On the line with Andy and Rob this year presented an opportunity of a life time to test and try different things. Three trappers who use different luring techniques trapping the same line, the same ground, most of the time less than twenty feet away from one another, what better testing ground could one ask for. I have read and listen to many accounts on the art of luring and lure application, but all these accounts seem to always be one person’s personal technique based on what they use or apply. So for me the opportunity to see how different techniques worked in such close proximity to another trapper was a gold mine of useable knowledge.

Now what worked and did not work is as varied as the lures used, but the one thing that always seems to make the biggest difference was location. No matter how much or how little lure, how loud or soft, you still can’t pull animals as far as many may think. Location and being right on it is the most important. Are there miracle lures, lures that work better than others? With out a doubt there are some lures that seem to work better, but would they pull animals any further than other lures? No, they would not pull them further, but rather make the animal work the set harder. Again, it is right back at location.

The one thing that did seem to pull animals further than any other trick was a good attractor. Weather the attractor was a hole, a bone or maybe a feather. Attractors seem to draw the animals to the set where the lure then did its job. But even with an attractor, you have to be within the animal’s line of site to get action at the set.

Learning location is not hard, but most of the time over thought, where there are tracks, that is your location. Then finding where to set a trap is up to each person. I use to look for the perfect place to set my trap, but soon learned that there is no perfect place, one place is as good as the other. Spend less time looking and more time setting. Just try to get as close to the tracks as possible, use a smart attractor and good lure. Don’t try to over think the sets.

Interesting?

Mr Howard.......

what is the question

I will write something this evenin

Huh ??? You lost me there............

Oh yea.......gotta fix that thingy, thanks !

Now that really looks cool. North Central North Carolina. I just thought all points were North in North Carolina.

I dont live near any town.........lol

Good info M. Howard. Where the critters passed thru one time they will usually pass thru there again....tracks confirm the location.

Thanks for sharing. M.Howard location,location,location, then good lure, and a attractor to boot.

howard,
i've been saying that for years....

most people overthink things...


did you ever wonder why the kids type cereal is always on the bottom shelf of the store????

location is the key....


location, location, location......


good stuff

Once on location the perfect spot "should" be picked if you live on my side of the state......Or it REMAKE
Rain can wipe out a location in short time here....and sometime does not stop....
.... once on location couture and soil conditions need to be looked out...
Often set have to be "slightly" off location or in the ceder trees to remain working...

Vinke, I don't have the rain you have that is for sure. I just find a spot tha want get run over by a auto.

Mr. Howard, have you ever trapped in snow? Try it some day and then tell me your thoughts.

This post was to make the point that lure, lure and more lure is still not the key, but rather location. Find location and then a good quality lure will do its job. This is something that I feel can not be taught enough and the only point being made by using Rob and Andy's names was to the fact that they are both experienced trappers with good equipment, knowledge and ability and it still came right back to location. As far as holding water, get a 5 gallon bucket with out holes in it and it will hold water, but the gold mine of knowledge will still be the same, location is the key. Keep looking, I am sure you will catch me on something one of these days, but not today.

tony, there are quite a few differences in many lures on the market, and lure placement is a very big factor that alot of people ignore.

you are dead on about location. and yep yall are right about alot of folks including me over think things, but thats what helps figure little things out, over thinking and reading between the lines.

text sent to ya tony....

Go trap some fox in the summer and get back to me about that over thinking stuff, lol.

Tony,
I totally agree with you....even if few others do. You and I trap the same weather conditions and terrain type based on what I've read and saw in your posts/photos on here.

I have said for years that just about any "lure" will work for predators if you are on location. Over-thinking things just slows me down and I would rather have 100 coyote sets on location with a so-so lure than 200 off location with the "best" lure made!!!

The time Bomb is ticking...tick...tick...tick

Hey Buzz, Your Grey Fox in the 1st pic, kinda looks like a possum? Have you been counting them as Grey fox all these years!

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.

Good post Buck, Andy and Bic. Agreed on all accounts. Now that everyone is thinking and past snow or tracks, I feel we are getting to the meat of the question which Buck has started another post about. You and I know what we are looking for when we walk into and area. We know where sign should be even in its absence. Finding tracks is not always the easiest thing to do and one can not always find them or droppings. So how can someone with less experience find location with out sign and with out wasting time and valuable equipment test setting for location? Trust me, I have run my fair share of test sets over the years and still do so just because it looks right. But as for someone just starting out with fewer traps and having them piling all on one spot to cover one location is a waste of time and energy. My purpose in this is to try and cut the learning curve by at least a year or two for so people. Again the best location is where there is sign such as tracks or droppings and the opening post was simply to state the point that location is key and even with the magic lure if your not where the animals are, you will miss more times than not.

Please keep it coming, this is the open dialog I was hoping to create and pull some useful information out of some of the ghost trappers on here.

My answer........6th sense

You know when the hair on the back of your neck stands up?

Thats dead critters!

Ya, but you have a third eye and six fingers.

hey Buck, why don't you copy and paste your thread over here. Leave the other one up also, but put what you wrote on the other post over here.

Ok, here's what I posted on the other thread.

Reading some of the writings of Charles Dobbins, he used the term "location" in a different way than I see it used by some people on this forum.

This is the way it seems to me, and Paul, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Charles talked a lot about sign, and then used the term "location" in reference to how he set on sign. It seems that "sign" always came first in determining if and where he was going to set a trap. When he used the term "location", it was where that set was made in reference to the sign. Like if he found coyote sign on a two-track, the "location" he mentioned was which side of the two-track he was going to make the set, using natural indicators such as wind direction, landscape, etc., or if he was going to make the set at this spot or 20 yards away down the two-track.

But I often see the term "location" used on this forum and in videos to describe a landscape feature, such as the intersection of a hay field and a bean field.

In those instances, "location" is used on a macro scale, as it were, while Charles tended to use the term on a micro scale.

Charles was very good at finding and interpreting sign, and it seems to me that in just about every set he talked about setting the first thing he mentions is the sign. And then he talks about trap location in reference to where and what sign he found.

Like I said, Charles seemed to use the term "location" on a micro scale to determine where he was going to make a set in a small area where he found sign, whereas in some of the videos and discussions the term "location" is used on a macro scale to describe a geographical feature such as an edge, where sign may or may not be found.

Am I wrong about that, Paul?

What you are referring to Buck is What I refer to as the SPOT. You already found sign. You know it is worthy of a trap. Now you got to find the right SPOT for the set.
To me, many variables dictate where place that set. Wind direction is #1. I want the lure smell to float across the animals line of travel. #2 is soil conditions. I drainage is very poor, I need a spot that is slightly sloping so water will drain from the set. #3 What type of set I plan to make. This helps me to pick out the type of backing I need whether it be a rock or tuff of grass, etc. #4 Last but not least, that 6th sense of what feels right. You can't explain that one or teach it as a short cut. Experience is what develops that 6th sense IMO.

That right there is beautiful!! Well done my friend!

Because snow is very humbling, things you thought you new and understood end up being different. When you see a Coyotes track quartering away from your set 50 yards away until he hits the scent and does an about face, or when you have trap frozen in the ground and you see if a fox really want's what's down the hole he will dance all over it. To say the types of lure or application of lure is not really that important is pretty reveling IMO. Of course location is the biggest piece of the puzzle, but certainly lure usage or type should not be discounted.

Disclaimer....... Of course I'nm not putting barrel swivels on my traps either.