Trapping Vs. Hunting

I am hoping to draw from the experience of this forum. I have a small pond 50x50 fed by a small creek at the bottom of a small hill on the back of my property. Completely overgrown, I doubt anyone has been back there in 50 years. Edge of town, no other neighbors touching the area. A pristine wild little place that only I can get to. I see raccoon and other little critters here and there. I assume there are other critters back there that I have no idea are even there.

My question is, and I have no experience in either hunting or trapping, would this be a sustainable little place for setting those cage traps that you can pick up? If so, is this a large enough area to sustain a year around trapping management system for small game? This pond area is surrounded by about another 5 acres of wild overgrown land that is also so wild you can't walk through it. I live in the Olympic Peninsula of Wa State so it is most always wet and completely overgrown and impassable. I could set traps on the edge of the pond area and there is a small game trail that looks like it follows the creek. The creek also feeds into a salmon and steelhead river about a mile away.

Also, are there issues with over trapping an area? Do those traps work, or am I wasting my time trying to develop this as a sustainable source?

Thank you for any advise.

 

You could raise quite a few fish in even a small pond. Trapping an area that small would rapidly become unproductive. You would be better off clearing it and raising goats. Goats are tough and can provide meal sized meat, milk and some have wool worth shearing. If you live there some sort of birds would be nice. The problem with trapping in a small area is that you can almost wipe out a population once you get good at it. Connabear body traps are great for the smaller critters but I like steel snares for bigger game.