Love of animals lures trapper to retirement job

Jerry Bartko would start trapping in Maine and just follow the weather.
By TIM YOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
HUBBARD -- Jerry Bartko's fondness for animals and the outdoors led to his retirement job of trapping.
"I was 8 years old when my uncle took me muskrat trapping," recalled the smooth-talking 65-year-old Bartko.
"I always loved animals."
Today, Bartko operates Wildlife Management Services with the help of his friend, Fred Coller of Hubbard, a former professional golfer. They trap nuisance animals.
Sitting in a two-story log home that he shares with his wife, Maryann, on Collar-Price Road at Coalburg Lake, Bartko popped open a cold beer and talked about his life of trapping.
After graduating from Hubbard High School, Bartko enlisted in the Army, spending three years as a forward observer with the 3rd Armored Division in Germany.
Not long after returning home in 1961, Bartko left for Seattle, where he worked for 11 years at building aircraft for Boeing Co. All along, he continued to hunt, fish, trap and play golf.
Making a living
In 1972, Bartko returned home to help care for his ailing father. He later decided to try trapping to make a living and went on the road.
"That was pure heaven," Bartko said of watching the sunrises and going out to check his traps from Maine to Alabama.
Following the weather, Bartko drove around in his Jeep looking for creeks and ravines where the animals tend to travel. There, he would put out his traps.
Farmers were always looking to get rid of foxes and coyotes that kill their livestock.
He would skin them, remove the fat, stretch them and sell the pelts to fur brokers.
"I was making a good dollar," Bartko said.
A fox pelt would sell for $60 to $65 each; raccoon, $40 to $50; coyote, $100; and muskrat, $5 to $6. He would catch 20 to 30 muskrat a day.
One year he was three red foxes short of the "magic number" 100 red foxes in a season.
Then, prices dropped, he explained. "Everything just went sour and hit rock bottom."
A red fox pelt now sells for $8 to $10, and a raccoon, $2.
Without the money in trapping, he got a job as a carpenter and then became the foreman for a company that constructed custom-made log homes. He worked at it for three to four years.
In 1985, his parents' home was destroyed by a tornado that swept through Trumbull County. He rebuilt his current home on the same site using logs without any plans. It has a vaulted ceiling, skylights with his trophy deer mounted on the walls and furs such as red fox draping the furniture.
State license
Bartko trapped part-time but realized he could get in trouble with the state because he didn't have a license.
So, about seven years ago, Bartko got his state license to trap anywhere in the state and started his Wildlife Management Services.
"I could probably make a living, but it would be constant work," Bartko said of getting raccoons out of attics and chimneys and groundhogs out of lawns.
Bartko and Coller are trapping about six animals daily this busy season, which runs from April through July. Bartko travels upward of 115 miles a day.
"I'm supposed to be retired from building log homes," he has a tendency to repeat, noting that after July he'll return to fishing, hunting and golf.
"To me, it's really not a job," Bartko said of his ability to help people get rid of a nuisance, reduce property damage and be with animals.
Bartko finds it difficult destroying the animals, a state law requirement. He euthanizes them.
If they weren't ill when caught, he buries them. He takes them to a Cleveland incinerator if they have diseases such as rabies.
yovich@vindy.com