Coyotes digging peat moss

Anyone else have issues with coyotes digging out traps in peat moss? I'm.pretty confident they can't smell my traps and it's happened enough times I don't think it's a bedding issue, but I have had all of my traps dug out this week. I didn't cover the peat moss with dirt or snow and I'm wondering if that's why?... Any ideas?

Every once in a while using just peat I'll get some but when I started pinning my traps down with nails so they don't move, I've not had many issues.

Yes,that is why.I would cover and blend it with local dirt.

They might dig any type of loose stuff , I saw a rabbit dug out a girls trap bed on a dirt hole, coal shale (trap bed material) is a little loose, sometimes a coon or skunk digs it up and coyote comes along and leaves print in soil, making it look like a coyote did it. Sometimes a coyote digs , uncovers trap, seems it's usually a female

I tend to use pest on the inside of the jaws and waxed dirt over the top. A few times when I was out of waxed dirt, I used pest with just enough local dirt to blend with no problems

Just read an article in the archives regarding bedding in pest which uses large nails to stabilize the trap in the looser material. I have no more waxed dirt at my current location and will need to rely on peat due to frozen ground and this method may be the answer. Would still suggest shifting some local material over it to blend in

I have never used peat without something covering it. I love using snow. We don't get a lot of it. A lot of times the digging is coons and rats. Digger B's always getting caught.........

How do you know It's a female coyote that's digging up your traps?

Traps are very hard to bed solid In peat. Even If you cover the peat with dirt from the site that trap still Isn't solid In the bed. The nails are the way to go. Or some major guiding so the first step Is the last one.

and sometimes I have found that peat has a strange odor and that may have something to do with the digging.

I use peat moss all the time and if there is a odor in the peat I seen them dig or if the trap is not solid enough they will dig. I use some dry dirt I have and put it over the peat moss after i done with bed the trap and not leave the peat show much.Or what I do also is take some grass on the site, spread it over the peat moss. It all works for me.I have seen also that deer like to get into the set also.

I caught a female once.

When I was using peat I would occasionally have some dug at generally it was curious coons that felt the loose soil. I power bed with nails at almost 100% of my sets currently, and definitely would if I was using straight peat again. If you power bed with nails and leave them alone even the scratchers will get caught. The trap won't move for them to flip it until they are caught if you bed it correctly. It's one more thing I have to drag around, but it has cut down on my dug out traps almost completely over the last three seasons.

Female tracks are usually smaller, snare a female and digging stops, more than once over the years, I can tell by looking at coyotes face, body if it's male or female nearly 100% of time.
It's great thing to have snare spots on same farm as a couple traps, just in case you get a digger or a coyote that refuses to work a set.
I think most the time I have a coyote actually doing the pan cover or jaw exposure it is near where an inexperienced trapper is trapping year after year

Last year this one location I got nine in snares, the ninth one chewed the 1x19 off, I saw her tracks looked like small young female coyote, I snared her this fall 100 yds from where she cut wire last year, extremely old, small female , I was close