It is that time of year again. My sleepless nights are caused by the excitement I have for our next adventure. I have had countless thoughts about the successful sets and those perfect sets that just needed a couple more days!

Big Joe and I will be heading out as it gets closer to January. Maybe a couple of days earlier than before.

We intend to share our trip here as always and look forward to the encouragement you all give us on this journey. If you have followed along before, you know what to expect. If this is your first time following, please ask questions and I hope you enjoy it.


Here are a few pics from previous trips:

Looking forward to it.

I have about 150 gallons of waxed dirt made. It is still in 5 gallon buckets. In the next couple of weeks I will transfer it all into individual 1-gallon bags. This makes use on the line much easier.


I tore apart my death ray last night to add a new lock and a new cable.

I’ll be following along. Hopefully not another big snowstorm this year.

I was thinking about this thread a day or two ago.

Looking forward to following it again

Will follow. Always enjoy this thread.

Good luck! We just had a 4-5" snow, but luckily no wind to speak of and it was already melting today.

Looking forward to it. If you are passing through N MO and need something let us know. Pray you have favorable weather. You guys have hit some rough stuff through the years. Watch your top knot!

Good to hear you are going again and taking us with you. Good luck and have good weather too.........jk

Good luck out there

looking forward to this post, hopefully you have good weather,

Gettem Boys!

Enjoy every minute

Really looking forward to it. Always interesting to read about your trip.

Thanks everyone!

At this point it looks like we will depart Michigan in the early hours of Sunday December 28th



Here are links to some of the previous trips. A lot has changed since then but it was nice to revisit the past.

https://trapperman.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/6071793/1

https://trapperman.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/8019453/north-central-kansas-part-6#Post8019453

https://trapperman.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/8287551/kansas-trip-year-7#Post8287551

Have fun Mark & Joe !

Tight chains!

Don’t take any prisoners.

Good luck this year guys.

Osky

Have fun guys! Looking forward to following along!

Butch

Have a great trip gentlemen! Look forward to seeing this thread!

Looking forward to your trip. I spent many good years in Kansas both good and bad weather. Just comes with the territory at times. It sure can change your daily check schedule when it warms up like that. Can't even run an ATV on it or the road edge as it works the same on those tires also. Need to find some grass base to make it work.

Very nice.Looking forward to seeing the posts.

Nice pictures guys

Always enjoy following your adventures

Good luck and safe travels!! Can't wait!

Looking forward to following this one

Excellent post!! Thanks for taking the time to do it..

I am spending every chance I can to continue my preparation for the trip.

Every trap is inspected for pan tightness, proper trap tags, functioning swivels and closed J-hooks. I don't set a specific pan tension but rather make sure the pan is almost loose enough to fall with it's own weight. Once set, the pressure of the springs will give me a tension I can live with. Once the cable stake is attached, I place the trapnin a gallon sized ziplock bag with a crumpled up wax paper pan cover. Each time I grab a couple of traps from a tote, I know there is already a pan cover with it. I keep the pan covers crumpled until they are ready to be used. This keeps them from blowing away in the Kansas wind.

Great prep and planning. I like the way u think!

Stack up the critters and post us some pics. I have never trapped in Kansas, love seeing the location of your catches.

Today I brought 170 gallons of waxed dirt into the fur shed. Over the next couple of days I will package all of it into individual 1-gallons ziplock bags. The bags will be packed into coolers for the ride to Kansas. Over the course of the trip we will gradually empty the coolers as we make sets. The coolers will then be used to transport frozen fur back home.

Great planning

Want a tour of your shed............

Here you go!

https://trapperman.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/8524816#Post8524816

Pretty country. I have a family place just across the line, South Central NE. I have plans to do what you are doing there someday.

You aren't far from where they wrote "home on the range" in 1870ish if you get West a little. Neat place to check out but I'm sure you stay busy.

Thanks!!!

]


That looks a lot like where we go!

I calculated the weight of my waxed dirt to be 1,900 ponds. I kind of want to add another 100 lbs to make it an evenTon!

I know the dust bowl swept the dirt from this area in the past so I am trying to do my part to bring it back!

When I load the truck, the first thing in is two coolers full of waxed dirt. They will be utilized on our first set days so to avoid excess work they will ride right where they will be needed. Then i add a couple totes of my traps for the same reason. When we get to camp and unpack, the dirt and traps will already be there.

