Does wire vs regular lever matter that much in your experience? Asking specifically in northern climates with frozen conditions for some of the season. Do the wire levers come up easier in frozen conditions? Does it really matter? New to predator trapping and curious about yalls experiences.

There's less surface area to freeze down on wire levers vs normal levers. Plus you dont have the bending issues with wire levers. Overall its not really an issue if you've taken steps to keep your traps from freezing down.

I like wire levers in extremely wet or freezing weather. I’n my opinion they keep their speed better in those conditions. I use a lot of both though.

What kind of soil are you talking about? With the popular use of waxed dirt/sand, cover hulls etc., and some peatmoss the lever issue is greatly reduced when encountering freezing soil conditions. If bedding in snow its a different ball park altogether,,,,,, then wire is better. My experience. .................the mike

Until you are catching hundreds and hundreds of them, I don't think you'd ever notice enough difference in the performance of either style to be worried about. That pretty much goes for any trap variation or modification. IMO as long as you buy traps that are designed to catch whatever animal you are after, they will work good as long as you do your part properly placing them.

We don't use any wire lever traps here in Wyoming and we get plenty of freezing conditions.
Wax dirt, waxed traps help with freezing. So far haven't had any real issue with traps not firing unless buried under several inches of snow.

I use primarily regular levers, I've no doubt that if you did a scientific test the wire levers would have a slight advantage in freezing conditions, but proper use of waxed sand alleviates that issue when setting in dirt, and when setting in snow I put wax paper under and over the trap. It makes logical sense that wire levers have less surface area to come up through a crust on the snow over the trap. But size of the jaw faces is probably a larger issue, and strength of the spring is also a factor. The Bridger 9 wire levers were well known for having issues with them breaking, I've never heard of an issue with other wire lever traps however. And I have heard several different theories on why big Bridgers broke them, but I'm unsure which is actually correct.

My guess for the most part is the wire lever will lift up the same size chunk of frozen crust that the regular levers will. I do feel like the wire lever bed a touch better but the difference isnt a big factor for me.

One advantage of regular levers is that you can change out the springs easier. That can matter if the manufacturer goes out of business, or if you cant get replacement wire lever springs. Also I like being able to adjust trap strength with different combinations of springs which is only possible with regular levers.

If not bedding your traps for the weather conditions it doesn't matter, both wire and steel levers are going to freeze down.

Wires: should theoretically be faster as they have less mass, they are easier to bed, they'll come up through snow better but if the snow is crusty probably doesn't matter much as both will have to break through the crust.

As loosanarrow pointed out, steel levers allow you to change different springs, with wire you get what the manufacture gives ya.

Personally, I use both, but prefer wire levers.

It's just what you get used to

Wire levers do not lock up the trap as well as regular levers. Many regular levers fail miserably also, depending on jaw design and lever height.

Thanks for all the replies fellas. Think I’ll stick with regular levers when ordering.