Opening day today and I so excited. Anyway. On a demonstration on you tube from ed sneider (watch his all the time) about a walk thru trail set. I typical use dirt holes and pipe sets so this is a first. I got alot of cattle trials to work with but my only concern is deer. Seems like a high maintenance set. Anyone else have luck with it?

You can put your trap right in the notch of two sticks. Done like this the deer will over step your trap. The furries will not. Not big sticks. You can just put them at a v shape. Seemed to solve my deer problem. Now cattle . are they present? If so you may have problems.

I'm going to try this set this year also. The pastures I trap have a lot of cow trails with few deer and no cows. Was thinking of using a cow chip as a stepping stick. Completely natural. My question is should I set a trap on each side of the cow chip?

Ive always bent a branch or good size stick over the trap at the right hieght to make deer step or bound over. You can even shove a stick in the mud to use if theres nothing available naturally. When i say stick,im not talking anything crazy here. Alot of times i use a piece of golden rod. Steelflight-good tip....im going to try it. Blind sets(trail sets) are a lost art. Funny how i used to set them back when i was 10 years old but now i have to think about it consciously to make them. Simple things usually work best.

even a bit of soil making a slight barrier works, over 90% of my sets are walk thru sets

For coyote, or bobcat too?

As for trail sets, I haven't found an active enough bobcat trail necessarily to make setting a blind foothoold worthwhile, though I did put in a few quick cable restraints this week.

I've been using the V step over stick for years with pretty good success. Just as Steelflight says, the deer will long stride over the V, the coyotes will short stride right onto the pan. Better to set the trap close to the V on the approach side as coyotes tend to step closer to an object when approaching and their 2nd step will be further away. I've followed coyotes in snow and see it all the time. 1st step close, 2nd step further.

Will bobcats typically step on a log, or over it?

Awesome pics Archeryguy. Great suggestion.

Yes! Actually,it is hard to predict.

for cattle you can put in a trench set and they won't step into the hole

Here's a blind trail set heading towards a bait pile,the set is above the cat.

Nice picture.

I'm thinking of trying that with a beaver, this month for bobcat trapping, rick.