Great googly moogly. Great season.
Care to share about your bait and snaring set up? Big bait dumps in the bush, then snaring the trails coming in?
We use roadkill deer for bait at our sites and tho we rarely run out of bait due to coyotes , we have found that to keep birds from eating your catch the bait has to be freshened every 10 days or so .. Not big amounts either , maybe a couple 5 gallon buckets of pig guts or such like .. something that has a lot of odor and keeps the birds happy. Snares per site varies , anywhere from 15 -30 spread out over an area the size of a football field . We set all on trails and none closer than 30 ft from the bait .. too much chance of catching eagles if much closer . I like to set trails even out as far as 400 yds away , coyotes tend to be less cautious there than the "in tight" ones .Coyotes in my area are some what clostrophobic and dont like the real thick brush patches so I dont waste time setting them . I place my baits out where they are easily seen but not easily accessed if that makes sense. A bait that is easily accessed with getting the coyote caught is easily cleaned out .My best site produced 43 coyotes this year and thats with 28 snares set , only 2 snare spots never caught one .
We use a basic Marty Senneker setup .. 1/16 " 1x19cable , 5 ft snare 5/64 Bridger locks,, reg or mag kill springs and a trigger on them , 265# BADs. . , 5 ft 3/32 ext cable . I like the oversize lock on the small cable , the extra weight closes faster and holds tighter .. in my opinion .
Our bait site arent overly close , closest being 3 miles apart .With the hi price being paid for coyotes now , there are lots of guys that are into the game now and coyotes have become very scarce in daylight hours .. In the 2 months we ran our line we saw only 2 from the road on that 75 mile loop every other day .. thats where the snares really shine , they are working 24/7 .