Lifelong passion: John Carey has been trapping for 70 years and counting now
John Carey of Loganton, stands in the shed he uses to clean the animals he’s taken by trapping them Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton, stands in the shed he uses to clean the animals he’s taken by trapping them Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton holds one of his prized pelts at his house in Loganton Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton shows how to prepare a trap near his home Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton shows one of the many traps he uses Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
Traps hang on the wall of a shed used by John Carey of Loganton to clean the animals he’s taken by trapping them Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton, stands in the shed he uses to clean the animals he’s taken by trapping them Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton, stands in the shed he uses to clean the animals he’s taken by trapping them Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton holds one of his prized pelts at his house in Loganton Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton shows how to prepare a trap near his home Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
John Carey of Loganton shows one of the many traps he uses Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
Traps hang on the wall of a shed used by John Carey of Loganton to clean the animals he’s taken by trapping them Sept. 6, 2023. He’s been trapping animals of all type for decades now, racoons, foxes, skunks to name just a few. Carey likes the challenge of trying different types of ways to camoflauge his traps and getting the animals to step exactly on the small panel on the trap that triggers it. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette
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From the time Loganton resident and longtime member of the Pennsylvania Trapping Association John Carey was just a boy, he had an innate passion for trapping animals, one that he couldn't shake off from the moment he found it.
With passions of that nature, sometimes you stumble upon them out of the blue and other times they get passed down. In his case, it was a bit of both.
Growing up on a farm with a father that had also begun trapping when he was a kid, setting traps was made a chore for the young Carey. Rats and mice were often a problem, and his dad paid him to keep them at bay.
"My dad taught me how to set a trap and everything," said Carey. "When the animals got pretty scarce, I would set the traps off and leave them off until they bred and built back up. That way, we always had money coming in."
"I can remember him catching a time or two, noticing the traps were set off and giving me heck. You know, 'go out there and get those traps set,' and I didn't want them set," he recalled, laughing.
Around that time, he stumbled across a trapping book by Stanley Hawbaker while visiting some friends. That's when he realized just how much he loved it, with Hawbaker becoming his idol. When his mother came to get him a while later, he was still rummaging through the book and was eventually allowed to keep it.
"I picked it up and started reading it, and I couldn't put it down. My mother said, 'put the book down, let's go,' and I wasn't putting it down," said Carey. "I got the book and poured through it. I read everything in that book."
Fast forward to just over half a century later and John Carey was recognized as a member of the Pennsylvania Trappers Association Hall of Fame in 2007.
He received the honor due to his impact on the association and trapping in Pennsylvania as a whole. The now-expert -- who had gone from learning the basics from his dad to teaching him more advanced techniques -- instructed all kinds of trapping programs in schools and served as director for the area and a county leader for many years.
"It isn't about how much you catch or anything. The trappers have trapper training classes, and I would be there, just doing my thing," said Carey. "It's doing stuff like that that's actually the reason they take into the whole thing. I didn't know that at the beginning, but then I found out."
There are a lot of aspects of the activity that have kept him intrigued by it through the decades, from the endless, different techniques, tricks and traps he's learned to use to the different challenges that came with trapping every animal. But for him, the most interesting part -- what roped him in and kept him with it -- was its initial challenge.
That is, getting the animal to step on the right component.
"You have to get the animal to step on that two-inch or less circle and that intrigued me so much, how you could do that," Carey said, indicating to the pan that triggers the trap.
"He can't walk by it, he can't sniff it, he can't stand and straddle it," he laughed. "You've got to get his foot on there. As you become a trapper, you learn ways to do that."
Carey could spend hours talking about different techniques, telling stories about all the different situations he's faced or wily animals he's come across and showing you his priced pelts and vast collection of different kinds of traps.
He'll show you the ropes if you ask him to and though it's hard for him to do nowadays, that hasn't stopped him from carrying on trapping for as long as he could.
"My feet and legs are giving out. But last fall, I hobbled back there and put a few traps down," said Carey. "That made it my 70th year of trapping straight. I've trapped since I was 10."