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Permission to use or quote from this transcript must be obtained from the Delaware Folklife Project.

Robert Beck
27 February 1992
Muskrat Trapping and the Community

Tape Log

Jenkins: One question that I have is how much do you see the decline in trapping that is going on when do you think there was the rise in trapping as far as you remember and who were some of the families involved around here in this community, Port Penn area, the big trappers?

Beck: The market contributes to the demand and market contributes to the effort of trappers to go after muskrats last year for instant in 1991/92 season the muskrats run between $.70 and $.90 a piece and the pelts which was not a very attractive to anybody there was people that did it through just for the love of a hunt I guess of course the carcass was selling for $2.50 or so. Most trappers they do not own marsh either they lease from the state or share trap with the landowner and the shares usually the trappers supply the traps and his time and effort and labor goes out and traps and he gets half of the pelt money and keeps all the carcass money for himself and usually the trend and when the state leases they do it on bids so its so much per parcel, marsh parcel you knows its according to how big it is and how many rats are on it determines what the trapper usually pays for that and that could vary quite a bit it use to be when muskrats were $6 or $7 dollars that the state received considerable amount of money for there public marsh lands

Jenkins: Well how was the land trapped and decided upon who traps on it, say 20 or 30 years ago before the state started

Beck: Well, there was agreements you know, my grandfather was never a trapper per say my grandfather Beck:

Jenkins: Where did he hunt land here

Beck: Well, he owned land where we are situated right here in Maryland, the Beck: farm but my father as long as I can remember, and a man from Delaware City named Phil Armstrong, trapped the marsh simply because my grandfather was a good farmer but he wasn't interested in going after muskrats but my father did and he pursued and it was a great income for us so on most of the farms, all the farms that had marshes, it was probably a family affair in most cases but there were trappers in Delaware City and Port Penn that trapped big marshes. As the owner got older and couldn't trap for instance the McConnell estate across the street from here Mr McConnell was a gentlemen farmer and probably would not know how to set a muskrat trap so he just let Mr. Bill Dolbow from Port Penn and his son trap those 350 acres every year for on shares and Mr. McConnell probably did not know what a muskrat hardly looked like

Jenkins: How long did the Dolbow's trap on that land?

Beck: Well they trapped right up til the state bought it and the state finally bought it and they of course put it out on lease

Jenkins: What year was that?

Beck: Probably been mid 70's somewhere around there. The McConnell farm was bought by the state around the mid 70's and thats when Mr. Dolbow die anyhow and his sons continued trapping til the state did buy it. Then adjoining that property was Mr. Paul Lang who's land eventually becomes states also where the headquarters is now for the Division of Fish and Wildlife and he also owned the acreage and he was the when he first bought that property before he even built a home on it he bought over 300 acres and he trapped it in the winter but he was a very successful produce man in Wilmington up on King Street. He sold produce to grocery stores and things like that he had a big produce market up there wholesale, produce market but he was only a little guy only 5'4" something like that but he was very active and he trapped his marsh along with a black man that he paid on shares. Wasn't hardly enough money award black trappers were earning

Jenkins: Why is that do you think?

Beck: I have no idea. I have no idea, I have thought about that quite often.

Jenkins: Do you think it was just not enough marsh and what marsh you would trap would go to whites in the area?

Beck: Well, most marshes was all owned by whites and like I say the land owner or their families usually trapped the marshes. There was a marsh called Fox Marsh

Jenkins: Where was this?

Beck: It was below Silver Run it was a big marsh probably 700 acres maybe in there. When you have 7 acres of productive marsh for muskrats which it was, in its hay day, you would have 8 or 10 trappers on that marsh and they would just as the picture in the museum shows two men standing next to a shack with muskrats hanging on the outside and that shack was common to a big marsh like that because there was several of those shacks located around the marsh and these trappers would stay there they would go there and stay

Jenkins: Spend the night you mean or no?

Beck: Well spend the week maybe, or something like that. Go home occasionally, home wasn't too far. Most of them was then because you had to walk a good bit of it or go by horse or rather an old automobile when the weather was such that it wasn't reliable way of transportation either one man lived in Odessa which was only maybe 6-7 miles at the most and the other on lived in Port Penn which was another maybe 5,6,7 miles.

Jenkins: And they trapped on the Silver

Beck: And they trapped on the Fox Marsh and then she passed away and during her illness she was taken care of by a man named Sam Green and she didn't have any family apparently she was from Philadelphia area but she lived there on the farm nice old house but she willed this farm to Sam Green and his wife Mary and of course that changed Sam had a fairly good he had three boys and himself and they trapped that marsh

Jenkins: Where is the Fox marsh, where is it?

Beck: It is just south of Silver Run.

Jenkins: Where is Silver Run?

