You can receive college credit for taking a fur trapping course through Purdue University of West Lafayette, Indiana. But before you sign up for the course, you must become a member of the Fur Takers of America (FTA). As part of your education, you are expected to go in the field, barbaric traps in hand, and attempt to subject hapless victims to the horrors of these devices. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources provides an "educational" special use permit so that raccoon, opossum, skunk, muskrat, otter, and beaver can be trapped as part of the class even though the trapping is done outside of the state mandated season. The course is touted as teaching a "respect for wildlife," yet leghold traps, neck snares, and conibear traps are the instructive tools, and there is nothing respectful about these cruel traps.

Steel jaw leghold traps clamp with bone-crushing force on whomever stumbles into them.

Apparently Purdue University has partnered with the FTA in conducting this "trapper's college" for more than two decades. The FTA is a big supporter of steel jaw leghold traps, despite the fact that they are condemned as inhumane by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Animal Hospital Association, and the National Animal Damage Control Association. Steel traps and conibear traps adorn the FTA's website. The class runs for six days and will allow students to "experience at least nine hours a day of intensive trap line instruction." The animals caught, be they target or non-target victims, may suffer severed tendons and ligaments, broken bones, amputation of toes, and a long, drawn-out struggle against an excruciatingly painful device prior to death. And the students, who have inflicted such suffering can't keep the animals' fur pelts, but they get several books and other trapping propaganda, free samples of animal lures, a certificate and graduation patch from the FTA, and two continuing education credits from Purdue University.