by Glenn Taylor
Northern News Services

INUVIK (DEC 06/96) - A woman whose dog was caught in a fox trap last week called to ask whether trapping withing town limits is legal. It is.

Moe Grant was running her dogs down Navy Road last week when she notice that Sheba, her yellow Lab, had suddenly gone missing. She turned around and began looking for her through the bush, thinking the dog may have gone sniffing after a rabbit.

After walking a couple of hundred yards through the bush, she found Sheba sitting still. She wasn't yelping, but her paw was caught firmly in a trap, perhaps set recently by a trapper to catch a fox.

Grant couldn't free Sheba from the trap, so she carried it and the dog to a friend's house, who helped unhinge the leghold trap.

"What would you think?" said Grant. "It could have been much worse. What if I didn't find her?"

Sheba was not injured in the incident, although Grant said the animal could have broken a leg. "I just want to know if this is legal."

It's not the first such trapping incident inside town limits. Last month, Collin Bonnycastle was helping to groom the local ski trails when his ski pole snapped into a similar trap.

"We were definitely surprised the trap was there," said Vicki Sahanatien, who was clearing the trail with Bonnycastle at the time. "We were annoyed -- that's definitely not an appropriate place to leave a leghold trap."

Trapping within town limits is actually not an illegal activity, according to Renewable Resources officer Conrad Baetz and town by-law officer Daryle Foster.

But Baetz said "I suggest to anybody trapping to be careful, and not put traps in areas where they see lots of dogs running, that kind of stuff."

Baetz is "not totally opposed" to trapping near the edge of town, to help control fox populations from entering Inuvik. Visiting foxes have been a headache for Baetz recently, and without trapping "it would be considerably worse than it is."

Baetz said the dog and ski-pole incidents were the first he's heard of in Inuvik, although he's heard the issue has come up in other communities in the past. "If you do find a trap in an area that does post a threat to kids or running dogs, please let us know so we can have a look at it and go from there," he said.