OUR STORY
From the Trapline to the Backyard
For more than two decades, North American Trapper® has been built around one simple idea, if you're going to manage wildlife, you should understand wildlife first. That philosophy started long before North American Trapper® became a brand. It started with a seven-year-old boy in Pennsylvania who caught his first muskrat in the late 1970s. That boy was Alan Probst.
Raised in a family of hunters, trappers and outdoorsmen, Alan learned early that trapping wasn't simply about catching an animal. It was about understanding the animal, where it travels, what it eats, what it smells, what makes it curious, and how it interacts with the world around it. Those lessons eventually became the foundation for North American Trapper®, which officially began in 2003.
After a 10-year professional baseball career, Alan returned to Pennsylvania and devoted himself to building a company centered around trapping education, wildlife management and the responsible use of trapping as a practical conservation tool. Over the years, North American Trapper® has produced over 500 original television episodes, instructional DVD's, equipment, baits, lures and trapping systems designed to help people understand and manage wildlife more effectively.
But along the way, we noticed something. The wildlife problem wasn't always in the woods. It was in the backyard. It was under the porch. It was digging up the garden. It was getting into the chicken coop. It was tearing up the lawn. It was living under the shed. Furthermore, it was understood that the people dealing with those problems weren't necessarily trappers. They were homeowners, gardeners, farmers, ranchers, landowners, and more. People who simply wanted to protect their property and peacefully coexist with wildlife while knowing what to do when an animal became a problem.
That's where Backyard Baits® began.
Backyard Baits® was created to bring decades of North American Trapper® field and animal behavior experience into a simpler, more approachable format for the everyday property owner. We took what we learned on the trapline and asked a different question: How can we make wildlife management easier for someone who has never set a trap before?
The answer wasn't to make trapping more complicated; it was to make it simpler. We developed species-specific attractants designed around the natural feeding and curiosity behaviors of common nuisance animals found around homes, gardens, farms and homesteads. Raccoons, groundhogs, skunks, opossums, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, armadillos, mice and other animals that can turn a peaceful backyard into a wildlife problem.
We Started With the Animal. Every Backyard Baits® product begins with the same approach Alan has used throughout his career: Understanding the animal first. What does it eat? What attracts its attention? What kind of environment does it live in? What signs does it leave behind? Where is it traveling? Why is it visiting your property in the first place?
That philosophy is at the heart of our entire product line. We're not interested in gimmicks. We're interested in creating practical tools that make sense. We are built From Real-World Experience. Backyard Baits® isn't a laboratory concept developed without understanding what happens in the field. It comes from years of watching animals, setting traps, testing attractants, solving wildlife problems and teaching others how to do the same. North American Trapper® has always combined equipment, attractants and education into complete wildlife-management systems. Backyard Baits® takes that same philosophy and brings it home. Literally.
The Backyard Baits® name may be new, but the philosophy behind it isn't. It comes from the same commitment to quality, practical education and field-tested wildlife management that has guided North American Trapper® from the beginning. North American Trapper® continues to provide professional trapping equipment, baits, lures, snares, educational resources and complete wildlife-management systems for trappers and land managers. Backyard Baits® simply takes that knowledge one step closer to home.
From the trapline to the backyard. From the professional trapper to the homeowner. From complicated wildlife problems to simple, understandable solutions. More Than Bait. That's why Backyard Baits® is about more than what's inside the can. It's about helping people understand the animals around them. It's about giving homeowners the confidence to recognize wildlife problems before they become bigger problems. It's about respecting the animal while protecting the property. And it's about carrying forward a tradition that began with a young boy learning the habits of a muskrat and grew into a lifetime devoted to trapping, wildlife management and outdoor education.
The lessons Alan learned on the trapline became North American Trapper®. Now, those same lessons are finding their way into backyards, gardens and homesteads across America. Real wildlife. Real problems. Real experience. Real solutions. Understand the animal. Respect the resource. Solve the problem.
Welcome to Backyard Baits®