Beck: Well, Silver Run marsh is on Route 9 it joins the Ike Cleaver farm or I would stay it is probably 5 miles 6 at the most below south Port Penn or Bay View Beach

Jenkins: I guess one question I wanted to asked to is how do these marshes get certain place names? From the people that own them or

Beck: This marsh here was I think I explained it earlier on but I will do it again it was a creek run through here wasn't any canal and it was called Saint Georges Creek and it run right down through the back of my house here and folks were muskrats price went to $5.00 it flooded back on this marsh and created 1100 acre marsh flooded and impounded marsh, fresh water marsh and it produced highs of 300-400 rats to the acre when it was new virgin marsh anyhow when it first got established they called it the 100 acre marsh or shingle landing marsh. The reason they called it shingle landing there use to be a steamboat come in here either unload cedar off the bank of Saint George Creek creek was deep then 11'-12' deep. And this boat use to come in and either unload shingles from New Jersey or took cedar over to New Jersey one or the other I could never get it straight but it was called Shingle Landing marsh for a long time. Then when the state created conservation section people that first come here Norm Wilder was the first director of the Division of Fish and Wildlife he come from New Hampshire and he started calling it 1000 marsh because it was 1100 acres you know and it has held that name well it helds everybody knows where the 1000 acre marsh is. The Fox marsh was called the Fox marsh simply because she owned it. There was an island field they use to call some parts of it had their own name and they called it the Island Field marsh within the Fox marsh so you know its like Silver Run we called it the Baxter marsh he had marsh there he never trapped it. There was always plenty trappers around everybody was a trapper in those days I guess but they just usually picked up the name of the owner pin pointed the location of it for most people you'd know where Fox's lived you'd know the Fox marsh was and adjoining him Fox or later on Green, Sam Green, was the Ike Cleaver marsh. Mr. Cleaver was not only the farmer but he was also the trapper one of the better trappers around. Incidentally this Fox marsh produced 1200, 1500 rats a year off that marsh which now you couldn't caught 500.

Jenkins: Why is that?

Beck: Well marshes where taken over by phragmites and one thing is the access to the marsh by the trappers almost nil he can't get through it to farm and plus the population is way down for some reason.

Jenkins: Over trap?

Beck: Well, I don't think it was over trapped there was a period of time when mosquito control people started spraying to control mosquitos unfortunately there used Paris Green and there was a big decline in the muskrat population immediately when the started using that chemical.

Jenkins: When did the phragmites start taking over, when did you start noticing how much?

Beck: Well, I wasn't very old when the first patch of phragmites showed up on the marsh. The first patch showed up at Reedy Point where on the canal an hydraulic filler and we first notice it I use to hunt over there with my father pheasant hunt, and we notice this patch of real tall grass and we didn't even know what it was at the time and it was always good for a pheasant or two my father would go busting through there and I would wait on the outside and sure enough kill a pheasant or so out of this quarter acre size and I'm 68 and I guess that I was probably 15 maybe 16 at the time so that gives you an idea of the time period. Close to 1940, 38, 40 when we first noticed it then we out here on the marsh my grandfather rented duck blinds and Mr. Joe Higgins was one of the renters, in fact he rented the whole marsh at the time for $100 had three blinds on it, one of the blinds on he built was patch of phragmites the size of this room case it was good cover for the blind. And it remained in that clump quarter acre whatever it is, it remained stabilized, then all of a sudden somebody one summer pulled out the control boards out of the slew and the marsh run dry and this apparently for seed of the phragmites to germinate here and this area is almost a nucleus for phragmites in the state and then it started spreading on hydraulic area also because periodically they would pump mud in there for canal maintained and this was an ideal seed bed for it. Then it started spreading naturally to the other marshes adjacent to the tidal marshes but to help it along the duck hunters from all over the state thought gees that's great stuff to cover the blind with so they started collecting it and hauling it all over the state. What they were doing was seeding the whole blessed state, every marsh in the state got its dose do phragmites and eventually it just predominate plant, 12' high, 11' it just squeezed everything else out and took over. It had some value for muskrat but none, no value for waterfowl or other types of animals, so it just degraded every marsh in the state just took it right down, depleted the muskrat population with it. This marsh here they use to support two trappers with no problem on 100 and some acres. You could trap all season there was two trappers and still leave plenty of rats for breeders. Caught would vary because muskrats have always been cycling they have always been up and down the population some years would be excellent some years would be not so good, no rhyme or reason for that I guess. A lot of animals are in a cycle mood most of the time, rabbits and everything else but any more it is down constantly where 2000-3000 rats was commonplace you couldn't caught that many in 10 years here know I don't suppose. Billy Moore traps here, young Bill Moore junior traps her know. Billy is 65 I guess but if gets 200 rats a year off his acreage now we feel like we've accomplished something. Plus the price is down, it's just not a good price but the marshes are still trapped there is still trappers there.

Jenkins: Do you remember any stories as far as the hay day and trapping, about any particular people take were excellent trappers or incredible trappers, record number of rats trapped in a season? Any competition among trappers to get bids on certain marshes. How did you decide who was going to get what marsh? Unless they just trapped there own marsh like you were saying.

