Hunting and Trapping

A double spring trap, which was used to trap muskrats to prevent them from wriggling out of the traps

For Jake, hunting and trapping wasn't just a hobby, it was a way of life, even at ten and eleven years old. It wasn't unusual for him to wake up at five or six o'clock in the morning to go out and check his traps before heading off to school. He would hunt and trap mink, fox, skunk, and muskrat. Jake would set up a few dozen traps in the swamps and forests behind his house. His trap of choice was a double spring trap, which was used most commonly with muskrats to prevent them from wriggling out of the traps. Jake would earn around 89 cents for a skunk pelt and $1.10 for a muskrat pelt, which were the two animals that he trapped most often. On one occasion, however, he was able to trap a mink and receive $38 for its pelt, which "was like gold back then."

Selling the animal pelts was crucial for Jake because he used the money he received to buy his own shoes and clothing. "Back then you didn’t have any money during the Depression, it was just before the WWII, we'll say 1941-4 and [trapping] was big money." By the end of the season, Jake would have trapped, skinned, and sold around 50-60 muskrats, and a half a dozen skunks each year, which allowed him to live comfortably.

Numerous pelts that Jake collected throughout the trapping season

"I used to get sent home from school because back in the fall I’d trap skunk and I’d trap muskrats too. That was the big money maker for us back then. But when you get the skunk scent on your hands, I was one of the older boys up there, and I’d go look at my muskrat traps early in the morning and then I’d go to school, and I was in charge of the coal burner downstairs, the old furnace, and I’d heat it and I’d get to sweating and the skunk scent would come out on my hands when I’d handle them and there was no way to get it off, gram would make the lye soap and I’d do everything to try to get the scent off, and all the sudden there’d be a girl here or there and they'd sniff and smell it...."

Jake's father and sister with muskrat furs

Jake's father (far left) with three friends after a hunting trip

"I’d see the teacher looking and shed say, “Sonny Jacobs, you’ve been trapping skunks. You come up here and take this note home.”' I’d get sent home for trapping skunks."

Pheasants

"I remember when I was a kid, when I’d go and look at my muskrat trap before I went to school, and the pheasants were here by the hundreds. I had a stick my dad made, I'd always set in my trap so when the rat got caught it would jump in the water and drown, and I had this stick that hooked the chain and the wire out to bind my trap, and I used this for another reason, and I tell this to people and some think they think I make it up. I was like ten, eleven, or twelve, and I went to these marshes, you know where the cattails were,	pheasants
that’s where the muskrats are, they love the cattails, and pheasants don’t roost in trees, they roost on the ground, they roost in swamps, mostly swamps, where its soggy. I went in there at daylight, I’d be there just about daylight so I'd know the pheasants were in there. So I’d go in there hollering, banging on the cattails and there'd be about 25-30 pheasants that would fly up and they’d be so close I could feel the air from their wings."