Ain’t that the truth, Bob! Mark, travel safe! You know where I’m at if you need anything.

Those pics are amazing! Some are frame worthy.

Impressive amount of dirt! How many traps are you taking?

Wow! You have some beautiful pictures!
Ms.Sharon should draw this picture it would be a fantastic piece of art from her!

Good luck on the line!

I look forward to being part of this trip every year. I am a guest on this adventure. Kids get all excited about Christmas this time of year, I get just as excited about what our next advwill bring us. The country is so beautiful, the local people are fantastic, oh, and the trapping is pretty good too!
I have been getting things prepped and ready to go. By Christmas day I will have things "staged " and ready to be loaded in the truck. I have been making meals and freezing them to make things quick, simple and easy once we start running our line. I just can't wait!

I have 108 foothold traps packed and about 2 dozen snares. I think Big Joe has around 100 traps ready for the trip.

Always enjoy this ride along. Looking forward to it.

Curious as to why you go light on the snares? No right or wrong answer I am just curious as to your thinking.

Frozen coyotes are much more work to skin. Our set up doesn't allow us the place to thaw coyotes out very easily if it is cold outside or maybe not at all. Most years have had some sub-zero temperatures.

The snares fit a specific purpose but I have found that a lot more of our line is suited for footholds. I still set some snares to get better at it. (Snaring where I live doesn't work well. Michigan's cable laws are too restrictive.)

Got the skinning rig back together to make sure everything is functional. Tearing it back apart for the trip.

With my new improvised trailer cover, I was able to get most of my supplies inside. I even got the skinning rig in there. Every other year I had to strap it to the top,

Truck and trailer are packed. I will try to sleep until about midnight:30. Joe will drive here and we will get his stuff loaded up. We plan a 2;00 AM departure.

We will have breakfast in Des Moines Iowa around 10:00 AM. We should arrive at the lodge in Kansas around 3:00 PM.

If you see us on the road, make sure to get our attention. We will certainly stop to say Hi!

How do you make your waxed dirt especially in that quantity.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BaqaNsar1/?

Let me know if you have trouble seeing this

Good luck guys...drive safe!

You guys know how to work! Eagerly following

drive safe and good luck on the line

Safe travels gentlemen.

Best of luck to you.

Looking forward to your updates.

It was a long wet windy drive but we made it.

The temperature along the route climbed to 54 degrees and then it was 17 degrees by the time we got out of Nebraska.

We unpacked and were able to each get one set in the ground before dark. Now we will get some
dinner, sleep and be ready for a full day of setting traps tomorrow.

Go get em!

Looking forward to the ride a long. Good luck.

Looking forward to pictures and updates

Glad y'all had a good trip

Wind hit here a bit ago, temps are dropping.

Nowhere near as cold as where you are but a lot different than what it has been the last week. Should feel more like end of Dec weather tomorrow

I'm just curious to how fast you have to drive to get there by 800pm on the 28 th of Dec. when you wre going to leave on Dec 28th at 200am. thanks Larry

We were just never more than a couple mph over the posted speed limit, especially in the 75 mph areas.

We left at 1:50 AM Eastern time and arrived at the lodge at 4:55 PM Eastern time.
That is roughly a 15 hour trip.
We stopped in Des Moines for 1.5 hours to have breakfast with a friend there.
That brings travel time down to 13.5 hours.
We made 4 fuel stops that totaled around 30 minutes.
That drops our driving time to 13 hours.


852 miles in 13 hours is an average of 65.5 mph.

Thanks for the video. Good luck guys!

Hope y'all are stacking fur

Was too tired last night to make a post?

We had our first set day and are feeling good about our progress. Spent a lot of time talking to the local folks that have became friends of ours over the years. We always re-establish our permissions before going on any of the properties.

It may not sound like a lot but we each got in around 20 sets on the first day. Some years it was 12 and last year we had 23 each for reference.

We try to make our sets sparsely on the properties and want to get gear in the ground over a larger area. We think of our line like a net. We want a larger net at first and are not as concerned about how fine it is. As we start checking, we will fill in the net a little by adding additional sets to the properties. We feel this gives us a better chance at different target animals.

Cool, can’t wait for the updates

Stack em up guys.

