Thanks everyone, Gerry is riding high today 22 pound female, Adirondack Cat.

Congrats nice female.

Congratulations

Congrats cats are fun!

Rick I have found a trail that comes out of creek bottom and goes up into a piece of higher ground. This trail is there every year and it is pretty open. No place really to squeeze them down. What type of set to use. Cubby, or can a person fence them down to blind trail them?

Fence them down, or move some branches and brush in to block things down.
This was a trail along high bank of deep creek, timber narrowed to a thin 4' wide or so point along a corn field and the high bank deep creek.
I planted several sticks on each side of trail to block it down tight and hung a snare. About a week and a half later...bingo.

Is the creek bottom fairly open as well?Can you blind set the trail?A cubby,a rub set or a flashy dirt hole should work,you can make a blocked down area for a walk thru etc.I would put in 3 sets at that location if you can,good luck.

The creek bottom is tall grass and cattails. They come up a frozen beaver run that's is appr. 3 feet wide. I forgot to mention this high ground is full of springs, a lot of ice.

PURRFECT narrow down a little and set up blind snares or footholds plus you can make other sets as well,do'nt over look a trash pile set on the edge of the cattails beaver or watefowl would work excellent in the creek bottom.

Sounds good Rick, will give it a try. Have plenty of beaver meat saved from last spring. Thanks!!!

Lots of good posts.

Mac

/\ /\ This /\ /\ Those step sticks cause them to stop ( especially at cubbies ) or gives them a place to step on to in order to step over in a walk through or a reason to jump over.

Keep them walking and don't give them a place to jump from or to.
Think about this long and hard.
Then picture all the pictures you have seen in print and wonder how many cats were missed and never realized were even there.
Your welcome.

Can anyone tell me how far up the front leg to cut to facilitate the turn, I made a short cut just past that little gland, I got them legs turned but wow.

Split the front legs up to the elbow. Actually you do not need to turn the legs as you usually leave them inside the pelt when turning it fur out when selling to buyers or auction.

We cut the legs off at the wrist and do not split them. Then when you turn fur side out on the stretcher (second day) we pin the leg straight up toward the chin and they sort of extend the desirable belly spotting. I put half a coat hanger in each front leg to facilitate drying and leave them pinned forward. I’ve been told they drum better that way instead of sticking out.

Cat came out real nice, quite a few spots.

Good post and cat ... congratulations

Gerry connected on another cat today, thanks for all your help.

Congrats again,our season end next Sunday,the last few years I try to catch at least one.This year I had 1 cat coming to a bait,caught it on the 6th night when it finally came back,it was perfect timing a warm night turned out to be a female so I was able to release her,normally it's too cold here to do that because of a frozen foot.I ended up getting two bobcats that found there way into a coyote snare and a coyote flat set one was a yearling and the other one was this years kitten deep snow and no mother tracks around that was in the flat set it was -20 something that morning so no way to release that one.Those two will get donated to our MTA Tanned Fur Project along with a few coyotes.