Dog in foot trap

Hey all,

Had a scary end to my Saturday hunt this weekend. My pup, Briar, stepped into a foot trap. Luckily, the jaws didn't have teeth and it didn't catch him around the ankle but instead trapped his foot so the jaws were squeezing his paw flat. Took my dad and I about 5 minutes to calm down and figure out the trap and get him out but when we did he took two steps with a limp and then started hunting like nothing happened. Shows no signs of tenderness or anything. Shook me up more than him. Here in MN, trappers aren't required to post their traps or anything, and it seems like a simple and easy way to help avoid this sort of thing from happening. In this case, my dad and I had time to have a conversation about what we thought Briar was sniffing before he stepped in the trap. If I had had some indication that he was sniffing a trap I could've whoa'd him and gotten him away safely. Obviously, that's not going to prevent anything if the dog is off a ways, but it would've helped in this case. Curious to see if other states have stricter legislation for trappers?

Traps here don't have to be posted...traps with teeth are illegal, and they can't be set within 100 feet of a residence, school, or church without the owner's permission. And you have to check them every 24 hours. I think that's it. Oh, they have to be small traps, no bigger than 5 inches I think.

Ouch! No insight on legislation but I'm glad his foot is okay.

be glad i know a guy in MN that had his dog killed in connibear type trap & he is leading a petition to make land sets w/ connibears illegal. the trap you ran into is called a foot hold for a reason. it is designed to catch the foot of the target animal. besides being illegal, teeth injure the animal & most animals will only chew or wring off if the limb is broken so good trappers would never use them anyway. some states require flagging especially on public land, but most do not. pretty much all states require the trapper to ID his traps in some way. some require full ID of the trapper & his address others only require the trapper to put his license or a state issued number on the traps. most states have 24-72 hour check requirements based on the trap style (kill Vs live), location or just population density/cultural conerns.

Come to think of it, a couple years ago we had a jack Russell terrier killed by a trap at a dog park that backed on to a factory. The factory had a raccoon problem and had asked a trapper to set some traps but he wasn't clear about the property boundaries and the dog was killed. It raised hell here for awhile because the dog was owned by a local dog trainer.