Search Trapping Incidents Database

Burnaby, BC, Canada — Angus stepped into a leghold trap and was seriously injured. Burnaby PCMP is warning families with young children and pet owners to be careful. The trap was set illegally within city limits

A dog was walking with his guardian at the Wyandotte Shores Golf Course and was caught by trap placed by city personnel to capture coyotes.

A couple who had permission from their neighboring landowner to run their dogs on the land. But a man who lives in the area, who has permission to trap coyotes as predators on land north of the couple’s, shot Tio when the dog was caught in one of his traps at least two miles from the couple’s house. He had seen Tio chasing livestock, he said, bunching up cows against a fence corner. He would have shot Tio if he had seen him running, too, he said. “It’s their fault,” the man said in a phone interview, “because that dog was chasing cows.” The deputy county attorney assigned to the case said he couldn’t think of a law the trapper would have violated. “The guy clearly has a civil case against him,” he said. “But whether any law was violated is very unclear.” He has never seen a case like this, he said, of a trapper shooting a dog he caught. The local county Dog Ordinance prohibits dogs from being “at large,” he said. “I’m not trying to pick on these people,” he said. “But their dog was at large.” The couple said Tio was on land they had permission to walk and run their dogs on. They say that the trapper didn’t have to tell them that he hadn’t seen their dog while they searched for four days at Christmas. And he didn’t have to shoot Tio twice in the top of the head for getting caught in his trap. “I realize we maybe put our dogs in harm’s way,” said one of Tio’s guardians. “But we didn’t shoot them. We didn’t pull the trigger.”

While out riding on a dirt road with a client, a horseranch owner saw her dog, Bear, sniff at a snare baited with a deer carcass, get hooked, and die. “It was probably the most horrifying experience I’ve ever seen,” she said. In Nova Scotia, snares must be about 600 feet from dwellings unless permission is granted by the owner, but traps can be placed on privately owned land without permission unless a notice is posted prohibiting the traps. There’s no law governing the distance the traps must be from a road.

Traps were set on a creek in a residential area to capture beaver and otter. The two dogs were trapped instead (very close to their home). When the trapper found the dogs caught in the traps, he shot and killed them.

Swan Creek Road off Gallatin Canyon, near Big Sky, MT — A man let his dog, Bull, out of the car to run for exercise. When Bull failed to return, the man followed his tracks and found him “fatally caught in a snare trap.” The trap was legally set.

The Labrador retriever puppies strayed from home and were caught and killed in raccoon traps. The trapper who found them buried the bodies so it would like the dogs were stolen, on the assumption that the children who loved the dogs might be comforted if they thought the dogs were stolen and therefore still alive.

A dog was caught by snare set on a farm while on a walk with caregiver. The snare, though placed in an area heavily frequented by dogs and their caregivers, was set legally.

A hunter had placed Shiela and 2 other dogsin an enclosed running pen on his property. When he returned later in the evening, he found the pen empty and evidence a coyote had dug into the pen. The dogs had tracking collars, and the hunter searched for them. When he found Shiela, she had been killed in a snare trap, designed to choke a coyote in a wire lasso. The trap was illegally placed and out of season.

A high school junior reported catching a 60-pound black bear cub a trap set for fox. After hearing snarling noises in the woods behind his home, he found the bear in the trap and called the Pennsylvania Game Commission, who came to the scene and tranquilized the bear and released it into the woods. (2 or 3 bear cubs are caught by traps every year in Pennsylvania.)