Pulling rebar with vice grips and trap hammer is tuff on the back. Saw Coon creek video with double cable setup and said could pull one handed with hay hook had my interest. Don't know if best setup is 12"or 18" cable or chain. Thinking 12" would handle 95% of sets plus adding 4" hole for trap bed and room for chain. You guys have any preference.

I like the bullet anchors on 1/8” cable. I use a heavy chain and my truck to pull them. Leave the chain hooked up to my d rings, drive up, pop the trap, put hook through loop of cable, reverse, remove trap, and go. I like mine about 12-15” for most of my trapping.

Make your retrieval cable shorter than your anchor cable

If you’re trapping right now you ain’t driving an anchor 6”, lol. I’m having to chisel out a bed using drags.

You might consider regular super stake and a good puller as another option. A puller makes pretty easy work of it too.

I use my drill and auger to bore a hole next to my chain/cable. By doing this quite often I don't need a puller and pull them out by hand.

The finned ones with pulling boss do work IF you can get them beat into the ground. The regular ones are a pia even with a pilot hole.

I drill a pilot hole and use the finned super stakes with chain on the hold and 3/32" or 1/8" cable on the retrieval. Without the pilot hole, I would never get them in most of the time and would not get them out without an excavator.

This is the way. But my issue is auger quality, or more correctly auger wear as a year's worth of use will take those square chisel edges down to a round smooth non digging top spinning in hardened clay.

All my online searches have turned up one maker of carbide tipped augers for termite bait stations but they want well over a c-note for one if it can be found in stock. Contacted to maker and they want a full company credit report before even quoting a price.

Warrior, I use a 7/8" concrete bit on my Rotary Hammer (not a hammer drill) for frozen winter conditions pilot holes here. Can't image that (Bright Red) Georgia Clay being tougher than our 12" of frozen silty clay here. The (tool) cost of doing business ......................... the mike

Why is that?

Could not find anything on the (pulling boss).

You dont want that loose end poking out to where an animal or trap thief can see it and get hold of it easily. Plus it will interfere with your trap bedding.-

In “good dirt” I’ll use the Super Stakes and like others mentioned just drill down beside them when ready to pull. In clay I’m using drags. They’re super easy to drive in wet clay, but you ain’t getting them out when it’s dry. I even tried using a 4-wheeler once and stood that bad boy straight up, lol.

You dont want that loose end poking out to where an animal or trap thief can see it and get hold of it easily. Plus it will interfere with your trap bedding.-[/quote]
Sounds good, need to figure how deep they need driving for coyote. 18" rebar seems almost over kill and PIA double stake pulling.

Every trapper from Georgia talks about red clay as concrete. Must be sun beating down on it.

Sounds good, need to figure how deep they need driving for coyote. 18" rebar seems almost over kill and PIA double stake pulling.[/quote]
really will depend on your ground. Outside of farm land and river bottoms, youre lucky to get 10" deep unless its been a wet month.

Yeah, even with drags and chiseling out a bed I have to use good dirt/sand/peat underneath it because if it gets wet and drys then your trap is pretty much useless. It’s the Northern version of freezing for us.

We get both the concrete hard ground and the frozen ground. Y'all arent that special :P Our clay is just grey instead of red.

If you really want to save your back.....use
cabled fangs attached with a 3/16" quick link. Cut em just below ground level on pull day. Put a new one on on set day.

Sorry but I laughed out loud reading this post.

Winter is our good time as the soil almost always wet and a freeze here is frost. From now until December our clay most resembles concrete.

How do they grow peanuts and cotton?

The fields are sub-soiled.

Swamp Wolf got it but peanuts are grown on sandy loams and cotton is planted early cultivated (weeded) until canopy closure (just prior to bloom) then laid by (no more cultivation) until harvest.

As mentioned, during the wet season you’re good to go. Right now with no rain “here” for about the last 2-3 weeks it’s concrete. Looking for tracks is pointless when you don’t leave any, lol. The first 6-8” or so is good dirt, but it won’t hold. You learn through trapping the same places where you can put anchors and where you can’t.
I think I have about a dozen footholds out right now and only 2 have earth anchors. In the past I’ve tripped sets and had to come back after a good rain to try and get them up. As long as the bears stay away I’ll be using mostly drags.

This is what I do, Going to set a few in the morning .you guys have me sweating already. The property I am going to has red clay roads and they are dry as a popcorn fart with the heat we been having.

If you don't want re-bar then finding a good alternative is important for you. I tried the bullet type for a few years with chain and did not like working with them. I used to stake canine sets wityh 1/2 by 24 inch rebar with washers on the end and that is why I tried the bullet system. Now I use re-bar again. I use 1 1/2 inch by 18 inch re-bar and 1 3/8 inch by 16 inch re-bar with a butterfly cross stake system. .I have nuts weled to the ends and I turn the stakes 3-4 times when pulling and the stakes come out easily. We have mostly clay silt loam with quite a bit of red clay in the area I trap.

Bryce

With 6+ revolutions on 18" rebar, without up leverage im not getting them out. Broke fiberglass handle on trap hammer and ended up flat on my back. Glad no one was there to see me.

I had a trap I had to do some work on once, because someone decided they were going to steal it. Tried to pull it with a chain and fourwheeler, when I got there, there were big holes dug out where they had been spinning their fourwheeler tires, and a 750 with bent up jaws. It was still there though, that was a super stake in clay.

I used to pull them with the winch cable on a fourwheeler, park right over them and winch straight up, but I kept breaking winch cables. Some of them I have troubles pulling with the leverage of a five foot puller I built. Have went to packing bolt cutters on pull day, and if I can't get them I just cut the chain (chained earth anchors, not cable). But also have went to a lot of drags.

I never had any problem removing 18" re bar. Hit the stake a few times to loosen It up then with the vice grips rotate till comes out. In frozen ground I would just drive It In a bit to break It loose. If you cross stake go with 1/2" smooth rod It comes out pretty easy. I can get away with 2 16" stakes when cross staking.

But most of my anchors are disposables.Cut and go.

I use super stakes and finned super stakes with chains. I pull them with a T-post puller that I modified. I occasionally have one get looked under a rock or root that I have to leave but rare.

Most of the earth anchors I use are wolf-fang with cable. If I’m in a hurry I just cut and run.