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.
