Pennsylvania Trapping Statistics

Vern Ross, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Game Commission notes that "Trappers, predator callers and houndsmen all make significant and annual contributions to the management of the Commonwealth's furbearer populations. Residents who think nuisance wildlife problems are bad now can't begin to imagine how bad they'd get if trappers and hunters weren't removing some of the surplus furbearers our state produces annually."

The following are the tallies for trapping alone in Pennsylvania (with previous year in parentheses): Muskrats, 71,500 (75,000 in 2003); opossum, 34,000 (34,500 in 2002); red fox, 31,500 (33,000 in 2002); gray fox, 16,000 (18,500 in 2002); mink, 6,500 (10,000 in 2002); coyote, 11,500 (11,500 in 2002); skunks, 9,500 (7,000 in 2002), and beaver, 6,757 beavers (4,538 in 2002).