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| TOP: Andy Brenna, left, works with his father Todd at Teton Welding on Bob Facklam's custom bear traps. LEFT: Facklam shows off the automatic stopping mechanism on the trap. RIGHT: A completed trap is ready to ship from the shop in Choteau. (TRIBUNE PHOTOS/ RION SANDERS) |
Facklam, owner of Teton Welding, builds bear traps - big ones. He builds traps for all kinds of bears - from black bears all the way up to polar bears. These are not the huge steel-jawed leg hold traps you see hanging on the walls in restaurants and bars.
Facklam builds culvert-style traps: A bear crawls inside to grab a bait and the door slams down and locks behind the bear. Facklam has been building and designing bear traps for so long, that he has a patent on a safety device on the "guillotine door."
"What we build is so unique it is worth protecting," he said.
Sometimes a cub will be right on mom's tail and traps without the safety measure can kill the cub. Or, as Facklam points out, the same door could seriously injure any kid who happened to be fooling around with a trap that he came across in the woods or in a campground.
"I'm the only known manufacturer of these traps that does it commercially," Facklam said. "That might make Choteau, Montana, the bear trap capital of the world."
That world beating a path to your door stuff? It's true, Facklam says. Last week when a reporter and photographer showed up at Teton Welding, commonly referred to as Bob's Welding, Facklam was loading three huge traps onto a flatbed trailer for the long ride to Alaska. Those traps were for polar bears on Wrangell Island in Russia.
Facklam has built traps for the big Alaskan brown bears or Kodiaks, as well as for grizzly bears and Malaysian sun bears.
While his traps have gone around the world, a lot of them head due north to Canada. Two years ago he worked round the clock to fill an order of 27 traps headed for Edmonton, Alberta.
Facklam got into the bear trap business about 25 years ago when Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks a game warden in Choteau, Tom Bivens, asked Facklam if he could copy an existing trap.
"I could,' I told him, but the question was would I,'" Facklam said. "Some of those old culvert traps were dangerous pieces for both the bear and the warden."
"We have never stopped improving our traps. We listen and do everything the customer wants as long as we think it is safe."
Since Facklam uses aluminum and stainless steel: his traps don't rust and the inside of the trap is smooth so the bear cannot injure itself. The earliest culvert traps had sharp metal and screws that could cut a bear.
Facklam's traps also can be opened by remote control from a fair distance away. And, the selling point for many agencies that need to trap bears: The traps break down easily for transport by dogsled, raft or helicopter when they have to be taken deep into the backcountry.
Polar bear traps are 4 feet in diameter and 10 feet long; grizzly traps are 42 inches in diameter and 8 feet long; and black bear traps are 38 inches in diameter and 8 feet long.
The traps weigh up to 450 pounds and cost about $10,000.
Facklam also builds animal shipping crates.
Facklam does not advertise the traps he builds, although he does attend conferences across the United States and Canada where he shows his traps to wildlife managers.
He also uses PowerPoint presentations to explain his traps and where they have been used.
His wife, Sally, who retired this year after 38 years of teaching English in the Choteau schools, is the computer and word person behind the Facklam bear trap business.
The couple often delivers the traps themselves.
"I deliver about everything I build," Facklam said. "The one-on-one helps the business and it gives Sue and me a little vacation."
By the way, American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson came up with the mousetrap line. If he had known Facklam, the quotation might have come out differently.
Editor's Note: For further information regarding live traps, click here...
