Other South Dakota guys please free to post your pixs and stories of this season on this thread if you want. All I know is that after 6-7 years of hardly any rat huts around, they are back this year! Semi-old men's eyes tell them they can do more in a slough than their bodies (at least mine) can actually get done but it was still fun this morning recovering sunken mrats out of a marsh. Getting my scratch itched!!



I had a couple of 120s on some hot looking dry rat tunnels up into the bank, thought maybe Mr Mink would push through there. Too bad Mr, Mink (or Mrs. GHO) decided to find my exposed rat first. Bummer, it was a larger one.

Still working wood for the boiler just about done lots of crops still in the field!

Awesome, 5-7 structures in an area the size of a home!!! Good luck and they will be there when the water gets hard if you can't get them b4.

Bryce

Had to scratch the itch to only put out a had full of sets but had this this morning

I've only tapped about 1/3 of the huts on this slough, just don't have the vacation time built up much beyond what I'm going to use in 16 days to go see my kid graduated his Army training. The landowner has another slough about 300 meters away that has a bunch of huts as well. If we don't get early big blizzards that fill in the edges, there should be some fun hard water trapping this winter.

2 in one trap! Wild. My first rat while setting up yesterday had both front legs caught in a #1 LS. I think it was diver down in only a few minutes, small though.

Put out 6 DP's in some ditch trails last week. I picked up 13 coons in one week. Hopefully tomorrow night after work I will start getting some coyote sets out. Nice job on the rats!

Good job on the masked bandits. Any really big ones...?

Hopefully, I can run some coon sets on the way to work next week and pick up a few. My organic-hoader farmer friend of mine grew corn for the first time in about 5 years and out on the way to one of my gardens on the field road, there were about 6 really decent coon trails coming out of his one corn fields and mostly heading to a smaller pond of his. I was going to set the last week of October but got busy with other stuff. I hope he does that corn field last to I can still hit those trails and see if they're active.

Yea they are all pretty good ones, at least four are 4xl and the others 2 or 3xl, with one little guy mixed in. Out of 13 coons only one sow the rest were boars.

Great rat pics, hope we have some down here for the spring season! Too busy doing some beaver work why the water is still open. I think freeze up could come awfully early this year. Looks like a great week of dry weather to expand the coyote line. November goes way too fast. Everybody remember to take some kids along with you on the trapline.

Another peaceful morning on this slough but colder so more ice to bust for me to get around so slowed me down. I thought this pix would turn out better but I should have moved to the left some more, looking back around the curve towards where I took the other marsh pix yesterday.



I've only had to thump 1 rat so far and he was in the water and would have been kaput in a bit more time if I would have wanted to wait around. Most of mine are "diver down" when I arrive.




This last pix is from a spot about 60 feet from my brother's mail box. The rats haven't started to open his neighbor's slough up but did see a nice rat water trail through the aquatic plants/algae that they were using in the ditch. I put a 110 on both ends where it went into the reeds. Was hoping for both to be filled but only got one. Decent size though. I don't know if they'll keep using this path with ice up, how far can they go on 1 breath...?

A wire colony submerged in that narrow ditch , might work well. I made my own out of 1 inch square screening , get multiple catches. good luck old243

Yeah, I need to get some colony traps but that sort of takes the one-on-one thing out of it for me-- yes I know that doesn't make any logical sense or more $, just my weirdness.

I have a cousin who's not quite 70. Her husband was his "own boss", hauled scrap steel in the warm months and trapped rats and mink in the fall and winter. He was a big colony trap guy but that what was feeding and keeping his family warm half the year. They had 5 kids and lived in a very small, out of the way town. They never had much money but their kids all grew up ok and are doing fine as adults. Man, my cousin could skin rats fast!! I probably should have hit my cuz up for a couple of his colony traps after he died way too young but I didn't. Sort of kick myself about it, if nothing else as a memorial to him, even though I didn't really know him that well.

Anybody else seem to be having a slow week? Maybe this system on Sunday will shake em up?

The end of my "open water" mrat trapping foray this year. It has probably been one of the more challenging ones and made this semi-old man work for it. The weather turned from a beauty of a day yesterday to now rats freezing to traps. I will have to run a heater on pile that contain rats tomorrow so I can get them free of everything. I think its hot shower time and perhaps a distilled grain product in front of the fireplace...

Looking forward to in-hut ice trapping this winter, maybe with my kid when he gets home on his first leave!

Hope you had a good time