Beck: Well a lot of them trapped there own and every kid every farm boy trapped it was just a way of life they had to share our traps too, our traps I had to step on the trap to get it open, I could not even open it with my hand in fact I started so young I used to have to come up to the farm house and get my grandfather to set 2 or 3 traps for me and I'd carry them down to the marsh already set and then put them in the sets to catch a muskrat I'd didn't even have the strength to even I wasn't heavy enough to get the jaws open so thats when I started. Most farm kids did start early and it not only helped the family out but it give him a little spending money also but I trapped and as a kid I used to catch as many as 80, 90, 100 rats a year just with a dozen traps and a little piece of marsh

Jenkins: When would you trap before school?

Beck: Four, I'd get up in the morning at 4:00 and run out and here I lived in Delaware City thats about 3 miles, 6 mile round trip. But I'd get up and jog out here and go tend my traps and then get back to school in time to be on time for school Saturday and Sunday was a break because I didn't have to get so very just take my time come on out I usually got up with my father they were always up they had to walk out every morning anyhow. But I had to leave a little earlier because I had to be there at daylight as soon as I could see to tend my traps so could go back to school in time at 8:00. But the selection of trappers was most trappers were all good I mean they was probably some that wasn't but there was an art to a lot of tidewater trappers trappers that trapped tidewater or tidal marshes couldn't get onto the technique of trapping an impounded marsh cause there was entirely two different methods of trapping which are explained on a earlier tape when I was describing traps and they just couldn't handle it and vica versa sometimes it took my a little while to get onto the tide marsh trapping a friend of mine Carl Marsh who adapted to both very well I use to follow him around on tide marsh some just to get the technique down and he showed me how to set traps on tide marsh and were to set them

Jenkins: What would you do just follow him was there a procedure involved when you worked together?

Beck: No when I was learning I just went with him just walked around with him chatted, carried the rats for him stuff like that traps then it paid off because well it didn't pay off because I didn't charge him anything, but it paid off for him because he got sick a couple of times and he got a hold of me or sent word and asked me if I could run his trap lines until he got feeling better and thats really when I learned to that I was getting pretty good at it on tide marsh

Jenkins: How old were you?

Beck: I was married then I was probably 20, 21 something like that and so I done it for a favor I just took his rats to him and he in fact I think I skinned them for him because everybody stretched muskrats those days it was a days work trapping was. So the selection of trappers it was a job you almost had your whole life you was a trapper on the Beck: marsh til Armstrong died he was trapping my father died trapping and when they passed on my brother and I took it over trapping, and thats the only trappers I ever knew on our particular marsh. We had neighbors were one was named Miller, Nathan Miller, who owned one of the biggest furniture outlets in the east coast I guess, it is still in existence Miller Furniture but he owned the adjacent marsh to us and my father and Mr. Armstrong trapped that for him and but all the other surrounding marsh here to name a few was the Bennett marsh, that was trapped by the Bennett's and then there was the Mac Earlesly marsh which was the third largest parcel in this 1100 acres it was trapped by Mac Earlesly and I think he had a black trapper too I think he was a cripple

Jenkins: What did they do hire him for a hourly wage or part of the share

Beck: Part of the share it was share he might not got a full 50% if he didn't supply his own traps or if he for instance Mac ----

Jenkins: Was there any black people around here living that use to do that

Beck: There's not to many old time trappers left period. Went from Mac ---- would be to go the next farm over was Sam Green the one who inherited the Fox marsh and he of course trapped his own place there in the center of the marsh was the biggest land owner was a man named Rawley, Wilbert Rawley, and he was a sportsman more or less he politician and sportsman he didn't trap and he but his brother did and his brother would come all the way from Leipsic everyday to trap his name was Preach Rawley and he brought a man with him from Leipsic and I don't know that man name now but it was a big marsh it was 200 and some acres and they had a lot of rats he caught a lot of rats off that marsh and then there was the Miller marsh which adjoined us and then there was a marsh owned by people name Hayes, which is now owned by Bill Grier and it was I don't know who it was trapped by I can't remember now but the selection of trappers the trapper if he was there like Mr. Dolbow, he just trapped until he dropped over dead, Carl Marsh trapped until he dropped over dead and

Jenkins: Would they ever get together or any certain place and hang out together or talk and talk about what was going on at their marsh or would they gather at the buyers the buyers use to come to them back then now they go to the buyers right?

Beck: The buyers use to come right to the house so that was the transaction it was very private who got what you never run around and said I got $.325 a hide

Jenkins: Why is that, just not a matter just was not appropriate to be boasting

Beck: Well you might only get $.31 and you might start something so it just wasn't something that was talked about. The fur on the 1000 acre marsh was highly sought because it was prime, it was as prime of fur as you could buy anywhere. The animals were big probably weighed a pound or more then the tidal marsh muskrats

Jenkins: Quality of the muskrat on the 1000 acre marsh

Beck: Yes the fresh water muskrat was always worth more in dollar and cents too

Jenkins: The meat you mean?

Beck: I'm talking about the fur

Jenkins: Oh just the fur

Beck: The meats a lot of the meat went to Wilmington to the market

Jenkins: Was the meats a lot different between tidal marsh and fresh water marsh?