Best of luck and safe travels !

Great approach for setting your line. People tend to way over saturate an area with sets, which I think is actually puts the coyotes on edge a bit. A couple quality locations in a 4 square mile is good enough for coyotes. I always set on cat sign.

The first check day found me skinning a badger and Big Joe skinning a beautiful coyote. We are still securing permissions and setting traps. I have a little less then 1/3 of my traps set now. Setting always slows as we beging checking and remaking sets. It will take us a week to get all of our gear set.

Off to a good start

Check day 2 brought a lot of work. We got 2 raccoons, 2 possums and 2 Skunks. One of the skunks didn't spray so i was able to skin it.

We set on a few more properties today so the excitement is building!

Looks like your getting some of those big prairie coon and some high dollar skunks.

Nice country...good catches. Sure beats the ground I'm working with...rain snow mud and repeat...more coming.

Looking forward to this years trip.

Best of luck to you both.

WS

Thanks for sharing with us......jk

Furminator I am just south of you guys down here by Abilene. You will probably get a lot of racoons as they won’t be denning up with high temps forecasted for the next couple of weeks. Good luck and hope you get lots of critters I’m sure you will and believe it or not it doesn’t look like any moisture coming either other than the fog……I’ve always said in order to break a drought around here just set a line ….

Great pics

Glad to see you're off and running and making catches.

Yesterday was a day for possum catches and deer steps. We spent a lot of time doing remakes with no target catches. We are now traveling around 100 miles per day setting and checking.

Some trail cameras footage showed a coyote being very interested but he didn't commit. He returned 3 times to the area of the set. It was the first night so I am optimistic that he will return when the scent at the set diminishes.

Here are a few set pictures.

Yesterday was a good day on the line. We drove 119 miles and worked sun up to sun down.
We secured some more permissions and the line is growing. Our setting numbers are much less each day as we have a lot more time required to check & remake sets. We say the sets get better once they have marinated for a while.

I got a pair of skunks and a pair of coyotes. Big Joe got a badger that left an amazing trap circle for his remake. The badger dug a massive hole underneath where the trap was bedded and then proceeded to work from the other side building a huge mound. For the remake, Joe moved the trap in front of the newly excavated hole. I told him it was the Taj Ma-Hole!

Good work guys! Keep it up as according to what Craig tells me Michigan is a snow hole now.

Keep it up! Enjoying the ride along.

man looks like a good time, thanks for taking us along

Keep adding to the pile

How close did the badger get to digging the stake out?

That looks like a really nice Badger.

Thank you for taking us along, looking forward to your updates.

That’s one big badger! Very cool animal I always like to see them

He was under the earth anchor!

Keep it up fellas. Sure enjoying the ride along!

Yesterday was a good day to get more sets in and we set up a property that i new to us.

While checking traps we found plenty of them tied up with possums and raccoons. i was able to get one more coyote in the same trap Ingot one the day before.

The weather is really going to warm up today but it will be a little windy.

You guys do a great job of pictures. If I ever leave MO (extremely unlikely) central Kansas is where we would be. Seeing many pheasant while you're out and about?

We haven't seen any pheasants yet

Today was a beautiful day on the line. We set another nee property and added a few sets to existing properties. We got possums, raccoons and a skunk today. No coyotes but it was still a great day except for walking into a locust branch with my eyelid!

Nice catches and I see the coyote pretty much stepped on the pan and got lucky

Speaking of luck, lucky you didn't lose an eye!

man, nice pic, good think you didn't get hurt worse

Another nice skunk, and glad that eye wasn't any worse.

Is that a miss on a coyote, or a guide? I seem to remember seeing prints in your sets from earlier.

I made the track in the dirt pattern right on the pan. In this set, there were already tracks there before I set the trap. I don't usually do that but it seemed fitting with the other tracks already there.

Locust is wicked! You could have had a much worse outcome. Worst place i have ever taken one is in the knee while doing tree work. The only positives I have seen are bees love them and mourning doves nest in them. Awesome pictures every year!

Thanks for taking us along! I'd love to get back out to Kansas and trap. I was in SE Kansas, west of Ft. Scott. Some of the biggest, prettiest coons I've ever caught. They looked like miniature bears! Also some of the finest sunrises/sunsets I've ever seen!

