to cover a trap in snow without causing the snow to form into a crust?

“Snow spoon” is what I’ve heard. I just asked about it in another thread

Nothing works that I have tried. I just shovel a big bare spot. Scatter dirt on undisturbed snow. Set a trap. Coyotes will often stand back and not approach. Some do come in and get caught. Cats do the opposite. Attracts them. Works better than flagging. Snow means no guesswork for snares.

Snow cover on already set traps I leave alone for coyotes. I clear it off for cats. They often want to go have a look.

It depends on your snow, the humidity in the snow, is the trap in the sun, it the trap black, is the trap in coal or frozen earth. Is it going to be cold tomorrow, windy, shady, sunny? All these make a difference.

Yes, a snow spoon can work great if the conditions warrant it. You can slide a thin layer over your waxed paper by SLIGHTLY moving it into and out of the pan or spoon. Don't move the snow around.

If you throw snow into the air and let it fall back on top of the trap it should freeze a layer over the wax paper or the trap covering. You will probably not like this. Looks good, works horrible. You have to have the right set of conditions to move snow and not have it lock up together like cement. Using your dirt screen with snow will get the same results, because you moved all the snow crystals and then they refreeze back together into one clump. While the snow you didn't move 3 feet away stays soft and fluffy.

Pick up the snow like it's fragile and set it down like it's going to break. That is the best you can do if you don't have good conditions.

If you have good conditions, swipe a broom full over the trap and walk away, using a broom to cover your tracks back to the snow go. If it's snowing, do not cover the trap, let nature do it for you, best there is.

I have used perlite in the past for covering traps in the snow with good results.

We have cold conditions and powdery snow. It’s going to get colder before our cat season kicks off, and my thought was to create a “fan” of sorts to blow the snow around without touching it.

I guess I’ll give an update after.

Blowing snow around will cause it to set up also. Just think about how hard some drifts can be.

I use a waxed shovel and just take the bare minimum of snow from somewhere away from the set. Try to slide the snow in one piece off the shovel and onto the trap.

If there is a tree nearby I also whack it a couple times with my ax so that a light dusting of snow drifts down over the set. No guarantees though. Super Wide covered it pretty well above

I have heard of some using styrofoam beads with some success.

Kinda what the perlite does, except perlite is natural. Its the white balls in store bought potting soil. Huge bag of it costs ~$20 Not ideal for an Alaskan longliner, but for a guy like me who may put in ~20 sets in the snow, it works pretty good.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Viagrow...=shoppingads&locale=en-US&fp=ggl

Appreciate all the insight! Don’t know if I’ll get my hands on any perlite before tomorrow, but had also considered the placement and tree shaking ideas presented by white17. Guess I’ll have to do some testing to know for sure.