Trappers,

Since this is trapping tips and general tips, I would like to help out some of my friends on here that may not be in the position to purchase fruit or coffee at the expensive prices that they are today. I do want to give the general disclaimer that the product below has caffeine in it, so if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure or something else it may not be best for you to do this, make sure to ask somebody qualified who knows your health.

The first picture is a pot of brown looking water, this is what we call Pine Needle Tea. Not all pine needles are safe, so I have taken the liberty to put some of the more common ones below. If you are unsure, please use a tree identification guide, ask your local AG extension before using the pine needles. This is an excellent warm tea that you can add some sugar too, but the most important thing it has in it is vitamin C. This means that you likely have a completely free source of vitamin c right there and you didn't even know it. You will just have to experiment with how many needles per water to see what you personally like, there is too much variety for me to even give you an idea. I just grab a handful, put them in my carafe and put it on the stove to boil.

Pine Trees that are safe for pine needle tea
White
Loblolly
Slash
Longleaf
Shortleaf
Spruce
Eastern Hemlock


Poisonous Pine Trees that you cannot use for pine needle tea:
Ponderosa
Monterey
Lodgepole
Norfolk island pine
Balsam fir
Yew pine







The second thing I would like to talk with you about is another native species to the southern USA. The plant is Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria), which is a native holly and is only 1 of 2 plants in the USA that we know contain caffeine. You cannot eat the beautiful red berries or else you will throw up and get sick. However the leaves, and branches all contain caffeine that is safe for you to make into a tea and consume. If the average coffee bean has 4% caffeine, then Yaupon has right at 2% caffeine, but Yaupon is widespread in the South. You could pick and pick and pick so many leaves and not get anywhere close to hurting a Yaupon tree/bush. We always have pounds and pounds of Yaupon on hand just because it's free and tastes great and has caffeine plus other chemicals that are better than coffee. You need to roast the Yaupon leaves until they are black and put them in a food processor to blend up the now roasted yaupon. Use a tea strainer metal thing if you want, or make tea however you normally do it. It's amazing and everybody should know about it. If you want to know a secret, Yaupon also sells for $20 a lb easy, but be careful the tea juggernauts will crush you and any legit spirited attempt to infiltrate the tea market.

Maybe I read your post wrong but if the ring is on a sapling loose what prevents it coming off as the animal makes an exit?

I edited it for clarity, but you need to wire it on, drive a nail through the sapling, use string to tie it on, use what you have available to ensure it doesn't come off the sapling.

Thanks

The next pictures show just a small portion of what I call my "bone yard". This is the area that I will take all of my bones after I boil them for bone broth, whats left of carcasses, or if there is an animal that spoiled and I cannot consume it, it will go here. Mother nature does work on it, breaks it down and releases the nutrients back into the soil. If you want to know a very real secret, it is 1 component of Terra Preta, I wont tell the rest, but the point here is that we are having 2 things work for us at once. #1 I am maximizing my use of things that I already spent time obtaining, and I am using passive magic to complete tasks that other people might use energy to accomplish aka boiling, bleaching, heat, etc. #2 I am getting a 4x return on just one product because of the multi uses that bones particularly have. Now if you make bone glue, then no you cannot do this because the process consumes the bone which is fine too, it's stronger glue than any other man made glue even in 2022. You could get bone broth, or bone marrow, you are making the best soil that exists on planet earth, you are helping carrion animals get meals and lastly you are getting free set material and WATERPROOF set material that people pay thousands for. If you have bees....you could use the beeswax and dip the bones just to further ensure the hollow cavity is truly waterproof. This is where I put all of my lures, the actual location, and then I will put this maybe right behind the hole on a hole set, I will lodge the bone inside a pocket set, sometimes I will bury the bone if I have a multi trap set, and the last part is that I will use the tree SOMETIMES, but you have to cover it with leaves or raptors will come.

The soil this makes should go to filling whatever garden bed you hopefully have to plant your crops in. If you had the rest of the knowledge and recipe of Terra Preta, you could sell it for over $50/lb. Just something to keep in mind, and I hope it helps you guys.

