I have heated the tops of my DPs and dipped them in glo-in the dark powder paint for jigs then finished each one by baking in a oven at 275 for 15 min

Thats cool ,have you noticed more interest in traps?

That is a neat idea! Yes I am curious too, if you have seen a change in the numbers of them that you have trapped. Do you mind sending daylight and nighttime pictures of the finished product to show the difference?

I think I picked up this trick here but last year trapping several bridges I fought mice and pack rats constantly. Either completely cleaning out the DPs or getting head caught. Having to dig a head caught, frozen pack rat out of a DP isn’t anywhere near as much fun as one might think.

On two bridges I went four for four head caught pack rats. No telling how many coon I missed because of the pack rats.

Then this season I don’t know what became of the coon. No tracks, no scat and none killed on the road near these bridges. I did pick up one but he was the only one. But using this trick I didn’t have any issue with pack rats despite seeing lots of tracks. They did like to lick some of the trailing lure off but they weren’t able to remove the caps.

They’re just a short piece of 3/4” pvc and a cap. They’re hold the trap at nearly set and if you preload them setting goes pretty quick. Once the trap is set they sit loosely in the barrel and the pack rats cannot seem to remove them.

Great idea, what % disappear like golf balls do. If not seeing racoon sign three things come to mind. Other trapper, distemper, or someone in neighborhood bought thermal whether legal or not.

Not seen any other trappers and not aware of any guys hunting thermal for coon. This is pretty much uninhabited areas. Plenty of coon last year. None this year and I didn’t hurt them much last year. I’m thinking distemper.

As to the percentage that disappear. I had 30 DPs out. Caught one and the cap was gone. So 100% of the DPs that caught coon had the cap gone. Of course there pretty fair current along this creek. I made extras.

Of course I’d expect with numerous catches I’d recover many of them. One catch is not empirical.

BCbuck. I’ve never been good at posting pictures. Imagine a fender washer sitting on top of an inch and a half long piece of plastic pipe. With a wire loop sticking out.

I found it was much easier and faster to attach the wire loop BEFORE gluing on the plastic pipe. Making my own comes out to 5-minutes a piece and about 50-cents in materials. And that includes a doubled layer of kite string for attachment.

You've probably already considered this Marty, but on my line, those hot spots can change from year to year depending on the crop rotation and if the fields have been harvested and plowed.

While this creek does make it to crop land, these bridges are in pines and hardwoods. Not premium coon habitat with no crops but there has always been some coon there. Except this year. I usually see a fair number of tracks and scat and there are usually a few dead on the road through the summer in this area. The creek parallels the highway and is pretty close. I didn’t see any this summer dead on the road in that stretch.

Do you replace string after a catch? I was thinking of something like that but attaching with cable.

I’ve only lost one Z-cap because the string broke. My partner uses decoy cord. I use kite string. Obviously the decoy cord is better, but I didn’t have any on hand.

The metal Z-caps don’t get chewed on. My partner thinks the plastic ones will. It’s an experiment and something to do in the evenings. We’ll see how many survive next season.

Instead of gluing on a PVC cap just use some of that expanding foam to fill the pipe.