To those of us who care deeply about wildlife issues and the abuse of non-humans, it seems that no matter how many horrors you hear about, there’s always something else happening to animals somewhere we’re shocked to learn. Even after writing a book against hunting and trapping, I guess there are still places my mind doesn’t want to go.

That’s how I felt when I read the article, “Montana, Idaho trappers catching more than just wolves,” in the Ravalli Republic, which I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, “Stop the Spread of Psychopathy—End Hunting and Trapping.”

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

For a few years my wife and I lived in a house surrounded by a small field on a forested hill above Washington’s Willapa River valley. The field was once an upper pasture of a now long-defunct dairy. We were happy to see it returning to nature. Sword ferns, wildflowers and Douglas fir trees were starting their advance across the expanse of grass, finding soil churned up by moles for their seeds to take root.

Common wildlife there included black-tailed deer, black bear, raccoons, coyotes, field mice and the red-tailed hawks attracted by the latter. Meanwhile, our feeders attracted everyone from squirrels and chipmunks to a varied assortment of birds—Steller’s jays, juncos and chestnut-backed chickadees, as well as flocks of band-tailed pigeons and American goldfinch, the Washington state bird.

But it was always a special treat to wake up to the sight of the local elk herd bedded down in the upper corner of the field, less than 50 yards from the house.

People often panic at the thought of 20 or 30 large animals competing with their cows for pasture grass, but elk are anything but sedentary grazers—they’re always on the move. Sticking together as a group, they make a circuit around their range through forests and across rivers to find themselves in a new place every day for a week or two, before starting the circuit anew. It was always sad to see them move on from the protection of our posted private property, yet you could almost predict to the day when they’d show up again.

But there was one lone elk cow who seemed to shadow the herd, always a few days behind. We saw her far more often than the herd, and we soon figured out that she was staying nearby in the surrounding forest rather than migrating over the miles-long circuit like the rest of her kind. The reason became obvious—she had a pronounced limp as though barely able to use her right front leg.

When we got a good look through binoculars we saw that her foot was in fact missing! What the hell could have happened to cause that? My first thought was that she caught her leg in some overgrown barbed wire, a familiar threat since “livestock growers” almost never remove unnecessary fencing when they finally quit the business.

Asking around to the locals, their standard reaction was a snicker and a half-assed guess that someone must have shot it off during hunting season. Either scenario seemed remotely possible, but not necessarily all that probable, considering the horse-like size of the animal in question. One bullet or a strand of barbed wire shouldn’t do that much damage.

Twice over the years I’ve found dogs caught in steel-jawed foot-hold traps in other parts of the state (one of them had to have his lower leg amputated) and I started to wonder if the elk might have stepped into a trap set for coyotes (whom the locals hate with extreme prejudice).

I knew that smaller mammals, as well as hawks and eagles, were often unintended victims of trapping; but the thought of an animal as large as a deer or elk being caught in a trap was just too hard to get my mind around. It wasn’t until I read the following lines in “Montana, Idaho trappers catching more than just wolves,” and then saw a photo of a hunter-killed cougar who had earlier lost his toes in a trap, that I suddenly knew for sure—that’s how she lost her foot!: “Trappers reported capturing 45 deer. Twelve of those died. They also captured 18 elk and four moose. One of the elk died.”

The article goes on to quote the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s state “game” manager, looking out for his cronies while objectifying the animals, “No one wants to catch a deer. It costs them a lot of time.” I don’t even want to try to imagine what an ungulate like that goes through to try to escape a trap—even before seeing an approaching trapper.

Traps are often compared to landmines set for any passing animal. But the difference is that while a landmine blows an appendage off instantly, a steel-jawed trap works its evil slowly—the more its victim struggles to escape, the more damage is done.

In the case of the elk, escape meant not only catching up with the rest of the herd, but also getting away from anyone who might happen by. If determined enough, an animal as powerful as that could eventually pull herself free of a trap’s steel jaws, but freedom would likely come at the expense of a foot.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved