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!