Been wondering where you were.
Keep chiming in.

Yep, I'm still around been doing a bit of coon trapping.

I got the truck all loaded up for muskrat trapping tomorrow. I have around 4 dozen floats loaded. I'm going to be filling in any open water I can find. I also have a half dozen colony traps for culverts. That's all I got for the moment, I will update you guys tomorrow on how many I get set out and such.

Best of luck young man.

As promised here's an update. I got all of my 48 floats out and 4 colony traps. I set all of the areas I knew had a good population of rats and left all my smaller areas for now and I'll start setting those gradually. I still have another 3-4 dozen floats in the shed so I should be ready to set the rest of these areas. I changed my original plan and cut a section of the line off entirely for the time being to see how this other section does. The problem I'm going to run into is running out of long enough stakes for my floats so I'll have to set as much as I can and figure out a plan for next year on how I'm going to acquire more and such. I'm also hoping to get a couple more colony traps out as I find more culverts. It did snow around 1", I'd say tonight so my traps on the floats will probably freeze down once it melts. I did have a couple of traps fire as I was walking away from the float so I'm going to have to replace those couple traps with a different one. I did see a rat swimming around at one of my spots that was a really good area last year and I probably pulled 30-40 rats off of it. The water in another spot is really low and maybe knee deep at the deepest spot, so I wonder how the rats will be in that area. Anyways enough yapping, I'll update you guys when I go and check either tomorrow or Friday.

Good luck , hopefully you will run a 75% catch ratio.

Sorry about not posting yesterday. So on 3-7-24, I caught 12 rats in the floats, it wasn't a bad haul for the conditions. All of my floats had snow on them and were iced in. I also got another 3 dozen floats ready to be set. Now on 3-8-24, I caught 16 rats and the same conditions as the day before. All of the 28 rats I've caught so far are looking good, a couple of bites here and there but overall, they are not too bad. I did put up some rats tonight and only got 18 of them put up as I had a late start, saved all carcasses and heads to be sold at some point. I'm overall not too upset about the catch since I know it will pick up once the water is opened up at night as well as during the day. I do have a couple of jobs coming up that I will need to check my floats every other day instead of every day like I would like to. Anyway here are the pictures, I don't have any of the fur shed as I just wanted to get out of there and get cleaned up.

YT, good job, I love to float trap spring rats, but we’re going to stay right on the beaver this spring.

YT, instead of leaving them out for (every other day), I'd suggest checking them at least 2 times a day when you can.

Looking good, big warm up for Monday-Wednesday so you should have better conditions for your floats

Thank you, If I had beaver I think I would target them too but I just don't know where many are and the ones I do know of, I don't have permission on the land.

I couldn't afford the gas to do that, the line is 40 miles right now door to door. And my time is so constrained right now that I'm lucky to even have traps out.

That's what I saw too, hoping that it will get the rats moving for a big check on Tuesday. I have a tree removal job scheduled for Monday so that'll take up all day after school.

Alright, I keep forgetting to post after putting up fur since I keep passing out so I'm finally making a post for 3-10-24 (Sunday). I caught 28 muskrats, it seems to start picking up now. I'm all caught up on skinning and have all of my carcasses and heads tucked away in the freezer to be sold. I'm going to start pulling muskrats down soon to take them off the stretchers as my shed has a capacity of about 60 rats hanging. Some of the rats have clean skins and some are bit up, it seems to depend on the area. I'm hoping to still get a couple of weeks but I don't know if that's possible. I will get the last 3 dozen floats out today and check the line. It should be the most productive check since it didn't freeze the last 2 nights at night. I would have checked yesterday but I had to start a 400-500$ tree clean up job which still requires 1 more day and I'll finish it on Wednesday. I would have waited to do it but I'm getting low on funds to keep trapping so I had to make a quick choice. I also got a dryer/tumbler set up to dry my rats. I honestly missed having one a lot. It makes the rats skin so much easier and it's way quicker to dry them and I can skin the same night. I'm also keeping all of my carcasses and heads, so if anyone is looking for some, please pm me. Anyways, here's a picture of the rats, I don't have them laid out or anything but I also haven't had time to do so.

Nice bunch of rats TYT.

Nice work, enjoy this spring season goes fast!

Good job, we really don't have any rats around here, which is a shame cuz I like putting them up! Keep after it!

Thank you! That dryer does wonders in making them look better.

Thank you! I'm enjoying every second of it so far.

Thank you! I'm not too excited for the day that we lose a lot of our rats, they're my favorite to catch.