Here is my water trapping hook I made back in late 1990s. I was trapping coyotes and beaver out of the trunk of my Toyota Tercel. That thing for such a small car got great mileage and had a big trunk. But I couldn’t have a very long water trapping hook, wouldn’t fit most tools I looked at in that trunk. Needed something cheap for retrieving beaver on snares. But to carry in the trunk could only be about 4’ long. Extendable to longer lengths would be ideal.
Then I found this old square tube light aluminum extendable fishing net. The net hoop had broken off and someone discarded the thing in their trash. I dug it out and took it home. Cut the broken net hoop off and inserted an old coon two prong grapple where the net was. Ran a bolt though eye of the grapple and tube so it was solid. On other end I bolted an old plastic D handle from a cheap shovel that was broken.
Viola! A water trapping hook that is super light, strong, rustproof, and when collapsed is less than 4’ long. It extends out to about 6’ long when the tube extends. Has one of those little spring buttons that pops up through hole in outer tube to lock in as extended or as shortest length.
I still use this thing a lot today. Works for retrieving stuff from front of the truck bed too, if I don’t feel like climbing in and out.
This was definitely a low budget but long lived useful trapping tool.
Jim

Here it is collapsed down to about 4’ and fits in most car trunks.


And after extended to full 6’ or so.

And here is one right out of my signed copy of Charlie Dobbins land trapping book. Need bobcat flagging right at the foothold set but live in a state like ours where you can’t hang feathers within 30 feet of footholds? And what about a flagging that shimmers and flutters in the slightest breeze? But also something not too obvious to anyone from a distance?

Old cassette tapes. A wad of tape tied up over the set in an overhead branch. Tie em up them pull out several strands to hang down and snip em so they are just individual strands. Really move in slightest breeze. I use a lot of these for cats. You can find old cassette tapes at lots of garage sales and second hand stores for a very small investment.I have a whole box of them I got for less than $5 and am set for cat flagging for a very long time.

I make little wads from a couple tapes and put them in individual sandwich baggies to load up in my setting bucket or bag.

Jim,

What a great tool and even better repurpose. I really think we should all do a better job at re-using or repurposing whats already made, it really makes a difference in the long term. Speaking of tips, here is another one of mine.

Trappers you see the jars, this is raccoon fat that I am rendering via the sun, so that I don't have to use energy and can accomplish things passively if I so desire. You can do this too, what I would do is every raccoon you trap, save the fat and keep it in your fridge(this is if you want to use it for food), or if you just want some of the best animal oil you can get. Put the raccoon fat in a jar, and keep it outside, or somewhere warm if you already heat that area. You will get separation and the stuff on top is what you want, it works great on traps if you don't have wax, I used it last year and it was a life saver. It works good on all your greasing and lubing needs.

For the food portion, let me tell you something big milk never wanted people to know. They never wanted the general populace to know that rendered fat of any animal can be used where they call for butter. You see everything back in the day was all from animals, we were not awesome by any margin, but we were a lot better stewards of America. There is no taste that transfers as long as you don't try to cook the fat, you just need some heat and it will separate out and you keep the rendered portion that will change from liquid to solid with temp in your fridge. Use it where you use butter and it works amazing. We have used it now for just about everything, sweet, tart, hearty, salty, spicy, soup, muffins, bread, you name it and it's one of the best kept secrets ever, and one of the biggest money savers for kitchen supplies. Raccoon Meat tastes EXACTLY like bear meat, they don't want you to know, but trust me. I have eaten both and it's the same, except we get to get a near infinite supply of the raccoon it seems.




