If you go out to check traps with Arnie Peterson, don’t overdress.

That’s Peterson, up ahead of you on the trail. Seventy years old. Gobbling up the snowy trail near Northome, Minn., in long strides. Hauling a pail with a bottle of skunk scent in it.

Perhaps you wondered, when you set out, why he was wearing so few clothes on a 9-degree morning. Blue jeans. A couple of flannel shirts. A sweatshirt. Maybe some longjohns underneath. Maybe not.

Peterson doesn’t require much insulation. He’s always moving, generating plenty of body heat with his long, lean frame.

Already, it’s been a good year for Peterson, who’s out checking fisher, marten and bobcat traps on this brisk December morning.

Between his garage and his basement, he has 735 muskrats dried or drying. He has 25 fall beaver and more to come in winter and spring. He’s taken his four allotted otter, worth maybe $100 each. He has a fisher and a marten, but no ‘cats.

Peterson loves his cats, but they’re scarce this year.

“If I do get one, I’ll quit,” he says. “When things get down, I don’t like to trap ’em.”

A trapper comes to think that way after trapping for 64 years. Peterson started at age 6, growing up in the country near Elk River, Minn.

“We were hard up,” he says. “Dad said, ‘If you want to make some money, you’ll have to trap.’ I trapped three buck mink that winter. I got a hundred bucks.”

That was in the early 1940s. Trapping peaked in Minnesota in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A mink was worth $100. Now they’re worth $10 or $12. But Peterson can’t quit.

“It’s nice back here,” he says, moving between ‘cat traps. “I just love it in this backcountry.”

Peterson is running about 30 sets in early December, but fisher and marten season will end in a few days. Then he’ll keep after ‘cats into January. Winter beaver come next, and then spring beaver.

Peterson doesn’t take fitness for granted. During the summer, trapping’s only off-season, he walks two to eight miles a day. He lifts weights. He cuts and splits five cords of wood. His handshake carries the authority of a 220 Conibear trap.

Clearly, he loves this too much to get down on his luck. Loves reading the woods. Loves the challenge of fooling a ‘cat or weasel or marten. Loves the solitary life on the trail.

“You notice there’s no phone in here,” Peterson says, rolling down the road in his truck. “I don’t like the phone.”