Hello everyone, every year I usually have a few dog proofs that are sprung with bait gone and no raccoon, however this year has been worse. The coons are large and there was a fresh snow when we saw the most misses. I’m curious if anyone has recommendations to avoid the frequency this has been happening. Should I make the cable shorter so they have less ability to get a dead pull? I’ve thought about anchoring it to a log so they could move it slightly rather than anchoring it to a tree or the earth. Any ideas?

were the traps pulled to the end of the cable/chain or just sitting where they were set?

Both. But majority were pulled to end of the cable.

Any catch circle at all? Sometimes raccoons or other animals will knock them down or play with them and set them off. I've only a had a few legitimate pull outs,as a result of them jumping over the side of a river bank on a cable that was longer than it should of been for that set.

Sometimes mice will set off a DP without getting caught. Coons can come by after and still work the trap. Like SniperBBB, I have rarely had pullouts with DPs.

I run a mix of original Lil' Grizz, Duke and Bridger. Hundreds of raccoon and never had a pull out. Curious which brand you're running as I have heard of this issue with some of the other brands.
The only way I could see it happening short of a defective trap is if the animal was able to climb and pull up or to wrap the trap around a tree in a way that applies leverage to the spring.

Yes there was a catch circle. And I’d never had this issue in the past this much. I’m also curious if the newer dp I have are easily sprung with the coating they have. I feel like I don’t see it as much with my older rusted dog proofs. Thank you.

Yes, I thought it was strange considering I’ve never seen it to this extent hence why I came here. I do have some newer dp that seem slicker, I have to file them down slightly to make setting them easier so I’m curious if maybe that’s part of it. Thank you!

Lot of the newer traps that are powder coated you probably should file a bit of the coating off the dog and trigger.

Something you might want to check is on the traps how much trigger travel there is before the trap fires. If you've got a trap that has excessive travel, it means that the animals foot is almost out of the trap when it fires so theres not a lot left for the bar to grab hold of. Also make sure that if its a one way trigger than the notch is fully engaged, you can squeeze the eye of the dog like you can on foothold traps to make sure it is.

Another weird thing that can happen too and set off DPs is possums using them as back scratchers.

Wire it straight to the bottom of the tree. More cable they have more likely they can get leverage and pull out

I do have both dukes and Bridgers, a few tripped completley pulled out of the ground on earth sets. There was snow, not sure if that could affect it in anyway.

Put a video game cam on it it might help solve the issue.

I did file them down but I will check the trigger travel. Thank you so much!

I cut the notch down by half on dukes. the old ones I have the trigger came up to far before the trap fired. big coons had to much foot pulled out before they tripped.

Add 2 crunch proof swivels

What are you putting in the DPs, Sam?

I have seen cold conditions have adverse impact on them. Seemed to me it was combination of when soggy bait inside them started freezing and the trigger systems had been packed with mud from previous catches. Not sure if that would lead to pull outs as much as not functioning trap? Maybe they were slowed down to point that only caught a toe or nail and held temporarily?

Letting a coon get to a sampling or root ball that they can use to help pull can lead to pull outs. Letting the trap stake (Dukes) freeze in the ground will lead to pull outs. I was using unmodified Dukes and problems were very rare if I avoided the above issues. Very rarely I had a toe catch that could let a coon pull out.

I have duke's and I can't ever remember having a pull out, have had mice set off traps, and then something pull trap out of the ground and work trap trying to get everything out of it.

I had an alligator remove 95% of a coon from a DP. That was an interesting looking scene.....but very obvious what the problem was.