Sitting here watching it rain and I had a few thoughts. Now this is coming from someone new to trapping so take it with a grain of salt…..but…..someone asked the other day if you should dye and wax your trap when moving from one property to the next. Feel free to contradict me if you disagree but I’m gonna say yes and here’s why.
I’ve been practicing making sets with my traps over the last few weeks and what I’ve noticed is that once you start getting the trap really dirty…..it loses it’s precision. The pan tension set to a “just right” level after waxing becomes really heavy after its been in the ground and lost all that clean lubrication. My pan stops operating nearly as smoothly as it did immediately after waxing. If I’m going to set up a new property, then I’d want each and every trap starting out day one with the precision of having just the right amount of pan tension and operating in a well-oiled fashion.
The dying part of the process seems to be done for the purpose of long term care. I think that is what is keeping the trap from corroding over time….5,10,15 years. Basically a weather coating. My traps seem to have taken the dye much better the second time around. Dying may be one of those things that you eventually just need to do as necessary in order to keep the trap well dyed but not necessarily every single time you move. Waxing though I would think would want to be done every time if that’s what it takes to have precision pan tension. I think when I go back to the trapping store I’m gonna buy pan tester so that I know I have each trap firing just right when I put ‘em in the ground.
