The Vanishing World of Trapper Joe Delia

Nowadays, trapping is on the wane, a victim of the fake fur, depressed pelt prices, new roads and population growth. Such is the lure of the Alaskan wilderness, though, that perhaps 110 professional trappers are still at large. TIME's San Francisco Bureau Chief Jesse Birnbaum visited one of them, Missouri-born Joe Delia, 40, a tall, rugged woodsman with hard, spatulate fingers, a laughing face and an abiding love for the outdoors. Birnbaum's report:

JOE DELIA arrived in Alaska in 1948, worked for a while in Ketchikan, then drifted over to the Skwentna region, where he built a cabin and started trapping. Skwentna is good mixed-fur country--mink, marten, lynx, wolf, otter, beaver, muskrat. Fifteen years ago, trappers got good money for these pelts. Minks, for example, brought about $36 each; today Joe Delia is lucky to average $10. Lynxes, on the other hand, have improved. You can get $60 apiece--when you find one: the reproduction cycle has made this animal scarce.

"When I was single," Joe recalls, "I didn't even have a coat. I had an old canvas parka and I kept warm by just travelin' fast. I didn't even have a clock. I didn't care what time it was. I got up when I felt like gettin' up and I ate when I felt like eatin'. In fact, I didn't own a radio; I didn't care much about what was goin' on in the outside world."

Delia built a trap line through the Skwentna country, setting up little tent camps and cabins along the way at about ten-mile intervals. "I've got 75 miles of trap line here. I had 125. When I got married, I'd leave home and spend each night in a different cabin with my dog team. I'd be gone twelve days, makin' about two trips a month. But it was too much. As my responsibilities at home got more, I had to cut some of the line out, so I sold about 50 miles of it. Now, with the snowmobiles, I hardly ever use the cabins."

The nice thing about a snow machine, Joe adds, is that it enables him to get home every night. Sometimes he takes his wife Carlene, 31, and his two children (nine months and four years old) down the trap line. They always take two machines: if the weather turns mean or if one of the machines breaks down, they can be sure of getting the kids back to Skwentna safely.

Before the advent of the snow machine, Joe used dog teams. But they were a problem. You had to feed them. Prior to statehood, which brought tight restrictions on fishing, Delia and a partner fed their dogs on salmon fished from the Skwentna River and Eight-Mile Creek. "We used to put fish nets in the rivers and cricks and get maybe 2,500 to 4,500 salmon, just to feed our teams. But then the state fish and game people stopped us from usin' the fish wheel. Then they stopped us from usin' nets, and then they closed it altogether for that type of fishin'. "

With fur prices so undependable, there is scarcely a trapper working in Alaska today who does not look for extra income. In the summer, Delia works for the FAA people at the Skwentna airstrip. His wife is postmistress (the post office is in their log home on the Skwentna River), and adds to the family income in that way.

"Trappin' alone we'd starve to death," he says. "Oh, we could make it all right, but just the trappin' even for a single man, you can hardly afford the gas for your outboard engine. Trappin' for me is more a fill-in now. I sold 53 mink and 45 marten this fall for $1,100, and sold about $900 worth of pelts this spring. Guidin' is my main income now. As a guide for one of the big outfits, I get $45 a day, eleven hundred a month guaranteed. By taking out my own hunters, I make fifteen hundred in two weeks. However, that takes me away from home for three months at a time. "As far as the professional trapper is concerned, he's just about gone. Take this country here. In recent years, there's been oil exploration. Last year they were drivin' pickup trucks through the woods here--ten, fifteen miles from Skwentna! It brings in people, and there's not any room. Right now, almost every bit of land around here is privately owned. Some of your best trapping is around lakes, and that's your most desirable property. So you're messin' around with private property all the time already. You even have to get a permit to cut wood. In ten years, I look for a road through here."

You can already see the change when you go hunting. "Used to be we could go up the river in little ten-twelve-foot canoes, you'd see grizzly bear in the middle of the day and all the time. Seldom any day went by without at least seein' five bear. And man, today, with air traffic, you hardly ever see a bear in the middle of the day. First sign of an airplane or an outboard engine, they're right back in the bush." -

And what of Alaska's promised new prosperity? Joe Delia has some doubts about it all. "We got two extremes now with this oil business," he says. "We got one guy, he don't want oil to work at all--and the state needs that oil. Our economy is pretty bad off without. The other guy, he wants to go all the way and not do anything to protect the natural environment. Most people come to Alaska to get away from the rat race outside. And you know, if we ruin our natural resources, well, there it goes.

"For me, I'd rather see a happy medium. I'd like to see some woods and some animals around, and a place where a guy can get out once in a while, hunt and fish without tanglin' lines with fifteen other people down the line. But the oil is bound to bring in people, and it's bound to lose that old Alaska. A lot of places you don't even see it any more. You see locks on cabin doors. Heck, the only cabin I got with a lock on it is the post office, and it has to be locked. I don't say it's good or it's bad. People got to go somewhere, and I guess there's not much room for them down below. But it's bad from my viewpoint. I like lots of room.

"Even so, my wife and I have it pretty good compared actually to what we did have. We haven't got indoor plumbing yet, but we've got runnin' water during the summer with a little electric pump. Once in a while, we talk about sellin' out and movin' into town to give the kids education, but the more I read about colleges, I'm not so sure I want to do that. Both my wife and I think we're pretty fortunate to be able to have a few freedoms left, to not have to conform. Like in town, I guess you can't even work on your house unless you get a permit. Well, that don't go too good with me. If I decide I want to drive a nail or two or put up another wall, well, I just go on and do it. About six years ago, Carlene and I went to the States to stay for a couple of months, but we couldn't take it. We only lasted about two weeks. So we're goin' to try to hang on here. We still have a big garden, and we get a lot of moose meat. I hope we don't have to leave. It's sort of a shame to me that people can't live out like they used to."

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