Nowadays, trapping is on the wane, a victim of the fake fur, depressed pelt prices, new roads and population growth. Such is the lure of the Alaskan wilderness, though, that perhaps 110 professional trappers are still at large. TIME's San Francisco Bureau Chief Jesse Birnbaum visited one of them, Missouri-born Joe Delia, 40, a tall, rugged woodsman with hard, spatulate fingers, a laughing face and an abiding love for the outdoors. Birnbaum's report:
JOE DELIA arrived in Alaska in 1948, worked for a while in Ketchikan, then drifted over to the Skwentna region, where he built a cabin and started trapping. Skwentna...
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