The next picture looks like a bunch of random wood. Two of the rocks are weights on cables, I just wanted to show you one way to do it. The other part you will see some milled lumber, I got all that for free it was on a curb and I think maybe somebody was building something and I asked if they had any scrap they were going to trash. You could use the milled lumber for floating muskrat sets, drags, anything your heart desires. The other thing you see here are my beaver sticks, I take these anytime I'm checking my sets, and I also try to grab atleast 2. What this does is give me free sticks that are so useful for a myraid of things, but it gives me premium conibear staking tools. I don't know why, but the beaver sticks are like perfect size in general and always work for all of the conibears I have. I used one of the beaver sticks and put a conibear holder on it and thats my primary dispatch method for all the animals that I trap. If you have studied enough biology and practiced swinging to hit the same spot, you could even use these to render the animal unconscious and then use the conibear to dispatch it.



This one doesn't fit into low income, but it is another method to tie off your traps. Understand that animals could bite through this and that I would never rely on 550 cord alone without some staking sticks used in conjunction. I use 550 cord which is just a generic term for military style parachute cord, 99% of it out there is not real parachute cord, but it's just what it's called. It also can be purchased far cheaper than chain or cable can and is always reusable, lightweight and blends in well as long as you get the OD green color. I use this a lot to carry my animals back to my vehicle since I am on foot quite a bit, I normally have a backpack, stick, conibear, axe, and so I just tie 2 loops on each side so that I put both animals paws through this and tighten them. I will then sling the animals over my shoulders, and it's very easy to carry.

Putting the top layer of separated coon fat on your traps was a “life saver” for you? Did you put it on traps used for canines?

I put it on every single trap I owned last season, did not get a coyote last year, but I did get some gray foxes.I had some close misses last year, but generally I didn't know what I was doing. Again something is better than nothing, I tried going with no oil and ended up with some severely rusted traps that would not perform at all. The raccoon oil traps even after being in water for 100 days still looked the exact same as when I put them in, obviously a few rust marks but just generally in top notch condition. `

Matt in this circumstance (coyotes and rendered coon oil), something is not better than nothing. Just incase a newbie is reading this, oiling ur land traps, particularly with animal fat, will get your traps dug. Don't do it.

Oh I see what your saying, ok yeah good point. We have to find an alternative then for the land based one....hmmm.

This thread needs to go in archives when complete?

Just disregard using coon fat to oil your traps or using 550 cord to tie off traps...and watch out for big milk

I don’t think paracord is a good way to anchor anchor kind of trap, not even bodygrips.


Good tips in this thread though.

Also MattLA...I'm a bit confused about using your drag set up. If I rig up a drag like that for coyote trapping and a bear gets his toe in my coyote trap. How do I find and get my trap back?

Guess I could use it...we don't have bears!

The old timer used these drags plenty with bear around in Louisiana. We had the highest bear density in the South, maybe Mississippi had more. He didnt mention any issues with bears, so I just dont think its a big enough concern to worry about. However if you do live in bear country and routinely have bear catches in your coyote traps, then I would add a 25lb weight or use the cougar formula.

I was being a little sarcastic. But, a 25lb weight or attaching trap to a large log is simply not practical for coyote & bobcat- sized critters. I realize you can only base your opinions on what you've been told or read, but a bear will take even the heaviest of setups for a ride. I speak from experience, not because I read it somewhere.

Your heavy drag setup may work OK to a degree when only a few traps are set, but not evenly remotely practical when doing commercial predator control or fur trapping on a property or several properties. You can't cut down that may trees...lol....or lug around heavy weights.

Your ideas may have some old time merit but hold zero practicality for serious high production trappers today. Your methods are OK for novice, recreational trappers that set a handful of trap like yourself.

Folks, the thread's theme is for low income trappers, which by default assumes that they do not have a whole bunch of traps to set. The thread has never been about the best or high production trappers and its disappointing that we are letting our privilege come out on this thread of all.

What is privilege? Privilege is where you generally have an advantage due to many circumstances and only look at situations through that privileged lens. For those of you who have made criticisms, what is the alternative that low income trappers can use? Not everybody in our community can afford the things you can, so it might do you some good to keep that in mind not only on here but as you go about everyday life.


Here is coyote I trapped this year that simply shows how great the natural drag works, there is another longer part offscreen from the pic. She was not even 50 yards from the set.