By Major L. Boddicker
The motel maid, a pretty, very short, and full-bosomed young lady, knocked on the door of room 107.
“Good morning, is anyone in there?” she asked. There was no reply, so she slipped the master key in the lock and opened the door.
The Hayden, Colorado, motel, fairly new and well kept, was a business anchor in this small mountain town of 600 people—retired ranchers, loggers, miners, and the usual mix of mountain folk from the ski crowd. Nothing much out of the ordinary was expected or happened there.
As the maid entered the room, an unusually sweet and revolting odor met her. She immediately became alarmed. She looked over the room, checked the roster, and noted the name: Dr. Major L. Boddicker, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. Suicide! The thought flashed through her mind as she approached the bathroom and carefully opened the door.
A blast of very obnoxious air engulfed her as she stepped into the bathroom. The curtain was drawn over the tub/shower. As she carefully drew back the curtain, dark red, bloody water greeted her frightful eyes. She let out a shrieking scream and raced out of the room, down to the office.
“There’s a dead guy in the bathtub!” she screamed at the clerk. “Call the sheriff!”
The 911 call went out to the Routt County sheriff’s office. The clerk translated the maid’s incoherent frantic message to the 911 dispatcher.
“Smells like he’s dead, lots of blood in the bathtub. My God, hurry up. No, no signs of life or movement. I didn’t actually see him. Hurry!” yelled the motel clerk.
It took about ten minutes for two sheriff cruisers and a highway patrolman to pull into the motel parking lot, lights flashing, sirens blaring.
The officers, guns drawn, maneuvered to room 107. The lead officer opened the door forcefully, pushing it and quickly moving inside, handgun drawn and pointing side to side. The other officers moved into the room. Nothing but a foul stench greeted them.
They moved to the bathroom door and slowly opened it, hearts pounding.
“Police! Anyone in there?” one of them yelled.
“Come on out, hands up!” One of them declared.
No reply.
Gun pointed at the bathtub, one officer slowly, carefully slid open the shower curtain. The smell was revolting and the bloody water a dark red hue.
“Oh, s—t,” he exclaimed. “You ain’t going to believe this,” he burst into laughter.
“Jesus, I’ve seen everything now,” another officer exclaimed.
There, laying head up, belly up with half of its tail out of the bloody water was a 60-pound beaver corpse.
I had put it there to thaw out for a beaver skinning demonstration at the weekend trapping workshop I was conducting. I thawed beaver out like that four or five times a year, and in six years it had never been a problem until that day.
Once they stopped laughing, the officers holstered their handguns, left the room, and reported to the clerk.
“The dead guy was a dead beaver, thank God!” one of the officers exclaimed. “As far as we can tell, it is not illegal to have a beaver corpse in your motel room bathtub,” he stated as they left the perplexed clerk.
That happened in November of 1982, before the Colorado Wildlife Commission passed the “Disrespectful Display of Wildlife” regulation, which requires a successful hunter to cover up his exposed big game on trucks or cars so the Eco-Whackos aren’t offended.
Since I had the shower curtain drawn to cover the beaver, I was probably legal.
Strange things happen when you are working with beavers.
When I returned to the motel at 1 PM to pick up the beaver, the clerk relayed the story to me with great enthusiasm.
“Please, when you do that again, let me know so you don’t scare my maid half to death,” he grinned.
“Sorry, I did not think a thing about that. I’ve done that same thing here every year for the last four years with no fuss,” I chuckled. “I’ll let you know the next time I thaw out a dead guy in my room.”
That is how trappers get to be legends.
That was 36 years ago this very weekend. Amazing how time has streaked by. November of 1982 was at the peak of the last great fur price boom. Trappers and fur hunters were hungry for new and better information to help them be more successful.
At the time, my job was to teach the full range of trapping and hunting techniques to Colorado citizens. It was the greatest job and fun I ever had. The normal forum was a heated barn, blackboard and chalk, slide projector, and a pickup load of trapping and fur finishing gear, which I hauled to every corner of Colorado.
My first year in Colorado was spent looking up and learning how to trap myself from Colorado’s old-time best. My teachers were George Stewart, Max Jordan, Logan Allen, John Arnold, Harley and Gene Peters, Gary Rowley, Dick Hane, Rich Heckendorf, Gern Terrell, and many others.
Prior to taking the job in Colorado, I had learned from F. Robert Henderson, Carl Ditsch, Dudley Scott, and Lee Steinmeyer in Kansas. These trappers and predator hunters are/were among the very best, worldwide. I have traveled worldwide and I know this is a fact.
The old adage that trappers keep their secrets to themselves, and it is hard to find a place to learn trapping is no longer true. The typical trapper’s response to the fur price bust, for 30 years, has been to improve and survive. Where would trapping be without the NTA, FTA, state trapper associations, and individual trappers and fur hunters stepping up to encourage new people? Trappers would be really scarce and headed for extinction.
The new opportunity is to hunt and trap for ADC and make a profitable professional business from it. If you haven’t tried it, you are really missing an opportunity for a great job and income for a great life.
In 1984, the anti-trapping people began to notice the success and enthusiasm for trapping was getting away from them. They hated the idea and the worldwide influence Colorado was having on the popularity of trapping. They organized a program to squash the Colorado program, and my efforts in particular. The extent and expense they went to, to destroy the Colorado Trapper’s Association and my CSU program is a story that is hard to believe. Started in 1984 by Governor Roy Romer and his Boulder and Denver animal rights buddies, it took them until 1996 to finally beat us and ban fur trapping by banning the use of snares, foothold traps, and body grip traps. There are exceptions for some ADC use bathed in red tape.
Almost all of the fur buyers and trap supply dealers are gone. But the re-named CTA, now the Colorado Trappers and Predator Hunters Association, still actively hangs on with an annual fur sale that is very successful. The CTPHA also has a large and popular booth at the Denver Stock Show each January, which provides an active market for tanned fur. There are two business meetings and a rendezvous each year in which members can participate.
It is tough to generate much interest in trapper education events with such a poor fur market and our best equipment is illegal to use.
My response to being ordered to go urban ADC and stop teaching lethal hunting and trapping was to go into business for myself and continue on course. That was a lot more fun than doing the ARF’s bidding. The ARFs actually did my family and me a huge favor; we squeezed the lemon and added honey. If you have read my articles for the last 40 years, you how know it turned out. Quoting B’rer Rabbit, “Please don’t throw me in the Briar Patch.”