Pennsylvania Game News - September 2020 - 34

1925 started to receive and grade trappers' pelts through its newly created Raw
Fur Marketing Services division. It was
started to accommodate the company's
many rural mail-order customers. Participating trappers were paid with either a
check or credit toward purchases from the
company's general merchandise catalog,
a copy of which back then was probably
found in every Pennsylvania farmhouse.
The service continued until 1959.
Predator bounties probably were the
biggest deterrent to establishing trapping
seasons any earlier than 1919. There was
a universal condemnation of all furbearing predators - from weasels to bobcats
- among Pennsylvanians because they
killed songbirds, farm fowl and small
game. Bounty laws provided clearance
to pursue predators and a chance to make
money afield year-round. Many did.
But the need for furbearer protection soon became apparent. In 1921,
Pennsylvania established the Furbearing
Animals Law, which made it unlawful to
use poisons, chemicals or explosives to
take furbearers, or to dig or smoke them
out of dens.
The new law was an extension of the
ethics standards already integrated into
hunting seasons. Conservation was in its
infancy, but it was starting to influence
wildlife management across the nation.
And with trapping drawing more and
more participants, resource managers saw
a need to inject fair-chase reform into it.
The increasing interest in trapping
stemmed from an improving fur market,
and the publication of A.R. Harding's
how-to trapping books. Harding became
familiar on the American outdoors scene
when he founded Hunter-Trader-Trapper
magazine in 1890; he'd also go on to
found Fur-Fish-Game magazine in 1925.
But his trapping books - still available
34

today - got countless Americans
into furtaking by teaching them
how to get started and be successful.
Born 11 years before the start
of the 20th century, Elric Jack
"E.J." Dailey was one of North
America's most renowned trappers. He earned much of that
recognition for his creation of
the dirt-hole set, which probably
has caught more foxes than any
other set in existence. He was
Hunter-Trader-Trapper's first
trapline editor and worked in the
same capacity at Fur-Fish-Game.
Dailey wrote authoritatively
about trapping, and his guidance
surely inspired thousands of trappers to get afield. His articles,
Harding's publications and the
demand for fur surely prompted
the growth in trapper numbers
Pennsylvania saw through the
Roaring Twenties and into the
Great Depression.
Another prominent name in
20th century trapping circles was
S. Stanley Hawbaker. A trapping writer
first, Hawbaker in 1938 would open one
of America's most dependable trapping
lure and supply businesses. Headquartered in Fort Loudon, Franklin County,
Hawbaker's Trapping and Hunting Supplies catered to thousands of American
trappers annually. The Hawbaker catalog
was something every trapper anxiously
awaited in the mail annually.
Hawbaker's Trapping North American
Furbearers, published in 1941, would
become the first encyclopedic all-species
trapping book offered in America. It
taught how to trap everything from weasels to black bears, and likely was found
on every baby-boomer trapper's book-
Pennsylvania Game News - September 2020

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