This one is meant to maximize whats available around you to limit what you carry in and enable the trap to fire whether its wet, dry, hot or cold. I dont know how the guys would do it when it hard freezes. This works beautifully in sandy, wet, loose, dry or hard conditions. You will find a pine preferably since it smells good too, but any living tree twig will work fine. If you need a pan cover, you can also use 2-3 leaves, or a cross of live pine needles. This one is from one of the old legends who was around when Louisiana trapped more muskrat than Canada trapped animals. Enjoy.

I don't understand what the twig does for u

Pan tension, good idea.

Enable the trap to fire?

That stick will keep the trap from easily firing.

Just who exactly was this legend that come up with that? Have you tried this?

If it does fire on an animals foot,the animal will easily pull out since the stick will create a large gap in the jaws..

Warning:don’t try this at home

Maybe use a smaller diameter twig and place it so when the trap fires it will be in the dirt gap of the trap jaws.

That is a terrible idea.

Must have been a legend indeed.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I couldn't see anything good in that setup. But sometimes I miss things.

The spring will lift the broken ends up towards the top of the jaws.

Well of course it makes for easy trap maintenance, not catching anything means less messing around!

I'm assuming that is supposed to increase pan tension... by someone who has not done much trapping. Bend the dog a little with pliers if you want more pan tension on that trap. The stick will hold the jaws apart, and one that size is liable to create too much pan tension anyways, even if it wasn't between the jaws holding them apart when it fired. Also it does absolutely nothing to prevent dirt from getting under the pan. You can get away without a pan cover or underall if you either use large leaves as pan cover (not really eliminating a pan cover, just using something else) or cover the trap with pine needles or grass rather than dirt, but that stick won't help at all from getting stuff under the pan causing the trap not to fire.

You gotta watch old information. The more I read it, the more it seems that about half of it its misinformation and Im sure some of it was deliberate.

LOL you guys are funny, the trap fires and the animals paw is thicker than the twig diameter..... 2 coyotes in a row using this same method had no issue. The twig in the photo is obviously longer to demonstrate whats going on. How many who are doubting it have tried it?

The main purpose is just to ensure the trap will fire even if sand or dirt gets under the pan. Some people will use sponges, some people use different stuff. This is a tried and true method that works beautifully, the animals foot doesnt get thrown out because the twig is under the pan. The great part is you can adjust the diameter of the twig if you are concerned about the your trap not catching the animal.

2 coyotes, 1st one is a female, 2nd one was a younger male. I dont think you want all my raccoon pictures that I use this same method for if Im not using DP traps

you might want to show the actual usage than an exaggerated version. For this to work, whatever you put under the pan has to be softer than whatever can filter in under the pan to allow the pan to depress. I havent seen too many twigs that are softer than sand that will deform with 10lbs or less of pressure.

You should try it before you hypothesize about it not working. Newfox1 is right too, it does also create pan tension, lots of different benefits. If you guys have a pine in Ohio, that should work good, ours are super soft down here.

Ill post more pics tomorrow, I have a good amount of sets to put in still. What do you want, water, sand, dirt or swamp bog?

its simple physics. Uncompacted dirt/sand is softer than wood. Even cork. Only time it will cause you an issue is when it freezes, or rather the water it traps after a rain/snow melt freezes. Unless you have so much pan travel(as in the pan almost goes to base before firing) on your trap, sand/dirt/clay will depress enough to allow traps to fire. In warm conditions? You'd have to bed intentionally put literal rocks or sticks under the pan to prevent it from firing. Or a trap thats been left out for months in clay and after a monsoon the clay bakes into concrete under the pan.

I still don't understand the physics of how the stick let's ur trap fire with dirt or sand under the pan. If dirt gets under ur pan enough to fill the void not allowing the pan to go down how does the stick remedy this?