Nova Scotia’s Ross White has been trapping for 50 years—and he’s not done yet

As White is freeing a dead bobcat from a snare, on one of the animal’s claws catches his thumb. “Ahh @#$%&!” he shouts, his curse breaking the silence of the winter woods. He grabs the spotted grey corpse—it’s the size of a beagle—and slowly walks through the thick snow on the uneven forest floor. Blood streaks down his hand. “I’ll have to soak that,” he says, knowing cat claws are full of bacteria.

After laying the bobcat on the rack of his snowmobile, White pauses to catch his breath. The animal is frozen stiff, and on its body there is an inch-deep, loonie-sized hole, a sign that a shrew had been nibbling at it. He says the cat has been dead for a few days, and that the kill was quick; the snare is still firmly wrapped around its neck. Grinning, White takes a photo. Eventually, the pelt will be auctioned for up to $350. “Nice way to end the season,” he says.

At 76, White is admittedly slowing down. He is still recovering from the quadruple bypass he underwent when he was in his mid-50s. He also has thyroid and prostate trouble, and his desk is full of prescription medicine. He grunts when he bends under a fallen tree, catches his breath after clearing his traps, and coughs as he speaks. But he’s still at it.

When trapping season is over, White will switch his focus to woodworking and gardening. He knows what he wants to do with his time, but mostly he lives for the woods, for the great outdoors—he could not imagine living any other way. It’s a simple rural life, a life on a tight budget, making the most of his teacher’s pension and payments from the occasional fur harvester course he instructs. It’s a life in which he is in control.

“I’m going to slow down more and more, until hopefully I drop dead,” he says. “That’s the trapper’s dream. A lot of people would be happy dying out there. You’re still independent.”

Writer Giancarlo Cininni is a recent journalism graduate from the University of King’s College in Halifax.