Congrats on the catches!

Had many a close call with those Honey Locust spikes, hate them.

Some people, like myself, have a reaction to the thorns. I get poked in a joint and it will be stiff and sore for weeks.

You have some dandy trails for some exposed trap set ups.

Shazam... on that eye! Talk about almost turning you into a pirate! I shouldn't talk too much as every season or so I get whipped across the face and eyes by branches.
Great looking country! Keep at it guys.

Yesterday was a good catch day but only if you like skunks coons and possums and deer steps! The coyotes and cats have not been active or at least not been working our sets. We are still making small additions to the line as we go. We both have around 70 traps in the ground and are driving 95 miles to check them. Seems like a lot of traps and work to not catch coyotes but we don't look at it that way. Just being out here in tis beautiful country is amazing. With a front coming in, we anticipate more coyote action soon.

Looked like a monster of a skunk to me. Keep at um and keep posting please......jk

Coyote and cat movement has been slow around me as well. I have my trail cameras out year round and haven't seen much the last 2 weeks on them. Had a cat on camera last night and thought I might have it in a trap this morning. It walk right over the trap, just missed the pan.

Man, I wish I was down there with you guys instead of working!

Way to push on! Hope this front turns on the cats and totes for you guys. Great pix!

Looks similar to where I used to deer hunt in central western KS

Love the old buildings, I bet they are just as good of places to catch critters as they were to find deer.

Don't have any coyote or bobcat sets out but talked to a guy today around here and no activity. Warmth, no snow, not many calories burnt, easier to find food?

Around here cats have been showing up on camera regularly but rarely a coyote.

We have a lot of osage orange (hedge apple) which also has thorns. When those poke me its a painful lump for several days. Much worse than even a larger cut.

Keep up the good work. They're talking about snow Friday!

great pic, guys, you two have the right attitude, just being able to get away for a few weeks would make it worthwhile, I'm living my dreams through you guys, keep up the good work,

Yesterday (Tuesday 1-6-26). Was a very busy day. The non-targets and deer were out in force. We spent a ton of time remaking sets. We ended up with one snared coyote, one skunk and more raccoons and possums than we wanted to count.

Today we will be un-hooking a bunch of traps that may be unreachable for a few days. The back roads here are hard to accurately explain to people that haven't experienced them. In areas where people don't live, the roads are unsurfaced. This means they have no gravel on them and the clay turns to gumbo when it is wet. It is kind of like driving on a heavily greased cookie sheet.

We will know how bad it gets when it happens.

Gotta run those bad areas very early while it is still somewhat frosted or you won't get far once those tires start to pick up that gumbo starts to roll up like a large donut. You are done Get the shovels out, carry some straw or wheat / Bean chaff.

Went to North central Kansas for several years Turkey and Deer hunting, found out right away there are only 3 kinds of roads. Hard roads, Gravel roads and MUCK roads!
Not going anywhere when they turn to muck. And it doesn't take much rain to turn them to muck.

Any road with a house on it is graveled. The dirt roads are access to pastures and row crops. Graveled roads are great. Dirt roads are just dirt. Drive on dirt roads when its muddy you dont just cover your vehicle in mud you rut up the road. Wanna anger locals rut up the dirt roads after a rain. A 4 wheeler and a trailer are good tools trapping here. Haul the 4 wheeler as close as you can then run traps with it. Load it back up and go to the next property. You wont tear up pastures or dirt roads.

Rabbit cycle where I go in central ks is extremely high this year. One path where i usually see 1 or 2 in the dark I have seen like 10 or 12.a bobcat don’t have to travel far to have a rabbit dinner.

This is so awesome!!
Critter count for the trip so far?

Where we deer hunted the only paved road was the state maintained one

Everything else was dirt roads

When they got wet it was definitely like a "greased cookie sheet"

Awesome trip!

Teaser

.

big bobcat, ???

Yesterday was bittersweet on the line. With the upcoming rain we unhooked a good percentage of our traps. I only have 27 traps still in the ground. Once the rain is done, we will re-attach traps in the locations we are able to access. It was hard to pull so many great properties but it was the right thing to do.

While it was hard to pull traps, it was great to make target catches. I got another beautiful skunk, Joe got another coyote and we both got bobcats. It was just the boost we needed on an otherwise difficult day.