I had a couple bags of sandblasting sand I bought when I thought I was going to have to sandblast a trailer frame. It turned out to be in better shape than I expected so I didn’t need it. It’s cheap so I thought rather than take it back to the store I’d see if it worked for waxed sand.

Maybe if I had the chance to trap white sands missle range.

It’s sure purty. I’ll use it later in the season when there’s snow I guess.

Good looking snowy sand, should work Good

When you add wax it darkens some usually.

Are you sure it's actual sand? Might be a chemical composite.

It’s sand. At least that’s what the label says. It doesn’t list any man made elements.

I never did like waxed sand. Too heavy, flows to easily. I will stick with my waxed dirt/peat mix every day.

That would work for parts of south Georgia or Alabama. There are areas of the coastal plain that are actually ancient beach dunes. And gulf beaches are bright white.

The Quikcrete play sand comes out a lot darker and it matches most of my local soils close enough I rarely have to blend. The stuff in the picture was a one of to see how the sandblast sand came out with wax.

I’m lazy. I use play sand because I don’t have to go harvest dirt, dry it, sift it then mix it. With the sand I pull into Gem Builders, tell them how many bags I want, they load it up and I’m on the way. And I can heat it more than dirt because there’s no organics to burn.

Heavy yes. But my side by side doesn’t seem to mind. I’ve not seen the running as an issue. I use a trap bed pretty tight to the trap size and use wax paper or old row cover for pan covers. I’m going to try some metal screen this season to see how I like it. Not sure if the sand will sift through the screen.

I've thought of trying the screens but never have. I figured the sand would sift through some. I just go down on a beach on the river and shovel me up a bunch of buckets of sand. I've found I always need to blend, whatever I use. Even dirt from the same area that blends perfect when dry, once the surrounding dirt is soaking wet and/or frozen, that waxed dirt is still dry and socks out like a sore thumb. I sometimes harvest ant hill dirt and will use it to blend a fairly large area when setting in needle duff in the trees, or just very lightly blend with existing stuff.

Bob, I used waxed dirt and thought I preferred it also, until I started wolf trapping in the winter. Waxed sand is the only thing I've found that you can set in and leave for three months and still depend on the trap going off. Waxed dirt works great for a while, but after a month or two it tends to fail. Not that I don't usually have to pull my traps out of the sand and make them into snow sets in most areas as the snow piles up, but if I am setting in a protected enough spot, or we don't get the normal snowfall, I want to be confident of the trap working with the least amount of maintenance and corresponding disturbance and human scent possible. If I was only setting for a week or two and pulling I wouldn't blink at using waxed dirt. After I did switch to sand though I discovered what a dream it is to bed traps in though.

I like a 50/50 mix of peat and gopher mound dirt here

But we don't have the low temps that would require waxed sand or dirt here

If it does not start raining I will need to have some dirt with a little water added just to bed a trap.
Dirt is like talcum powder here on the 2 tracks and travelled spots

Might be able to mix in equal part buckwheat hulls to darken that up

That looks like it would be perfect for blind trail sets in the deep snow. I have 10 lbs of wax left, may have to get some and try it out.

If you're worried about sand sifting through the metal screen covers, have you ever tried waxing the screen covers?

I tried a screen cover over one of my traps today. The sand goes right through. And what a pain in the butt to cut off a roll and keep straight. I think I’ll stick to wax paper, row cover or hollow fill under the pan. All have worked well for me.

I tried muffin papers last year and they work really well but there must be something in them that attracts pack rats. I fought them exposing my traps all season last year. They’d scratch around until they got the pan cover exposed and then start pulling. Some times they’d have all pulled out. Others just a corner. Enough to spook a coyote

For as often as I catch and remake each set, I am remaking most sets 2 - 3X a week or more at times. I rarely have sets sit more than a week without action of some kind. If you are that far off a travel way it would be best to move some of those traps to more productive areas. Late season trapping is a different story as animal numbers are lower and they are moving more so it will be likely traps could sit for longer periods of time.

Under snow cover I have very few problems with waxed dirt/peat blend working as expected. It is the freezing rain and the snow, freeze / thaw that creates the frozen pancakes over some sets with high wind chill and wind blowing constantly. Sets are always going to fire once you take that ice pancake off.

That’s the beauty of waxed dirt or sand. Last February when I broke my ankle it was thawing and starting to rain. The following day, while I was getting X-rays, it rained some then turned cold again. The next day I went out with a couple of young guys to spring all the traps as I was scheduled for surgery the following day. I had 43 wolf traps out and as many or more cat sets. Every set had the ice/frozen snow pancakes. Yet every trap fired once the pancake was removed or broken through.