I have tried messing with peat moss off and on with little success. I have tried it in the trap bed and covering the trap then a little dirt on top that. And Have tried it with no dirt. It just doent look natural and so many times i come back and it has all blown away ! What am I doing wrong ?

I place only a small amount of peat in the trap bed. I then cover my trap with dry peat. Because of the 10-30 mph breezes we get, I then sift some dry dirt over the peat moss to blend.

Right now I'm using peat moss with leggett antifreeze. In the trap bed a little antifreeze covered up by alittle peat moss,place trap in bed. Put trappers cap over pan fill in around in&out side around the trap. Bedding it as tight as you can. then sift alittle fresh dirt over peat moss,then another coating of antifreeze.Then a light covering of shreeded died grass.

I have tried using peat moss and salting the top layer this fall and winter, not working. We have had so much snow, rain, freezing cold weather it is freezing up my sets rock hard. I won't use that again in the freezing weather. I bought flaked wax, going to make that up this summer and give that a go.

With peat there is no need for a pan cover/ trappers' cap, nothing. The idea of the peat is to keep the dirt from getting under the pan. Your peat must be totally dry(do in the summer). In our current conditions I put down wax dirt, bed trap, 1 handful of peat on top of trap, level off, then wax dirt on top to complete set. No issues at all.

That's how I do it. I have no problems with frozen in traps. I catch yotes but I get some snapped traps. If waxed dirt was free for the taking I wouldn't use any peat. I use it to try to make my waxed dirt last longer. IMO Peat is so light and fluffy it just has a different feel then frozen ground. If the yote walks right in you're ok but if not I think they can tell the difference in the ground.

Good luck !!.

Its blowing away because you're not topping it with enough dirt.

Its super light...and will blow away if not topped with something.

Most people try and use too much. A hand full or two at most for me.

If the trap bed is dug out to the correct size for the trap there shouldn't be hardly any peat outside of the trap jaws. Just make sure to work the peat under the pan so you don't get any holes after you sift over the peat.

BINGO! this cold weather is awesome - since the ground is solid I'm catching my RF in re-makes - I spray poly glycol in the bed then put in waxed dirt, I bed the trap solid - put dry peat inside the jaws then cover with waxed dirt - the trap is essentially encapsulated in waxed dirt - poly fill under the pan is a problem, plastic screen covers are a problem - the dry peat w/ waxed dirt is great!

I use a thin layer of peat in the bottom of the bed, and then put a pan cover(coffee filter) over the pan and fill the jaws with peat.
Before I bed the trap I put some calcium chloride down. Then sift some dry dirt on top of the pan, add calcium chloride and then pack the trap in, uncover the pan and repeat the last step. Then make sure I add another bit of calcium chloride and do a thin layer of surrounding dirt to blend the set.
I've had sets sit in 15-25° weather with 15-35mph north wind for 10 days.. you could walk up to any mole hills and see frozen dirt covering all of them but you could blow the top layer of dirt off my set like it was a handful of sand in the desert. And it's a solid bed. You can always powerbed the trap and do the same thing without packing all the dirt, but that eats up to much peat.

It's fail safe. The only issue is the corrosion so wax your traps.

From what I understand wax dirt is expensive, time consuming, and cumbersome to make. Calcium Chloride is nearly free. 18-28$ for a #50 bag at any ready-mix yard. I've probably set 20-30 traps with my 9.5lb jug from.walmart and haven't even used 1/8th of it yet. I won't have to break into the #50 bag for awhile
Cheap.
Fast.
Effective.
Nails are cheap for power bedding. With 16D nails, some cheap peat and some chloride you can get to setting pretty fast. And never worry about waxing your dirt all summer long.

Takes me 1 day to do 200 gallons of waxed dirt for 100 bucks. Just sayin.