path?

Do you want to be on the fast path with your trapping carrier? It is not complicated or rocket science. To be honest, it is pure common sense. Learning from others is not a new concept. What trapping instruction and trapping schools do are again very simple. They allow one trapper learn from the experience of another trapper that has been there and done that already. It saves years and countless dollars to the learning trapper. Don’t have the set backs yourself, learn from mine or anothers set backs. Education will teach you lessons without the loss of you own time. Lets face it, we all have similar ideas as we progress in our personal trapping. The slow path makes one take the time and lost production to see if the concept is a good one or not. Education allows one to ask questions and learn from the lessons already learned. Trapping education is a short cut to bigger catches and a higher income if the student puts the experience of another to practice.

Student from the land Down Under

Do I practice what I preach with my own trapping education? I sure do. I have spent thousands on getting personal instruction and schools. I have taken instruction twice from Craig O’Gorman in MT, FTA Trappers College, Johnny Thorpe from NY, Red O’Hearn in IA, Red Edgemen from TN. I have trapped and learned from Randy Smith in PA and Newt Sterling from NJ, Scott Adams in OH, USDA Trappers in FL, Norm Blackwell from GA, Nick Bowers and Bob Best from OH and PA. I have also have had the joy and blessing to learn from hundreds of students at our school and while giving personal instruction. Because we live in a free country and I have the support of a understanding trappers wife. I have been blessed to run with and be around a lot of great trappers that have taught me small and large things that I can share with trappers that I instruct.

If we can help, just let us know. If you e-mail please be aware that we get a lot up to 100 plus questions a day from trappers. Sometimes I am out in some wooly part of the world and am cut off from the internet. So I might not get in touch with you right away. I ‘m limited by time and trapping. Hope you understand.

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Info for Texas Predator School

One, The cost is $1,500. This covers your food and a great place to stay, so there is no extra cost to you unless you want to go to town and buy some things. A deposit of $750.00 is required to lock in a space for you. This deposit will not be refunded for any reason with in 60 days of the class. This money used to pay the ranch for the lodging.

We are only taking 10 trappers per year.

Two, The dates are not set in stone yet. This will not happen till the winter. The ranches we are trapping on, are working game ranches. They do not want to miss a high dollar hunt for us. Every year, the dates are toward the end of February and the first of March.

We only have 4 students at a time on the ranch. This gives each student some wiggle room on dates to meet their schedule. The sooner a student signs up, he has the first crack at the dates he wants. This also gives the student more personal attention than having everyone in a group like we used to do.

Three, snaring gear for you. So you do not need to bring any snaring supplies. We will also have traps for you to use if you are flying in. I would recommend bringing digging tools and personal trapping bag. If you are bringing traps, you can use some of the CDR’s and expanded pan traps we use, to get a feel for them. You will have a large track of ground to cover, so you can bring up to 60 traps to set. Some will be for coyotes and some for cats. We will have lure, but you might want to bring your own. Your catch might be better with different smells than what everyone else is using.

Four, We require each student to have a personal protection weapon. Don’t worry about this, we will have a hand gun or AK for you to use. We are on the Mexican border. We have not had a problem so far, but we will not be alone out in the brush. When we have someone with gun control issues in their country, we give them an American welcome. We will pull out the Ak’s, AR’s and pistols to have some fun to welcome you to Texas. That is if you are into shooting.e, You will be with an instructor at all times. We have several traps for you to use and this way you can get “hands on” with different equipment. We recommend bringing you own setting gear, traps, lure and bait. We will have the

Five, The course covers coyote, bobcat, raccoon and badger trapping. You will also catch more than these animals. We get in-depth on foot holds, snares, DP’s and this year some custom cage traps we will be testing at the school..

Six, The temps can vary greatly, so bring some cool weather and warm weather cloths. I would wear high leather boots. Everything can prick, sting or bite you. Also, have leather gloves. I would also advise you bringing a couple of light long sleeve shirts, brim hat and sun screen. The sun will be out in force and being sunburned is no fun.

Seven, Bedding and towels are available at the ranch. Food will be provided also from ranch. If you are hooked on a certain drink, i.e. Coke or Mountain Dew, bring some with you. You can also bring beer and bottles to the ranch. Just remember that we are there to learn and become better trappers.