Beck: Oh yes

Jenkins: A lot fatter, where they not as good?

Beck: They were not as fat, they weren't it was difference between day and night

Jenkins: The tidal marsh was a lot leaner

Beck: Yes and smaller in frame like I said they were weighed a pound less than these muskrats here

Jenkins: Were those better to eat? Were they game was, do you know what I'm saying

Beck: Yes, I don't know, I don't know if I ever eaten a tide water muskrat to tell you the truth. The only muskrats I've ever really eaten that have come off these marsh here and these muskrats are still really high quality out here.

Jenkins: Would a trapper would they typically I mean would they eat the rats or just get so sick of them they wouldn't eat them at all and sell the meat

Beck: Well thats what my mother said I used to have to beg her to cook them for me
Jenkins: What would you do with them?

Beck: I've just cooked so many of them that I don't care if I never see another one or not but we had to live on them for awhile that was our first protein but there was a market for muskrat then and it was a cheap source of protein and Mr. Cleaver's wife for instance, Mr. Ike Cleaver a big trapper and he caught a lot of rats but his wife went to farmer's market twice a week and she set up she had a old truck and she set up her wares in the back of this truck and one of her wares was muskrat's meat

Jenkins: Where was the farmer's market?

Beck: Kings Street in Wilmington, there would be just one farmer right after another parked backed up to the curb and people made it their I forget what the days were now, like a Monday and a Friday but people made it their business to go to the farmer's market because that was where to get good fresh chickens, good fresh eggs

Jenkins: Well what would you do with your rat, how would you cook it, did you smoke it or boil it?

Beck: No, no, no it was pare boiled in most cases and fried and my mother used to what they used to call pot them down

Jenkins: Pile them down?

Beck: Pot them, and she would cook them and cover them with water and onions and just keep cooking them until the water was almost all gone and of course they were sectioned, they were cut in two hind legs and two front legs and the backbone which carried a lot of meat was a section of it and the rib cage section so 6 sections of muskrats but it was cooked down the way she did it and then she made a gravy out of just before it started to burn the pot up all those good juices were concentrated out of the muskrat and she make a real brown dark gravy out of it and we would have a meal of mash potatoes and muskrat and gravy which was hard to beat and still is, I make it occasionally for myself because Linda my wife, won't eat it.

Jenkins: What you just eat the rat after that or then you take it and cut it up and fry it

Beck: Well no, you eat the rat with the gravy, just pot in down but the way most people do it today just pare boil it until it's tender and then they throw it into the frying pan and brown it, fry it, very good that way too

Jenkins: What does it taste like?

Beck: I can't describe it, we had a traditional festival in Port Penn every year and we started off having serving muskrat, fried, as one of the main courses. We had fried muskrat and fish

Jenkins: Shad?

Beck: Shad and we had 500 or 600 rats for this dinner that became an ordeal I ended up butchering most of the rats and I just give it up. Anyhow we were --- our festival early on maybe the first or second one so we created the menu here at the house and invited down the Otto Deckman from the News Journal who was the food critic and he brought his friend, he wasn't married, a lady friend with him and we had this menu of the dinner here at our dining room table with him, Otto Deckman and Glenn Dill who was another correspondence with the paper, sports writer and his friend it was Linda and I and a couple of the girls from the committee and we served it to Deckman and he didn't hesitate, he never had eaten it before and neither had his friend but they I never could put a handle on the taste of it but I think he come as close to nailing down the taste as anybody ever come up with one in fact his friend did, she found it very similar to the dark meat of turkey and as I got to thinking about it the more I tasted on it and ate it it is very similar much more tender and is very tender

Jenkins: So muskrat really wasn't cooked for anything special just the staple meal to get by on

Beck: Well we had a lot of muskrat dinners, I wrote an article on them

Jenkins: No I mean not now but in general

Beck: Well it was part of, when trapping season was here you had muskrat once or twice a week because it was good protein food and you got away from chicken

Jenkins: Did anybody ever smoke them?

Beck: No, not then but I've known them to be smoke since in modern times because everybody seems to have a smoker anymore and it seems to me that Clyde Roberts smoked one or two and I don't know if I've tasted them or not but I can imagine that they would be pretty good. The only get together in the muskrat industry and it was a big thing peninsula wise and also locally wise because we would manipulate ourselves sometimes but they would have a skinning contest

Jenkins: Where was this?

Beck: This was real competition that was the only competition that I ever knew in the muskrat industry and it was done for sport I can't remember the big contest was held down on eastern shore Maryland every year people come from everywhere, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Virginia, Maryland and entered into this contest and I can't remember, probably cash prizes maybe I can't remember that part of it, I only went to that contest once over there.

Jenkins: When was this?

Beck: Well hell, it was probably held in March I don't know I never guessing at it because of muskrat season starts first of December through March 10th so it was sometime in the winter months that they had this contest because the rats were all fresh rats, fresh caught. Then there was rules and regulations and some of these guys could skin a muskrat so fast you couldn't see it happen and it was outstanding I was never fast

Jenkins: Still it's not going on anymore?

