Neal Shuman

On October 7, 1968, Neal Shuman and his family learned that his brother William had died in Vietnam. Neal was 13, and up until that point, he’d been bad news (his words). After, it was as if he took his brother’s place, hanging out with Melvin Eugley and other friends of his brother. They were older kids. They had coon dogs and rabbit hunting dogs. They hunted. Trapping started when Neal watched his neighbor Jamie Reed doing it. Neal got a trap of his own and caught muskrat. In time, he graduated to three traps and caught mink, too. Six years later, he was trapping beaver. He skinned what he caught and sold the fur to buyers from as far away as New York. As soon as his three children were out of diapers, he took them into the woods to fish and trap. When they grew up and left home, Neal stopped trapping. But when his son William became a game warden, Neal went into Animal Damage Control (ADC). Neal has trapped for the state, nearby towns, and residents with an animal problem for over 25 years. The way Neal sees it, by working year-round with ADC, he can learn more, and faster, about his craft and the animals. Neal was born in Dr. A. Franklin Randolph’s maternity ward down by Bear Hill and has lived here his whole life. For thirty of those years, he was a crew leader for roads and bridges. As for trapping, these days Neal uses animal cameras and an assortment of traps. He’s caught everything from a fox and coyote to skunk, porcupine, mink, fisher, opossum, beaver, muskrat, and rat, which he considers the most challenging.

There’s a woman down in Dutch Neck.  She’s a judge, too — judges fairs in Maine and in Florida, too.  When she finally got my name, she’d lost roughly 60 birds of the little ones.  When I got there, they had grain bags of dead chickens, and they told me it was a weasel. 

Her husband, he had traps everywhere…rat traps, Havahart traps, and more.  I says, “But you’re not gonna catch it, unless it’s just a fluke.” 

And he had them baited with liver.  Well, liver might work out in the woods, but it ain’t gonna work when you got fresh, living poultry.  See what I mean?

“Well, it makes me feel better,” he goes. 

Anyways, it was a really sunny day, and you know, you walk in a building, and it’s real dark.  So I said, “Well, I’m just going to lug in all my gear in.  And then get my eyes straightened out.”  I could see they had all these separate rooms for pigeons, juvenile turkeys, ducks and stuff.

All of a sudden, one of the rooms erupted.  You know how the dust comes around the door? 

So I just walked in there.  These were big chickens, and they were flying around, freaking out.  And I was just standing there.  And finally I see it’s a mink, not a weasel.  And I think, “Wow, everything I brought down, it’s not big enough.  It ain’t going to hold a mink.” 

Well, this mink, he jumped up where they lay the eggs, and he was just weaving in and out of them things.  The mink jumped down and got behind the hot water heater, put his front feet up there and just looked at me.  We’re just looking at each other.  I knew where he was going to go to.  There was a hole in the corner.  But I didn’t have time to go up there and set.  I had to go back and set. 

Well, they had this vet tech working for them.  And every day I could see that she was releasing my sets to do her job.  Finally I found a place she wasn’t using and laid some traps. 

Well, I was down there the fourth day and by now, give or take, a hundred birds had died.  I was kinda not very happy.  Then I remembered I’d put two horse buckets in with a trap behind it where there was a crack.  And I thought, “Oh, I didn’t check that trap yet.” 

So I went over there and moved the first bucket.  That mink screamed.  Have you have heard a mink scream?  That was the first time in my life I ever heard it.  The whole building went silent after that.  The vet tech, she’s freaked out.  All the animals are freaked.  It’s a sound that’ll make your hair stand up.  

And that mink was in a cheap supply trap because I’d borrowed one of her husband’s traps.  So I just picked it up and put it inside one of my traps because I wasn’t taking any chances. 

The vet tech, she saw me and asked, “What are you going to do with it?” 

 “I’m going to destroy it.” 

She said, “Why don’t you let me take it and let it go?”  She wanted to take it out by her house.  She lived by Bug Tussle. 

I says, “No.  For one, you’re not paying the bill.  And two, that mink has got the taste for chickens.  And once they get the taste, they’re not going to stop.  I’m just saying…That’s what I think.”

My job is, I gotta get them all.  Else I don’t gain anything.  ‘Cause if there’s still one, it’s still going to kill. 

Or if it’s beaver — and you can believe this or not — I’ve seen one beaver do just as much damage as ten beaver.  When you’re trying to get all the beaver, you gotta make plans. 

When I make a set, I make preparations for another set.  But I don’t put no trap there.  I just get ‘em used to going there.  It’s like plan A, B, C, and D. You really gotta do that if you want to get ‘em all.