Curious what other people for have for a success rate on raccoons, and really on all kinds of critters. I typically have around 2 dozen sets out for raccoons, and might catch 2 per night., for a success rate of 8.3%. On muskrats I might have 15 sets out, and might average 5 a night, for a success rate of 33%. I'm curious to see what other people can do. I've got a lot to learn about this trapping thing, so I'm sure I'm on the low end of the scale.

A lot depends on how your setting. I tend to carpet bomb locations on coon, rats and beaver so my rates are lower than say someone roadlining which we cant really do here as the laws and geography doesnt really allow for it.

carpet bomb here too,then move on.

I like that term, carpet bombing. I guess that's what I do too. Satuarate a little public lake area for 3 days and pull until the next weekend.

The more trap nights you set in an area the lower the catch rate will be, easy to see, if you set two trap nights in the presence of twenty animals your chance of 100% success is fairly high, but if you set two hundred trap nights in the presence of twenty animals your success rate can not exceed 10%, because you will run out of animals.

Currently running only two traps. Yeah I know i need to fix that. However for rats I'm putting them in line with their travel

I can do around 25/30 trap nights per coyote in my area

Good thread. I’ve never kept up with it. I’ll have to check that out

I know for sure, if I set 2 or 3 Raccoon traps, I'll be 100% the next morning.
Because it's an urban area, where there are no natural predators for coons. So the coon population is insane.

I figur a 4-5% average is ok

I always have a tough time gauging populations but I try to only set on sign and I set a lot of traps per location for coon, rats, and beaver. Only 2-3 for coyote though.
I generally only get a few weeks season with our weather for coon so I hit those hard and fast. Coyotes are more spread out and I got more time on my side they don't hole up like coon.
Jim

the fact of the length a male mink's circuit is bases my gangsetting and length of setting.coon,rat beaver usually 3-4 days unless they tell me otherwise.canines and cats and fisher-will tell ya whenever and if ever i figure it out.

Tend to spread out.

Took a gang setter along once and he stated, “you only set the good sets, I set all the sets”. Lol

Weather can play a BIG part of both rats and coon movements as well.

i'm about to run some traps in the next week i believe and will keep ya's informed.interesting topic to me.

I had coon and rat sets out last weekend. 10 sets for 5 days equals 50 trap nights. Caught 5 coons, 1 possum, and no rats. (Lake froze over). That's a 16% success rate. But one set caught three of my coons, so that one set had a 60% success rate. I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned there, but I'm not sure what that.lesson is.

set more coon traps.

Takes me around 50 trap nights to connect on a coyote when running footholds. I was able to take a coon almost every day from 12 traps set at 6 different bridges.

Problem with modern times is that it is to easy to pull up someone's page or see someone's post with hundreds of fox/coyote in it and assume that they can make the same catches in their area. The person making those huge catches was likely doing it full time and was in prime territory for the harvest and did lots of scouting and prep. Looking at these photos can make the average trapper which does this as a hobby discouraged when they don't put up those big numbers as well.