Trappers Association will miss Joe Kelley

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Filed under: Scott Richardson — Scott Richardson @ 10:07 am

I remember the first time I met Joe Kelley of Colfax. The year was 1993.

He was 80. But I thought he was in his early 60s. He was filled with energy. His handshake was strong. He had a wide, friendly smile.

Kelley had come to the Pantagraph to pitch a story on the Illinois Trappers Association. A past ITA director for more than 30 years, he was the organization’s greatest ambassador.

Kelley died in March at age 93. I doubt the Illinois Trappers Association convention, starting Friday at the Livingston County Fairgrounds in Pontiac, will be the same without him.“Trapping is my game,” Kelley told me when I interviewed him three years ago. At age 90, he’d just completed another trapping season. “I’ve thought about quitting. But every year when the time rolls around, I’m raring to go.”

He’d learned to trap at age 12 after he overheard some older boys at school telling how they’d trapped muskrats for money from the Mackinaw River.

“That sounded pretty good to me,” laughed Kelley, who took his first two muskrats using rusty old traps he’d found somewhere. “Nobody was more surprised than me,” he admitted.

He passed the skill on to his three sons and a daughter. One of his sons, Paul Kelley, started trapping at age 7. He and his wife had twin sons during the ITA Convention held at Lake Bloomington the year his dad took over the directorship in 1969. Paul Kelley was elected ITA vice president while he was still at the hospital with his wife.

Paul Kelley, current ITA president, recalled how his dad was always concerned about the image of trappers. He would spread the word about trapping wherever he could as long as he could. At 90, in the summer’s heat, he manned the ITA booth at the McLean County Fair to point out how some of today’s traps are designed to kill quickly and humanely. Others hold an animal alive without injury so trappers can decide whether to harvest or not.

He also stressed the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ opinion that regulated fur trapping is a safe, efficient and practical means of game management, helping control the number of certain kinds of animals that tend to be subject to diseases. Trappers also come to the aid of homeowners when skunks and raccoons become uninvited guests in garages and crawl spaces.

Still, under his leadership, the ITA took some of the criticism to heart. It realized high fur prices in the mid-1970s to late 1980s had attracted many new trappers interested only in money. They knew little about ethical trapping methods. As a result, the ITA designed a course to teach young trappers. The DNR made the classes mandatory.

Trappers don’t make the money they used to, but trapping obviously kept Joe Kelley healthy and happy. He never wanted to stop. But age and lung problems finally forced him to skip the 2005 trapping season. Even then, he never stopped advocating for trappers.

When the ITA had several bills before the General Assembly last year, Joe Kelley phoned his son every day for a new list of legislators to call from his room at the nursing home.
“I wish we had 25 or 35 more people as dedicated as dad. If every organization had a dozen like him they wouldn’t have the problems they have,” said Paul Kelley.

“Had it not been for him and his determination, I’m sure our organization would not be here today.”

The Illinois Trappers Association’s annual Fall Convention opens at noon Friday at the Livingston County 4-H Park in Pontiac.

The event features supply dealers, demonstrations and sweepstakes drawings along with an Illinois Trappers Education course on Saturday.

A banquet and auction will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday. Meals are $10. The event ends at 3 p.m. Oct. 1. For more information or to register for the trappers education course, contact Paul Kelley at (309) 726-1443, or Mike Gragert (217) 456-6121.