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In April, a judge in Bangor will hear a lawsuit seeking to ban trapping of the threatened Canada lynx.

By JERRY HARKAVY, The Associated Press March 9, 2009

PARSONSFIELD — Legs protected by hip waders and hands by rubber gloves, Brian Cogill kneels in fresh snow. He scoops slush from the hole he chiseled through the ice on a brook above a beaver dam as he peers into the frigid waters below.

"This is like Christmastime, opening up a package," Cogill says. He sees that the trap he set five days earlier had sprung.

Moments later, he pulls up a body-gripping Conibear trap that snapped the neck of a 30-pound beaver, killing it instantly.

It was a productive morning for the Grizzly Adams lookalike who checked 10 of his traps in two locations and came away with four animals: three beavers and an otter that he will dry, skin and stretch into pelts for sale at an upcoming fur auction.

Even as Cogill carries on a centuries-old tradition that played an important role in the European settlement of North America, today's trappers find themselves under attack by critics who regard the practice as cruel and are pushing to have it banned.

The latest confrontation will come next month when a federal judge in Bangor hears a lawsuit that seeks to prohibit trapping that could endanger Canada lynx, a cat listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Cogill plans to attend the hearing.

Proud and defiant, the 45-year-old ex-Marine doesn't soft-pedal his favorite recreation. He displays it with a Maine accent on the "BVATRPA" license plate on his pickup truck, which also sports a PETA sticker with an upfront message: People Eating Tasty Animals.

'A WHOLE LOT OF HARD WORK'

Beaver, the largest rodent in North America, is Cogill's favorite quarry and accounts for the largest share of the furbearer harvest in Maine.

State pelt-tagging records over the past decade show years in which beaver outnumbered bobcat, coyote, fisher, red fox, grey fox, marten, mink and otter combined.

On a bright, sunny morning after a storm that dumped 6 inches of snow, Cogill and his son, Brian Jr., 14, donned snowshoes and trekked a quarter mile off a woods road to a brook where beaver colonies have long flourished.

A sign of their presence is the familiar beaver house, a den that the industrious critters build out of mud and sticks and which are now covered with snow. Cogill scouts out those lodges and beaver dams as he chooses the best locations to set his traps.

A Portland Public Works employee, Cogill could never see himself working in an office and says trapping feeds into his love for the outdoors.

"It's seeing things out there that most people never see, knowing the animals, just being out in the woods," he said.

He is one of roughly 4,000 licensed trappers in Maine and an estimated 150,000 nationwide, a figure dwarfed by the 12.5 million Americans who hunt. While the number of trappers may fluctuate according to the market price for pelts, few make a living selling fur unless they combine it with pest control work like trapping raccoons for suburban homeowners.

"It's really tough in today's world to make a living at it if that's all you do is fur trap," said Kraig Kaatz of Oak Forest, Ill., president of the National Trappers Association. "Nuisance work is by far more lucrative."

Cogill isn't in it for the money. He has trapped about 85 beaver this season, and he'll sell them later at a fur auction. Beaver pelts, on average, have fetched from $14 to $21 in recent years, and the slumping economy that has reduced demand for fur is likely to keep that figure on the low side this season.

Not all of the time Cogill devotes to his hobby is spent in the woods.

Working in his barn, he skins the carcasses, cleans the fat from the skin and then stretches the pelts by nailing them to oval boards.

"Beaver trapping is a whole lot of hard work," he said. "The easiest part of it is catching the animal."

For all that work, he's happy to get back what he spends...