(Truth is the Beav can't set #11s)

I never tried to set any since I never have owned any. So you may be right. Thinking small has never been my way of doing things.

Amazing!

#2 sq jaw with guards to the outside was best I've used. Beav hates them too, but least he was honest when asked if he'd tried em. Bet the new Dukes would shine like these.

All my 11s got the chain moved to center, and extended some. The springs fold in.
They hold what gets in, but oh the misses.

This is from experience in Pa where BGs are heavily restricted.
I have 160s, but not a lot.

Someone said give em something to work on besides the trap, I agree.

Hi Beav

When adding chew guards , the coon will not get the whole foot done in , it will still have the foot in the trap wait for you.

Yep that's what chew guards do.
Didn't the #2 Vic round jaw have some major chew guards on them?

I don’t really understand beav’s method with putting the coon box by the foothold. If you’re putting in a 1 1/2 or an 11 down to catch a coon. You might as well just put that box instead of the foothold. To me that’s a waste using two traps on one animal unless you got one dandy pile of traps

Not really since coon boxes In my opinion are a poor coon set. And we were talking about reducing foot chewing. And also when trapping ROWs you didn't want live coon jumping around and It's illegal to discharge a weapon that close to the road.

The way I came up with this deal Is when I was live trapping In SC I would catch a few coon and we would just slide the catch cage right up close to the coon and It would crawl right Into It. Fox did the same thing.
so I thought maybe that would work In the road right away. But for the most part I pretty much forgot about It.

Then I was talking to trapper from NE and he mentioned the BG box. But he was using It because In NE you had to check your non lethal traps every 24 hours but on BGs you didn't. So by using the box to kill the coon he could get around the 24 hour check law.
Know I didn't run 100s of these set ups but In certain spots it did work. And to be honest not all the coon committed suicide but the majority did.
So this set up would reduce the chewing Issue for the most part.

Yes I guess that’d be one way around the issue. Beav can I pick your brain as to why a BG box is a poor coon set? I use a pile of them and catch as many coon as I care to deal with. In Nova Scotia setting a dry land foothold for coon it has to be a victor 1.5 soft catch or a DP and they need checked everyday. Using boxes (baited with gaspereau, beaver, mrat, deer) I also pick up mink, weasel, bobcat and the odd fisher.

The #11s have their place. Bob Noonan turned me onto them in a 1984 article in The Trapper (before it was the Trapper and Predator Caller). He said the #11 was by far the best foot hold for reducing chewing and holding coon he’d used till that time. He also said the 1.5 coil did have a 25% chew out factor and a #2 or bigger Coilspring almost guaranteed a chew out.

I used #11 and #11 double jawed traps for years. But, one season I had problems with them so I sold every one. There was a year about 20 years ago, when I decided on trapping coon to the exclusion of almost everything else. They weren’t the glamor furs of red fox or mink, but they didn’t get stolen nearly as often either. Since I didn’t like chewing, I tried the Griz, egg traps, Alcatraz and finally settled on Duke DPs. My buddy was using Z traps and I’ve switched over. I also use some snares now, too.

Putting a BG box (72 hour check) next to a foothold (24 hour check) to try and bypass the daily foothold check would be a guaranteed violation here.

This year I ran exclusively blind-set 11's for my foothold waterline. In the first few checks, I caught and held every water furbearer in this state, including an incidental beaver and multiple otter. I'm sold on them.

The only time I ever had any real success with BG boxes Is late In the season Like early Dec when things start getting a bit tough as to finding food. In late Oct and all of Nov around here there Is no problem putting on the food bag. I figure a coon Is pretty satisfied when It comes to food so why would that coon get down on It's belly and try to crawl Into a box to get some type of bait? I did a bit better when I raised the box up at a 45 degree angle . I even set some boxes up at 90 degree angle and those also worked. I just made It easier for that coon to stick It's head In the box.

Yes you’re right that they do work better later on. I don’t put them out till the last week in November. But I’d much rather nail them in December than when the season opens Nov 1st. I am a firm believer of them though and I also hang a few snares around them to pick up the odd coyote or fox as well!

Would that double jawed 1 1/2 work as a rat trap as well ? would it also work good for coons with the bigger rat pan installed ? I.E...Wild River pan ? That is under the idea of a multipurpose trap that Beav was talking about.

There was a post on here a while back that the fella hung his boxes on tree trunks so the coon entered the top. It would keep the Opossums out maybe, and perhaps the occasional roaming cat. The #11 response will work better than my #1 CS DJ idea. Just had an old trapper tell me this morning he caught a 25lb otter by the front foot in a coon set this season, non-drowning pocket set. So they are plenty strong. Be great if we put DP'S kind of suspended high enough that coons could reach into but not opossum. Maybe I'll work on that idea.