TrailSafe: For Humane Trails. Keeping Nevada trails and recreation safe from steel jaw leghold traps.

Trap Incidents
Note: We have heard numerous stories, but people cannot always pinpoint the date. Therefore, incident dates are displayed only when confirmed.
Incident Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
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Approx. Date	Incident
Approx 2009	[told in person] My friend's dog was trapped in Pleasant Valley in 2009. The dog was traumatized, but recovered. This was especially outrageous because there were four traps, all set near a school.

	[told in person] We were checking out an old mine near Winnemucca in the King's River area. We heard a dog screaming and found it caught in a trap. We managed to get the trap off.

about 1990	[told in person] We were hiking in the Carson City area with a small, 25-pound dog. The dog got trapped. We reported it to the sheriff and to NV Dept. of Wildlife. NDOW told her, "If we get more complaints we'll do something."

about 1992	[told in person] Two years later, we were hiking with a different dog, who weighed 40 pounds. She was trapped near Sparks Family Hospital. My friend went to call Animal Control who came out with a stretcher for the dog. She was taken to Fairgrounds Animal Hospital. Fortunately, there was just soft tissue damage. I called the sheriff, and the county, city and state governments to complain.

	[told in person] My grandmother found a dog wandering near Pyramid Lake with a missing right front paw. Nobody claimed the dog, so grandmother adopted her. Eventually the paw healed, but it looked ragged as though it was chewed off.

Oct., 2010	An intern for a local political campaign says his cat was trapped in the Fallon area. He found the cat outside, all bloody.

about 2002-03	A group of us were hiking near the old White Horse Ranch by Olinghouse, west of Wadsworth. There were 10-12 of us. One woman's dog, a sturdy German Shepherd cross, got her paw stuck in a trap. It took two of us to get the trap off. The dog was hysterical with pain and fear, but was still able to walk. We went on and further up the trail found eight or nine clamp traps. There were feathers hung near them, a signal the trapper was after bobcat. They were attached to rocks to hold them in place. A hiker's aluminum hiking pole got stuck in one and it was almost impossible to get it out. We also saw snare traps on this trail. We saw more traps, clamped to the ground with rebar, on the west side of the slope.

Sunday Jan. 2, 2011	I was running Kaiser (German short hair pointer) in an area that I have run dogs for the past 30 years. He chased a rabbit up and over a hill and that's where he was snared. I was able to find him by his whimpers and by my other dog walking over to him. Kaiser was lying under a juniper tree and his coat matched the dirt--he was difficult to see. Luckily, the steel leg hold trap only grabbed skin on his shoulder--no meat, no tears. There was blood, but it turned out to be mine when the trap cut into my palm as I was opening it to free him. The trap seemed to be fairly new but had not been visited (no tracks in the snow) for a few days. It was set off a dirt road where I have taken my dogs for the last 25-30 years in the back of Lemmon Valley on the way to Antelope Valley. I have notified my neighbors and will forward all information to them. My suggestion was to put up signs warning people there were traps in the area. This is an area used by many for exercising dogs, 4-wheeling, etc. I was also very disappointed to discover that Nevada had the 96 hour rule instead of 24 hours as apparently other states have.
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“The time has come and gone when it is acceptable to regard this world as a resource to be exploited for the comfort of a single species. Animals with a central nervous system are too much like us to be treated as chattel.” Professor J.B. Neilands