Hello,
I've never tried using conibears before but a friend bought me a Duke 160 conibear for my birthday and I've been trying to use it. I've been setting it at the entrance of occupied dens but all I get is a snapped trap. What must I do?

Back it off a little bit or clear the space around the jaws so that when it fires the jaws don’t hit the soil. Ideally, your trap would fit inside of the burrow (smaller trap). In this case, making the burrow a little bigger should fix it.

Or...


Set the trap on the trail they’re using to exit the burrow.


Also... make sure that your trap is tuned to fire when the trigger wires are hit. It isn’t unheard of for factory triggers to be able to swing much, much too far before firing. There is a tutorial on tuning traps on one of the first pages of the forum. Personally I rarely tune that way. I instead prefer to lightly squeeze the trigger’s yoke with visegrips to make them more sensitive. Be safe handling those things, they HURT!



Good luck

I bet! I know a gentleman who caught himself in a 110 and took one of his fingernails off!

also helps to put a couple pencil diameter sticks, just a couple inches long, UNDER the jaws, (perpendicular to the jaws) so they don't plow dirt/mud and slide freely.

You need to stabilize the trap or the animal will just push it out of the way and fire it off.

The most important things to me when setting conibears is that they are stable and well fastened. I've watched both muskrats and beavers get caught in conibears and it reinforced me making sure that the trap is always stabilized.

As mentioned stabilize the trap and when you place the trap the wires should be on the outside of the hole if you anticipate it coming out of the hole.

What type animals are you attempting to kill?

Skunks, possums, & raccoons.

Right.

Stabilization to conibears is like properly bedding a foothold. If it isn’t solid/rocks, there will be problems.