That's it. It's interesting and makes you think about some things. I'm not sure it's going to be a game changer for you but if you want to understand it a little more in detail then it's ok. I loaned the book out a few years back and never have got it back or bothered to pick it up.

Kirks idea could be right on but like human scent to a degree, in that we cant eliminate it so we just have to work around it and it could definitely have more bearing on cage traps or maybe to a lesser degree snares where the target animal has to enter the magnetic field with its whole body other that just place its foot on it....??? Just food for thought.

I will add that in my testing the more dirt we put over a foothold trap the less detectable on a guasse meter the magnetic field is

I used to think if you just backed off a screwed up coyote for a few weeks, give them room to breath, time to wind down, that they’d “forget”.



Now I feel an experienced coyote never truly forgets.

They may let their guard down (briefly), or take a calculated risk at some point that doesn’t work out for them, but they don’t “forget”.

My naive approach to catching them is to let them dig out every set i make for a year or two to the point they get so confident and conditioned to digging just one trap out that I can back door them with a second trap..... im a slow but determined learner... lol

So what makes an "effective" trap have less magnetic field intensity?

Type of steel?, certain models"?, heck, they're all steel...

I have sung the “Digging Coyote Blues” more than I would like to admit as well YS.
Without seeing your standard routine, it would be very tough to come up with a credible answer of any kind.
And even then it would most likely be tough to nail down.

If you made thousands of mock sets and were not dug up on a single one then you would think there would be a good explanation behind the anomaly.
Perhaps there is a part of your real set routine the coyotes have picked up on somehow.

After many rounds with a long list of primarily adult female diggers,
I found one blanket solution for the whole lot of them.

If you remove, all potential reasons for digging the mayhem will usually stop.

Those reasons include but may not be limited to:

certain attractants
set looks & construction
how attractants are applied
fresh dirt smell in trap bed

When I made this adjustment, the digs came to an abrupt halt for good.
I cannot recall the last time I walked up on a dig at ground zero, much less an exposed trap.

How are you removing the fresh dirt smell in the trap bed? I know in the right conditions you can pound in a bed rather than dig it, but you still need to cover the trap.

Bone dry dirt brought in from home and blended in .

This method is for conditions where your surface dirt is dry maybe down an inch or so,
but below that the dirt contains a good bit of moisture and the smell that comes with it.

The fresh excavated dirt from the bed is left on my tarp.
Dry surface dirt gathered from the immediate area replaces the fresh earth from the newly dug trap bed
Keep in mind the bottom of the bed still holds that telltale smell of fresh dug soil.
Filling it with dry dirt will help pull out moisture from the lining of the bed so the smell will better blend with the neutral smell of surface dirt on top.
When the set is done the tarp is gathered up with the fresh dirt and slung in the air to disperse it over a wide area.

Keep in mind in some cases replacing the bed with dry is not enough to negate the fresh dirt smell of the lining of the bed.
This usually happens when there is an abundant amount of moisture below a dry surface, usually after a recent rain.
That type of soil condition will get you dug up quick.
There is a way to fix that problem, but I will keep that particular one under my hat for now.

I have had some luck with using red ant bed dirt at sets.

I gather the dirt when I come across a big ant bed. I dry it on a cement slab next to my barn. Once dry, I put it back in buckets.

I use it when I’m making sets where there’s moisture in the dirt. Not very often here.

1. It is dry, loose and a little waxy so my trap fires fast.
2. I assume it smells like ants, which is common and not a place you’d want to dig.
3. If it is really wet after a rain, blending a set is near impossible. So I just use more ant dirt and make an ant bed circle with extra ant dirt. It looks more natural than my blending after a rain.
4. The ants may or may not charge/discharge the dirt when they are working it. Above my pay scale.

It is not a silver bullet, but I think it helps. Thanks for the discussion everyone!

I also use anthill dirt at times to blend sets. In my case, usually because I am using waxed sand to bed my traps. The ant hill dirt is dry and waxy like you said and takes a lot to soak up moisture and freeze, so it makes a good thin top covering to blend the waxed sand. And it blends well in my timbered terrain where the ground is covered in the dead needles that anthill dirt is full of. It would stand out like a sore thumb in Tejas's terrain, but then I assume ants down there make their hills out of different materials that may blend much better.

I once loaded 3000lbs of steel and
every scrap yard refused it.
They were rods from a limestone crushing
rod mill. Magnetic crane
would not pick them up.
If you can measure magnetics.
try a tumbler?

Got to admit, Kirks thing was a new twist.