Eight, Each student is allowed to keep three cats and all the coyotes you want to skin. We will be putting up your cats in the evening. This will make it easier to tag. You will need a 5 day hunting license to tag cats in TX, not a trapping license. You will need a trapping license to keep coyotes and badgers. We Predator Control Group will be keeping the coons.

Nine, Keep in mind that we are 8 miles from the Mexican Boarder. I would advice you bring a hand gun for protection. I don’t think we will have any problems, but the border can be a dangerous place. I would also bring a 22 for dispatching, skinning gear and a catch pole for cats.

Ten, We are going to cover trapping and the business side of the game. I would advice you to write down goals and questions about trapping and the business side, if you are interested in this. Clint will be interviewing each student on Sunday as you arrive. This way we can help you meet you future goals the best we can.

Eleven, We will have two instructors. So the in the field classes will be small. What ever you do, don’t be shy. We can only teach you what you need to know, that is if we know what it is you are looking for from the school.

Twelve, If you need medication, don’t forget it. Town is a long drive from the ranch.

You will arrive on a Sunday evening and settle in. Classes start after breakfast on Monday morning and run till Friday afternoon. You can take off Friday evening or Saturday morning.

Hope to see you in Texas! You will have fun, learn a lot and trap your butt off if you come.

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Instructors at the Texas Predator School

Norm Blackwell

Norm Blackwell grew up in the small town of AuGres in Northern Michigan. He started trapping at the age of 14. Living on Lake Huron/ Saginaw Bay he started trapping muskrats, raccoons and beaver. After the fur boom of the 80′s, he was still having farmers/homeowners call him to come trap nuisance wildlife. He was the 54^th person in Michigan to get an ADC license. A few years later he moved to Georgia, where he became licensed for ADC work as well. As you can imagine, Georgia was like moving to a different country compared to where he was from. After being in Georgia for a short time, he learned about the live market for coyote and fox. At that time they were paying $75.00 for reds, $35.00 for grays and $100.00 for coyote. He trapped for the live market for several years along with ADC work, until the live market fell. After that, he started trapping turtles for a turtle farm in Florida, he would deliver six to eight thousand pounds of snapping turtles as well as various other types of turtles a year. He met up with a gator trapper from South Georgia around that time and started helping him trap nuisance gators. Which he still does today when he needs extra help. During this time he also commercial catfished on Lake Seminole, the Chattahoochee River and the Fort Gaines area.

He met several people along the way that had large tracks of land of hunting clubs and plantations. They seemed to all have the same problem with predators. This is when he started concentrating on predator control. He started out just trapping in Georgia and it was not long before he was traveling to the surrounding states doing predator control, including Texas with Predator Control Group. As you can see, he has made his living off the land for most of his life. Although it has not been easy from time to time, with a mindset of “failure is never an option”, and the strong support of his family, he would not trade it for anything in the world.

Clint Locklear

Clint started trapping in Alaska for martin and red fox. After returning home to TN, he ran mixed lines for water animals and land predators. For four years Clint trapped for a TN county to control their beaver problems. While doing this, he had 3 years over 700 beaver and one over 1,100 beaver. Like all things do, this contract ended and he went into long lining fur trapping all over the country. Always looking at the fur prices, he would chase everything from coyotes to muskrats to make a full-time living trapping. Next Clint targeted the predators. His clients were deer ranches, quail plantations, turkey hunting camps and worked on educating the members of the Quality Deer management Association about the real world effects of predator damage. While Clint was getting sound footing in the coyote, bobcat and nest predator business, he was still pounding fur in several different states. He has trapped in 24 states in America and Canada.

Clint has produced several trapping videos, written 3 books, and held trapping schools and predator schools for years now. When he has the time, he gives personal instruction to trappers from all across the country. Clint has made his total living from the trapping industry for over a decade now.

On his predator control jobs in Texas and several other states, he has learned the art of catching predators. No longer is 9-12 bobcats a day or 10-18 coyotes a day a big deal. It is just another day at the office. What he likes as much as putting steel on animals is to help other trappers to do the same.