Beck: No, I haven't heard of a contest in a long time, I think when I worked with Division of Fish & Wildlife we entertained the Atlantic F---- conference here in Wilmington several times and one of the times we had a muskrat skinning contest and

Jenkins: Organized by Fish and Wildlife?

Beck: Yea, it was part of the entertainment it was for everyone, just something to break the monotony of business meetings. I think we had an exhibit on different things I think we had a duck calling contest too the same time. So that type of thing went on and that was a big deal it was something these guys held records for, years and years and years for skinning most muskrats in a minute.

Jenkins: Do you remember who, do you remember any of the people?

Beck: No I can't remember any names I remember the one that won the Wilmington was named Harry Zacheis

Jenkins: Zacheis, is he Greek?

Beck: Zacheis, Zacheis. He was fast, he was good, he trapped Mrs. Fox.

Jenkins: Do you know of any ethnics groups that were into trapping?

Beck: No. It was 10 of 15 years ago there was a federation of sportsmen have done a lot of good things. One is the young water fowlers, they teach them hunter safety, take them water fowl hunting and things like that. It was a great program and then they have a big banquet after the season is over but it also there was a young chap named Robinson who deceased now, we used to call him Robbie I never did know his first name I guess. He would go around to land owners and get the right to trap a piece of acreage on the marsh, maybe ten acres, fifteen and he would get a group of young trappers he called and he taught them how to trap. They were from all over the state and all walks of life, white, black or indifference, including some females. I never knew a female trapper to trap for a living.

Jenkins: And he just did this for a recreation or would they trap it for the whole season?

Beck: They would trap it for the whole season and the landowner seen fit he would donate that money toward their equipment or keep the money entirely or in some cases the trapper landowner would want his share but they could still keep their share and buy traps and boots and stuff like that for the class

Jenkins: See he's introducing all these different people to trapping

Beck: Yah, and that ceased when he ceased.

Jenkins: You don't know any of the people he use to do that or was doing that with them?

Beck: I didn't know any of the kids. That's been a few years back and these kids that participated are still living but I could never tell you who they were the one man that would know, the other one man who would know died here a couple years ago, McDowell, but I wouldn't know any of the kids, I never did know them by name he would stop here occasionally and I would talk to them about trapping and it was kind of part of the course we didn't even have the museum then so it was way before that

Jenkins: What was some of the best memories that you have about trapping yourself, do you think anything stand out, real exciting day?

Beck: Well, trapping was dead serious work it started the first day of December and it was very serious, the weather had a lot to do with it you would become very conscience of the freeze temperatures. My father, the first thing my father would do in the morning was get up and go out in the yard and take his heel and drive it into the ground and he could almost tell whether it had froze enough that night to prohibit them from going on the marsh if the heel on his shoe went into the ground fairly easy they would come out and wait til the sun come up and melt what little bit of ice it had made that night because this marsh here a muskrat does not move the minute it starts making ice and this marsh freezes when it is 32 degrees unless the fresh water marsh. Now thats not true when in a tide marsh. You can trap almost the whole season of a tide marsh without ice bothering you because the rats are underneath, down underneath the top of the marsh which is fairly warm and doesn't freeze and these rats are active here to under the ice and thats why I say it is very serious because if it froze hard enough to walk on you just hope it froze hard enough and didn't snow to keep the ice clear so you could see where the muskrat was traveling underneath the ice because you could set, cut a hole and set a trap under the ice and catch them.

Jenkins: I didn't know that

Beck: Ya

Jenkins: Using the same kind of traps?

Beck: Using the same kind of trap because when muskrats run under the ice they release air bubbles and the air bubbles come up and lay under the ice and as he gets more active and the air bubbles get farther away from the house or the place that he lives you see him stop every once and while and breathe in one of his bubbles. Those bubbles of air I've watched him many, many times when the muskrats under water he can seal his nose and mouth up real tight but that release of bubbles always comes out somewhere up between his shoulders and I guess that was the way he must have released that air must have went through his fur and released itself that way because I've never seen anything in the fur and the hide that would indicate any vent there that would release air and otters are the same way I've noticed otters up in the zoo release air up around the middle of their back too but apparently its something that they release the air somehow from the mechanism in their mouth and it runs back through the fur but anyhow he makes the same run under the ice all the time and in other words if we could walk out on the marsh know and it was froze you could see about three lines of bubbles coming out of the house, maybe four, its according how many rats are in but if you stood quiet long enough you would see that muskrat come out of that house and he would follow that line of bubbles because he would use them he had to use them because when he come out he wasn't out just to swim under the ice he was going somewhere and cut some cattails weeds off and carry them back to inside the house and eat them and this was what their activity was all day long normally their nocturnal but when the ice is on they become active all day long so that lead that ice level was only about 6 to 7 ices from the bottom of the marsh you could set a trap underneath that line of bubbles and catch them very easy. Trap them under the ice was a piece of cake you might say. The nice thing about it you knew that when that line of bubbles was there you knew that you had some rats using them and you could set 40 or 50 traps a catch 40 or 50 muskrats if you knew he was there because you seen the line of bubbles

Jenkins: The bubbles would just stay trapped up on top up under the ice right?

