Guys, I was meaning to ask this question last season and I never remembered to ask it..
What are your personal experiences/thoughts on which device a coon is more likely to work..
The cage trap or dogproof?
My own initial thoughts would be the dogproofs.

I have a spot not far from home and not out of the way, that has raccoon activity,, but the raccoons seem to not want to work the dogproofs for whatever reason.
I’d certainly love to pop in some #11 blind sets but the owner ( junkyard property) says that he doesn’t want to run the risk of his cats getting caught in the traps.
My only options are the dogproofs or cages..
I personally don’t like to use cage traps because they are bulky and cumbersome… although I do own several.. I didn’t carry any cage traps back in there.

Again, if I had to go out of my way to trap this location.. I wouldn’t mess with it,,
But the buggars are there,, they just don’t seem to be interested in anything I put in the dogproofs

I'm surprised you haven't caught his cats in the DP's yet. You're only asking for trouble running DPs around pets intentionally. Bait your cages correctly and set them in the right locations and you'll catch coons. It's not hard to do.

Cages have less refusals.

You can creative with DPs to get them to work the traps. Ron Jones/Jonesie had a good post in trapping only on this a long time ago, might of got moved to archives.

Hand trucks make great tools for doing serious cage trap hauling. I use one occasionally when I'm paid all enough to

The coons are very likely eating the cat food too.

Keith

Around the house I've used both, but usually go with the cage...with the DP's theres a lot of digging and anything in reach gets destroyed...but they both work....depends were they're visiting.

Jonesie has some great podcasts on DP and cage trapping.

https://app.talkshoe.com/show/rednecks-pride-outdoors

I usually use cheap cat food in dogproofs, so I intentionally avoided using it here.. I was putting fruity pebbles cereal because I read it works well… and I did catch some… but there’s a whole lot more that seemed disinterested because you can see the tracks going on by

Around cats the only option is cages, period. Also you will want to avoid any sort of meat or seafood based bait or lure if at all possible. Sweets, anise, fruit or grain based are all on a coons menu while cats being obligate carnivores are meat only.
Even then curiousity killed the cat so expect cats in cages, even empty unbaited ones. Give it a good shake up before release as cats are easy to catch, the first time.

One of my go to coon baits in urban work is cheap cheese puff balls, the brighter and cheesier the better. Throw a handful in and trail some out. If you can find a deal on cheap gummi worms try those. Grape or strawberry jam is good to keep around. If rural or readily available sweet feed.

Buddy’s running some cages with cell cams on them he’s had a lot of refusals I gave him a bag of carp bait will see if that makes a difference.