Like so many possibilities in prepping, it depends. I personally like the idea of trap lines, however, as a city dwelling forty something I find it difficult enough leaving work for a day on the weekend let alone regularly to check a trap line several hundred kilometers away. As I understand the rules for ownership of the line, it has to be used to harvest fur. A great opportunity if you are a semi retired outdoorsperson who lives close to a line or has a very understanding and enthusiastic spouse. Sounds like a pretty unlikely situation for me personally.

Antsy

One thing that occurs to me is that even if the line was only harvested from infrequently over the season, for suburban and city dwellers it might also offer the opportunity for foraging, planting edible trees and shrubs, and creating habitat for other game species. I don't know if the law requires that the land only be used for trapping, but if you could also obtain licenses for fishing and hunting, it could be a nice go-to for monthly trips. Lay out lines for the 1-2 nights you're there, hunt over areas that don't see humans all that often, fish areas that may see less activity (waterway rights differ significantly than land rights, especially between the U.S. and Canada) and pick some of the wild produce. In theory, you could basically grow blinds for waterfowling and the same for ground-level blinds for deer and any gun-legal furbearers.

I eat a lot of "odd" wild game and my four-legged children are happy to eat organs and junk meat I won't, so the fur itself wouldn't be the only thing coming out of the lines or offsetting the cost.

There may be some regulation, as with some of the farming titles, that requires you to work a certain amount or produce a certain amount from the property. That would have to be checked and weighed into the equation as well. Like Antsy said, whether it's worth it depends - on a lot of things.
🙂

The purchase of a trapline only gives you the right to trap from the land, it doesn't actually give you the land itself. That stays in the trust of the crown. You are allowed to build one cabin (small) and lean-to's along the trapline for safety and stops as some of them can be quite long. You do not necessarily need to produce from it each year but each year that you want to trap from it you are required to pay a small fee and register. These can be done at any Environment and sustainable Resource development office. There is no minimum requirement for harvest but you do have to report what you do harvest. Some years the harvest is good, other years it's poor depending on the cycles of the animals you're hoping to trap. It might be a good way to get somewhere remote in an emergency but they're meant to be rustic cabins, you wouldn't have a lot of comfort in them.

I have worked in the bush for a number of years for different companies. I frequently ran into trapper's cabins in some great remote locations. While most of the cabins were extremely rustic, there were a number of very fine cabins set up in some beautiful locations. One that comes to mind was set up along a muskeg drainage on a section of high ground. There was floating muskeg in every direction, thus the materials had to have been brought in during the winter. The cabin itself was a full two story place with at least two wood stoves-- based on the chimneys. The area was great but if you didn't have a reason to be there, I can't see anyone just trying to cross a few kilometers of floating muskeg for fun. It makes for a rather amazing moat in the summer time.

So I have a bit of a different take on traplines because I spent part of my life living and growing up on one, we had more than one cabin (4), we had to have cabins at different locations because we harvested to much fur in an area so we needed to have a better location to deal with trapping the new area, 2 were actually skid trailers ( so non permanent). we grew gardens, raised chickens, and a few other things. We had more than one registered owner, one being me when I came of age. You pay your trapline fee every year or loose it, you are supposed to harvest each year but there are no hard fast rules on how much you must harvest. The only thing we were not allowed to do was live there year round. So for 1-2 months of the year we did not live there (technically). But the time spent there when not harvesting was prepping the line, prepping bait (chickens parts are great bait mix), growing bait (muskrats love carrots), gathering fuel for each cabin. We had some horses for that you need shelters and pens, storage for Fodder, sheds for storing trapping supplies. The government is very understanding if you approach it the right way ( hahaha)
Even then we had to think a bit outside the box.
People on this site are always yammering about having a place to run to or spent time through out the year. Well Traplines are legal, just going and building a cabin in the woods is usually not and if the government wants they can just bulldoze your illegal cabin on crown land into the dust, and you'll only know the next time you go there and if they find something they can trace back to you they will fine you and give you the bill for the demolition.

Very true on the illegal cabins, they'll usually post it for a couple of weeks but if no one shows up they have the right to demolish usually by burning or demolition. You may or may not be surprised how elaborate some of these illegal cabins are which is the equivalent to squatting.