Beck: Yes, in fact they would make so many bubbles eventually they would even though the ice might be 2 or 3 inches thick those bubbles would eventually work there way to the surface and you would break through if you didn't watch where you were walking and you would break through the ice where that line of bubbles was because the ice was very thin I suppose the warm air and all that you know comes exchange of bubbles but that was

Jenkins: So in terms of checking out the ground and seeing how cold it is, what else would he look for before he would start trapping in the morning?

Beck: Well, that was it. I mean they those days the insulated clothes weren't as sophisticated as they are today so they put on their old sheep lined coats which was quite a thing those days, had a collar you knew could pull up around your ears and they always carried rain coats with them and rain hats even on the marsh put that in the boat.

Jenkins: Did everybody have those sheep coats?

Beck: Everybody

Jenkins: Even the kids?

Beck: It was the warmest thing around then, we all had them, anybody that fooled around the outdoors like we did

Jenkins: Would you buy them or have them made?

Beck: Oh no, they were bought. I have no idea where, Sears probably, catalog. My brother he use to wear a navigator cap fur lined type thing I guess it was wool lined too. He use to pull it around and tie it around his chin and it had a pair of goggles attached to it and he would wear that to the marsh, on the marsh to keep the wind out of his eyes and keep his ears warm and he was alright but that was the daily routine, come out of the house, check for freezing, walk 3 or 4 blocks down the street in Delaware City and pick up Mr. Armstrong and we would walk on out to the marsh here and of course by that time it was breaking day light and if it had made a skim of ice we would just hang around until the sun got up and started melting it a little bit and then they would go on their way because the muskrats are most active just after sun down

Jenkins: Sun down or sun rise?

Beck: Sun down, they're more active then thats when the majority of your trapping or catch was caught. The middle of the night there is very little activity. I know as a kid I use to go down and sit around the marsh where there was a lot of muskrat houses and you could hear the activity, you could hear the muskrats swimming or jumping off the feed places in the water and things like that but it would --- 9 or 10 o'clock the activity just died down they had done their feeding and everything and in the morning just before day light if it didn't freeze the activity would pick up again but not near like it was at sun down but you would catch a few rats in the morning. I remember one year the muskrat population so good that my father would run a line of traps starting at the boat landing he would start tending his traps that he had put in and he would go on and 2 or 3 hours later he would come back but he would come back the same route because he was done tending all his traps and a lot of times, a lot of times he would have muskrats caught behind him in the day light because there was so many of them and so active. I heard him talk about picking up 8 or 10 muskrats after he had already tended them that day.
Jenkins: Could he have feasibly just left them there?

Beck: Oh he could have left

Jenkins: I guess he wouldn't want to though

Beck: No he might have set the trap up so catch another one you know that makes it nice catching two rats a day particularly those days they were only worth about $.25 a piece, black rats were worth about $.35

Jenkins: There weren't that many black rats?

Beck: No, this marsh here run 10%, you'd catch 10 out of 100 would be black some marshes run 60% you'd get 60 black rats. I saw one marsh at Assawoman in lower Delaware when I was working down there at Assawoman Wildlife Refuge and it was 100% every muskrat you caught down there was black

Jenkins: Normally they're what just brown sort of a dark chocolate color?

Beck: Well there is two phases, there's brown they call them brown and blacks. But there is just a difference in the percent and in the price. Black furs are beautiful furs almost blue black.

Jenkins: It's not a different rat is it?

Beck: I wouldn't think it's the same muskrat you skin it it all looks the same except the hide. Why this black faze they are usually in pockets too they don't socialize much with brown rats. The 10% that came off this marsh was caught in probably 5 acre section of marsh why didn't socialize with brown I don't know and they seem to be more difficult to caught too for some reason or I always thought they were.

Jenkins: Was the any special way to try to catch black rats then brown?

Beck:

Jenkins: You talking about the shacks?

Beck: Yes

Jenkins: Those were just used for -- you'd dry the skins up in your attic though right?

Beck: Well, you

Jenkins: Or after they were dried they were taken to

Beck: They were stretched in the attic

Jenkins: Stretched in the attic

Beck: When you came in with a days catch they were wet so you hung them to dry either on the outside of the skinning shack or this farm here had two great big barns and it had a whole row of nails there that they hung the muskrats on to dry. They didn't take them long to dry if there was a little bit of wind going but they would skin them the next day and that fur would be all nice dry and fluffy so they would take them to the attic and stretch them.

Jenkins: Do you think people designed attics in a certain way so you could stretch?

Beck: Oh I doubt it. The attic in my old house here was plastered, finished off, probably to be household help, probably a bedroom but it had doors

Jenkins: Didn't that stink up the house?

Beck: No, those houses were fairly tight of course there is no stink to it anyhow, just a little bit , but the windows were always cracked, always raised, there was always air going through the attic.

Jenkins: Even in the winter?

