That's better! lol

nope.......grinners dont move in the snow, Black Dog said so........

We`ve caught porky pines at -15 around here! Does that count?

Well I wish someone would tell the the grinners that! It would sure be nice to run a line while they were on vacation.

Have you ever trapped in the snow?

I have and he is close to being correct in my way of thinkin......not purrfect, but close

LMAO! I can feel the love.

Y'all are gettin way too intense.......Im just a old man that traps a critter or two

Yep sure have once about two years ago. It snowed all morning one morning and I had to run traps in it. Man was that white stuff a mess. Lucky I live in Louisiana though, cause it was gone by mid afternoon and left a huge mess at all my sets. At lease rain packs a set, snow just makes the ground all mushy here. I might not have fur, but thank God I don't have to live in this mess.

Just so ya know I aint lying, here is a pic out back.

Took this one going to work.

Jeeez Lordy! It's a cryin shame that I have to agree with ya for once. Except.........for me over thinking things doesn't help me figure out a dang thing! LMAO

buzzard caught that fox on the stink i sent him...

What is the big deal about snow anyway??? Not everybody deals with snow - if we liked trappin in snow, we'd all move up there... We trap snow free from Fall to Valentine's day. Don't move down here, though, YOU WOULD HATE IT!!! Snow is great - stay there - PLEASE....

Tracks are great, but there is alot more to finding locations then tracks.Alot of areas you would not be able to see a track.

don't know about you guys but i am gonna keep settin' my traps like this...

1. habitat
2. location
3. sign

KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. I have heard this all my life and try to live by it. You and I know there are many more places where you can’t find track but are on great location. This statement about finding track and you have found location was not intended from the more experienced reader but rather the new comer and folks just learning land trapping. How many times have you made sets that look perfect for location but were unable to produce catches? For the more experienced this is part of the line and part of the knowledge we learn every year. To many times new trappers find themselves trying to live up to what they hear and read in magazines and on sites like this one. They want to be able to “know” where to set by a feeling, or just reading the lay of the land and make a set. And more times than not they get discouraged because they did not look for location but rather what felt good to them and or looked good and missed the first basic rule of trapping. If the critters are not there, ya can’t catch them. For someone with limited numbers of traps and limited access to land it would be better for them to set strictly on location and the location I referred to is the simplest of them all, tracks. If they came through once they will come through again.

If I insulted others intelligent by making this post, well get over it. There are still young and new trappers out there who do not have lots of land nor do they have piles of traps and I feel it is better for them to catch first then learn the hard stuff.

And no, I do not trap in snow, nor do I go on those posts and tell the people who do if they have never trapped coyotes in standing water then they have nothing I want to hear. I am sure my way of thinking may not work in all parts of the country, but I sure don’t see many folks explaining why. They had rather try and run me and or my way of trapping down and feel they have elevated themselves. Maybe if they would put more energy into making post that would help others, people could really learn something together. I try to give sound information that works in my area and may help other get into the trade and enjoy it, try it some time, it makes you feel good.

You know, I got to thinking all the way to work this morning. What is location! Some of yall na saiers come on and explain location. I can promise that 100% of the time my little statement “find track and you have found location” is correct. I am not upset or even trying to start anything other than to make people get in here and get involved.

So please explain “location” in way that new and inexperienced trappers can understand. Put them on location with nothing more than what you can type on here.

I make water sets for coons strictly on sign, and that means tracks. And I won't set a location based on ONE set of tracks. I look for the places that coons congregate on the creeks or ponds, the places where so many coons have gone down to the water's edge that it looks like a coon feed lot the mud is so full of tracks. If I set on a single set of tracks, I might check an empty trap for a week before hitting on the one coon that occasionally passes that way. When I'm coon trapping I don't like to waste time with empty traps, and if I gang set only the heavy use areas then I waste less time. That might mean having to trudge 300 yards down the edge of a field in knee deep mud, but it beats wasting time.

When I'm going after the dry land coons, I don't find a lot of tracks. But the other signs are there. Some of the trails I snare are very faint when looking at them standing up. But when I get down on my knees and look down them from a coon's eye level, they look like superhighways. This is where I set snares.

I don't do much canine trapping, but when I do I look for tracks and scat at the intersections. Just because there aren't any tracks or scat at a good looking spot doesn't mean the coyotes aren't traveling there. But tracks or scat mean for a FACT they are traveling there, and I don't have to guess. My location choosing skills aren't good enough to just guess. Like M. Howard indicated, I'd be checking an awful lot of empty sets. So I rely on sign. But as I look for that sign, I'm getting better and better at knowing where to look for it. And some day maybe I'll be confident enough to start making sets where I don't see sign, but know it would be there if the ground conditions were right for tracks, because the location is right. Then I'll have become a good canine trapper. I'm not there, yet.

A little something called fur.

Tony, i think you are looking at it a little too simply, but i don't claim to know anything.

Yes, i agree that tracks are sign and you should set on sign. However, i feel you should also set on sign in location... Example, a coyote i was following this winter, came onto the property near what i would call good location (wood lot corner and field intersection). He left his scat and tracks and continued on down the wood line, then went out into the open field for several hundred yards. He then went down hill to a waterway and followed that waterway to another wood edge (location.)

Now if i were to take some of what you said literally, it would lead me to believe that setting on the tracks that i found in the open field would be a good spot to set a trap. When in actuality, there was nothing that would bring that coyote back to that spot. However, if i were to set at the woods corner/ field intersections on the sign, that set would be on sign in location.

I followed this coyote across this field a couple different times and each time he hit the two points that i called location, but he took differing routes through the open harvested bean field, all the while leaving sign...

Very well put Andy. Setting on sign is always better than Nothing. BUT there are places within a territory where Sign and Location overlap. Those are the places you want to locate!
That is why I try to scout an area several times. If I see track in a certain spot and come back a few weeks later and see more New tracks..I've found True Sign. Tracks in the same area over a period time is a better indicator than just a single set of tracks that may have been a 1 time occurrence.