Looking for info on remote trap checkers?

You'd have to leave some kind of contraption or contrivance to check for you, right? A camera focused on your trap? Whatever you leave will be a target for thieves.

Jim

Better to join the Armchair Trappers of America.

Jim

I check some sets from the road with a spotting scope

For those of you not familiar with Washington trapping laws, we are a cage trap only state. Not only are our traps 10x more expensive than footholds/Conibears, they are also much more difficult to hide. This leads us to set in more remote areas, further from home. Most of us don’t run huge lines of traps because it is cost prohibitive. When you can invest $1000 in traps and count the number you have on one hand, it is difficult to justify driving50-100 miles each day to check them. Some of us have resorted to checking traps remotely through various means. Call us armchair trappers if you like, but I’ll work smarter instead of harder any day.

At this point the best I have found is the Arlo Go series cameras. They can be set up to sense motion and record events. They also have the ability to live stream on demand, so you can check the status of your traps at any time. I have been getting over a month out of the batteries, even in sub zero weather. The downsides are the purchase price and the monthly service fees. It adds up quickly if you are running several cameras.

Fish> it a darn shame it has come to that.
Seattle libtards love there fuzzy animals i guess.
Can you make any money trapping up your way or selling fur also hard in your area?

I use cellular trail cams on a few traps that are not on my main line I check every morning before work. It’s worked out pretty good so far. Actually made a catch right after sunset one evening and went ahead a drove out to dispatch and reset seeing how the night was still young.

Move to a different state with better laws, and check your traps on foot?

Hello Bob from Walla Walla ( a town so nice they named it twice)
This is a little dated, but it will give you some brand names to research.


Trap Monitors:
A Comparison of
Commercially
Available
Systems https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife...ch_Notes/fs_trap_monitors_2013_FINAL.pdf

Don't get me started. The ignorance of people on the West Coast is unmatched. Most have forgotten the words that our country was founded on.

As far as selling fur, we probably don't have quite as many options as many of you guys, but we do have at least 2 county buyers. I shipped most of my fur to FHA this year, but will likely take most of my cats to one of the Idaho sales next year. The Idaho folks have been putting on great sales, and I would rather support these local organizations who are working hard to fight for us.

I have also used wireless trail cameras for trap checks. They are okay, but lack that positive confirmation of a catch. There have been many instances where an animal comes in to the set, and the camera sends pictures of an animal working the set, but then the pictures stop and you have no idea whether the animal was actually caught. The cameras I have used (Bushnell Aggressor Wireless) did not have the ability to take a photo on command or live stream video, relying on motion activation instead.

My day job is in electrical engineering. Over the last few months I have been working on designing a cellular trap monitor system that would monitor the cage trap itself, sending notifications when the door actually closes. So far, the cost of producing the type of device that does everything I want is similar to the monitors that are listed in the attachment posted by BillyTraps. I am hoping that some new technology on the market will help me get the cost down to a couple hundred dollars, but I don't know when that will happen.