Beck: Yes, in the winter when the rats were there because they wanted the air to circulate and dry the hide as soon as possible because you know you catch a 1000 rats thats a 1000 stretchers and if you catch a 1200 you have to take 200 off the first stretched fur and put what they call green fur on, fresh fur so when they took them off the stretcher they would bundles them up in bundles of 25 and hang them, just hang up there. They could touch then, they could touch together and not rot or anything they were air dried. Thats one thing, one of my jobs as a kid and my brother too, we had to go up to the attic and make sure that the air blowing through the attic hadn't pushed any fur together because if the fur was fresh, freshly skinned, or even a day or two old, and it got together with 2 or 3 hides got together they would rot and you would get some smell then. So it was a routine then, it was a daily thing to go up make sure these 100's of rats were separated, some air space between. They were hung on long wires I think I mentioned that earlier and the stretchers had hooks in the end of them were they just

Jenkins: (Second tape with Bob Beck: ) He is going to tell me a little bit more about the muskrat skinning shack from how it was designed and why it was designed a certain way.

Beck: I was very young I can remember the shack its pictured in the museum I can remember that shack and I can remember going in to it one time it had a chunk stove, what they called a chunk stove in it, that keep warm.

Jenkins: This was the shack on your

Beck: On Fox, on Fox property. No we never had one here. The skinning shacks well let me go back to the skinning shacks a little later. I think I talked about them earlier on anyhow but anyhow this shack that I'm talking about on Fox's and I thought you were too that was to live that was a bigger shack and a regular skinning shack. I say I just vagly remember going in and their was a chunk stove there well even a skinning shack had a chunk stove to keep warm while they skin. It also had to my recollection three sets of bunks in it which the men sleep in but they had this big cook stove, coal or wood seemed to me it was coal because I remember Buck got cold there and thats what they done their cooking on of course those big cook stove had nice ovens in them and they cooked their own. Those guys were good cooks they had to be, they even made their own bread and stuff like that. I often wondered about the sharing of that, how they, Mrs. Fox was a very frugal, she was tight. If they divided up the muskrat fur and it came out to $.90, $.95 and it was a odd penny there between the two of you she would take the penny. And she would go up to the attic and watch the trappers on the marsh through glasses to make sure they wasn't and there was some of this done I'm sure

Jenkins: Hiding?

Beck: Hiding fur, skinning out fur on the marsh and slipping it down your boot. I had never seen that but I have heard of it. If a man got caught doing that he was done as a trapper. She didn't trust anybody

Jenkins: Did she know that had gotten caught?

Beck: No, it was probably done I'm sure it was because I talked to a man in a bar in Delaware City and he never mentioned names but he said a lot of trappers come in here and trade fur for booze. It probably happened in grocery stores for all I know. But we had no reason to do that here.

Jenkins: What bar was this?

Beck: It was called "Wissawhatty"

Jenkins: "Whistle white"?

Beck: "Wissawhatty"

Jenkins: Oh, "Wissawhatty"

Becl It was called the "Pink Elephant" in Delaware City. That Wissawhatty tinkered around with trapping a little bit himself so he had a way of getting rid of fur and he knew what it was worth and he probably give them half of what it was worth. I don't think there was any money exchanged, exchanged in produce, product, booze. That was done but the shack, the living shack, that was just about all that it consisted of and I think the

Jenkins: Just one story though it wasn't big?

Beck: No it wasn't big it had an attic to it of some kind, it was closed I think they keep some of the persible food up in it.

Jenkins: Like a loft?

Beck: Yes, like a loft. It was just a square hole in the ceiling that they pushed up a cover that covered over this hole and they kept their persiables up there. They didn't have many persiables mostly stuff they brought was canned, preserved, home canned and they had big appetites, those guys, they put eggs and stuff like that up I'm sure to keep them out of the heat of the cabin. They had big appetites, the guys got up and ate more for breakfast than I eat all day.

Jenkins: What do you think they would do at night?

Beck: At night, well they had lanterns but there wasn't much reading went on those guys were give out. You catch a hundred rats a day and skin a hundred rats and stretch a hundred rats and get the carcasses up to the main farm house and all that by wheelbarrow or however

Jenkins: How would they preserve the meat back then?

Beck: We would have to go to the market, it had to go to the market.

Jenkins: Immediately?

Beck: Yes, if you kept a muskrat cool, I always kept them in a cool place either down in a spring house or something like that you get away with 3 or 4 days worth of muskrats but it had to get to the market pretty quick. We had our bar covered everyday day in fact our bar was for the meats. Our bar was Sam Green and he contracted in the first of the year for giving price and that was it, $.10, $10.00 a hundred but he stopped everyday and took them, you didn't have to worry about that you only had to do skin them and put a lining of wax paper in a box, a cardboard box, whatever he supplied the boxes and probably were wooden boxes but you put a layer of wax paper in them and you just skinned the carcass and threw down, and cleaned it, gutted it, took the feet off and cut the tail off and it was ready to go to market. Finish product. But he bought a lot of carcasses around. Not today it is entirely different, you can't get enough the demand is so much


Jenkins: Were was this store?

