Well I've made a few firsts for myself this year. For the first time I ran a line before our rifle deer season. I've typically never ran until after Thanksgiving a line of any size. I also decided that there's nothing better than an education. So I had Ed Schneider from Kansas Trapline Products come with me for two days on my line. It was an eye opening experience, and although it was only 48 hours I learned more than I could have imagined. He pretty much helped me set out the coyote line. I'm about halfway through my first vacation of the year, and it's been a blast.
Also I've never trapped these thirty miles as I had to get on ground I could before season. I almost feel like an ADC guy in the fact that I'm very close to town on properties that many people don't deer hunt. I've been trying to snap as many pictures as I can, but after Ed left I'm on my own, and I've been staying rather busy keeping everything going. I've been paying attention to the moon, barometer, and temperature. What I can tell you is what I already knew, the full moon was very, very rough. Not much of anything moved, and I even had rabbits/packrats in blind sets that went uneaten. Patience has been the key, and the weather has cooperated enough that I've got on some animals now. Everything really picked up when we dipped about 15 degrees, and the barometer dropped about 3 points. It stayed steady the first three nights, along with the moon.
I'd encourage anyone that's ever thought about instruction to give it a go. It's amazing when a guy like Ed can hit a place, and look at google earth, and tell me where we need to go look for coyote tracks. When I thought our ground was tough to find tracks he'd prove me wrong time and time again. It was a pretty humbling experience. I consider myself pretty solid on trapping fundamentals, but it was the big picture I'd been missing. I feel like I have that now to apply to my larger line later in the year.
Here's the first hurdle. As Ed pointed out I'm alrite coon trapper, and a horrible coyote trapper. In all honesty I was setting locations that might have a coyote, but there were six coons to get through first. I did my best to expand away from the coons, but in all honesty I've grown up on coons and I love the little buggers.
Here's some coon trails along the line, you can't just not set them.
First night skunk/coon and second night possum/coon. Look hard at them.
I've just been blind setting for the coons on the trails. Mostly where I have coyote sets nearby that I want to negate them getting into my sets. Here's a few more trail coons.
No matter how hard you try to keep them out of the coyote sets it doesn't always work. Some of these boars are out in the middle of nowhere.
This coon was in the middle of the pasture 1/2 mile from the nearest tree, and he was one big boy. Why I find this picture interesting is as soon as he saw us coming, he hid his eyes. This guy survived I'm sure a number of spotlighters in the area, but he didn't make it past the dirthole.
Here's a few coyote sets I snapped pictures of.
Luckily I put down two sets here, bandit couldn't plug them both.
This was the remake from that set.
This coyote was caught at the same time, just up the fenceline.
This coyote fell to a stepdown on an edge of a waterway. I had no idea this waterway even existed over the hill until Ed suggested we go investigate.
This is a hot location which has coyote tracks coming and going up a ditch. The first two nights it was plugged with skunk/nontarget. The next two nights was coyotes. Hoping for a third tomorrow. Caught using Ed's die hard C, both the first and second.
Remake
