Thanks for letting me join this group. Ok new at this forum stuff. So here’s my question. What do most of you use for coon bait in your dog proofs? I have always leaned toward sweet bait.

Welcome to Tman

I use Cat food and trailing oil

Dry cheap bag of catfood and dump in some molasses. You can add all kinds of stuff instead of mollasses, like fish oil, liquid smoke, sardines, mackerel, strawberry jello, anise oil, butterscotch or caramel flavoring, you name it. Those all work well and ive used about all of them too. Keep it simple and cheap, and go have fun. Let us know how you do, too.

I use some dry dog food that I poured R&M Midnight Death over. Pour that in the bottom flush with the trigger, then stuff a marshmello in the top so it sticks out some. Seems to work pretty good but I'm sure there is better ways

dog / cat food with bacon grease mixed in so it does not stick together in cold weather

This is only my second season trapping and it will be the first time I'm really targeting coons. I'm planing to try a few different kinds of bait in baited DP sets: A fruit DP bait I got from traprjohn's Seven Oaks Trapping Supplies (http://www.sevenoakstrappingsupplies.com/), some fish bait from whatever fish I catch, and some cheap sardines from the store. See what the coons like best. Also going to try out the different lures I got.

We use two different baits. One is Kellen Kaatz black label, and the other is a home made bait I’ve maid out of fermented berries. Both have worked very well for us

I used straight froot loops the kids wouldn’t eat anymore and that worked good. This year I have half dog food and half froot loops and drizzled some bacon grease on it and mixed it up.

Marshmallows are all I have used in the past with great success. I am going to experiment with fruit loops and a few other things this year while prices are low to see if there is a difference in catch rates

I learned from Randy smith who caught a ton in the DP traps...

dry dog food
with brown sugar added
orange candy below trigger

ground up fish with a little liquid smoke

Thank you to every one for your input. I like the all the suggestions especially the cat food idea and molasses along with the old fruit loops. I think with the fur market still being down, coons are going to be plentiful. Which is good for us still trapping
but bad for overpopulation, mange and disease.

Thanks

Store brand Fruit Loops in trap. Cheap cat food with fish oil added as a trailing sent/other critter bait. They won't bother the dry sweet Fruit Loops in the trap, except possums. As the weather gets colder I switch to crayfish oil in the cat food, and even later I go to shellfish oil. Cost more but is really loud. Coons only hole up in the very coldest days here and are on the prowl if it warms just a little. Especially the big boars.

I do a couple different things, first off, Dollar Tree. You can get bait, containers, all kind of stuff cheap!
1. Little marshmellows, cat food, and a large jar of rasberry jam. Microwave jam to soften and then mix.
2. Jack mackeral, cat food, fish oil
I also use fairly loud lures, really like Caven's moonshine

Ok here’s a scenario for y’all...
Trap a place that has umpteen protein AND corn feeders out. They run them year round. Coons galore too. The owner keeps cage traps and a DP or two at sites year round as well. He occasionally catches a coon, but wants me to come in and catch’em all.
I have placed DP’s under the feeders with just about every concoction mentioned here and even have pics of coons sitting between DP’s eating corn/protein off the ground, but they will not eat corn/protein out of a DP. I think he has educated the coons to a point that cages and DP’s are avoided. Snares are not legal here, so footholds will have to do. This is SWGA so there are no definitive coon trails. Deer trails are every 10 yards.
How and what would you set?

Straight up jack mackeral, they cant turn down a stinky fish...