Beck: He didn't have a store, he was a farmer. He would

Jenkins: He would turn around and sell them to somebody

Beck: It was his winter activity. He owned that big marsh, he owned the Fox marsh, he inherited that so he didn't have to worry about that as an income becuase he had all these trappers working for him.

Jenkins: But who would he sell them to?

Beck: Different stores, he had a route he run. He stopped in Delaware City there were 3 or 4 grocery stores and each one bought a couple dozen rats a piece and then he would go to Wilmington and stop fifty stores up there and it was a routine with him, he made good money at it

Jenkins: Does any of these trappers, they ever sing songs or anything. How would they keep themselves amused. Just working?

Beck: I don't know of any muskrat choir around. I wish there were because you come up with some real neat folk music. I know when I was in Ireland I really enjoyed a show over there that was surrounded activities they sung about their activities, days work. It carried a lot of history with it, it was really neat.

Jenkins: Was there any main stories that you can remember that where past down, specific story about so and so who use to live in Odessa who was a trapper and let me tell you this is what happened to him and something to be learned from this what happened to this guy, anything like that do you remember?

Beck: Well, no they little stories that I can remember nothing spontaneous every happened in that industry it was routine. There was only one thing that I remember, really remembered, was when my father was trapping muskrats over the ice and normally a muskrat gets caught under the ice because I've stopped and watch hundreds of them get caught. Once that traps hit them he is drowned, he is done. But by some quirk one day I was on the marsh but I think I was running a different, helping my father out probably but he went one direction on the ice and tended a lot of traps and come up on this, you could see the rat in the traps throught the ice you knew you had a rat so you had to re-chop the hole open to get the muskrat out and normally you would reach down and grab the chain and pull the muskrat out but left the stake in hole in the ice and left the chain on the stake and you just reach throught it and set the trap back in there but he stopped at this house with this big brown rat in it, seen the rat and he chopped the hole and reached down and the rat was still alive. it took off two knuckles on his right hand and the hand never did get right again but actually that rat, a muskrat could chomp so fast he didn't have time to even get his hand away before it had devoured two knuckles on his hand. I'll never forget it because he immediately come to the house because he had to get to the local doctor in Delaware City. I know it when we went back to see this muskrat he was still in the trap and sitting out over the ice this time but man my father must have bleed a gallon of blood there was this trail of blood you couldn't, it was just pumping right out of him and cold weather always bothered him after that, it was one of the tales that I can remember about trapping and the other was happened a tale, a true tale. 3 or 4 days ago my trapper come to me and says, Billy Moore, he says, "Bob," he says knocked on the door, "is it legal to take beaver trap here?" No, I said not in Delaware, not yet anyway. Well Billy Moore is something else, he has caught more big animals in little muskrat traps then any man I ever, and held them. He caught this beaver in a muskrat trap and this was the day of the 27th, this was on the 24th of February. The beaver was alive and he couldn't reach down to get his trap off the beaver's foot and the beaver was hook to the trap, and the trap was hooked to the stake and the beaver had devoured this muskrat house that he had set the trap on and he was buried right in the middle of it and Billy says I had nothing to do with it he said I had to tap him on the nose a couple of times trying to knock him out a little bit to get my trap off and he said he wouldn't knock out. Then I took my push pole and tried to hold him under the water to drown him and he said that when he run out of air he come up out of there he just pushed me right off out of the boat almost. So he finally did, he said it took him almost an hour before he finally got this animal drowned. It was a big one, he brought it here and he wanted to get it mounted so I'm in touch with Enforcement Section of Division of Fish and Wildlife now trying to get a tag for him because the taxidermost won't take him without a tag but Billy has been the capturer of otters even, I never in my life caught an otter, I couldn't hold it even in an otter trap, you know with great big jaws they are powerful animals. He caught 2 or 3 in muskrats traps I never understand that, he was caught several otters and he catches a lot of raccoons in muskrat traps and they are no slooth, they are strong but he has caught quite a few this year

Jenkins: How long has he been trapping on your marsh?

Beck: Oh, Billy, of I don't know. We've had several trappers, when my brother and I give it up all together, we had a man named Holliday, Davy Holliday, come trap and if he ever hears me say this he will kill me but he was not the best trapper in the world but he worked hard at it and he just didn't have the, we knew he should have been catching more rats but he just couldn't, didn't have the technique to do it and some people are that way. David now, he is older than I, I'm 68, Davies probably 75, but he always trapped over on the tide marsh and was very good at it but when we let him trap here he was a good friend of mine and still is he just didn't have the technique to catch muskrats in fresh water marsh. He would catch some, catch 10 or 15 a day but he ough to been catching 40 or 50 or something like that. If he was happy, we were happy. We could have used the money but he took care of his fur, he skinned it and he was honest and then Davie was long in age and he said I just can't push around that marsh anymore in that boat and do a good job so he give it up and Billy was trapping, Billy Moore was trapping the Miller marsh adjacent to use and we asked him if he wanted to trap ours and he said yes and thats probably been 25 years or something like that.

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