Y’all make me want to get into trapping!
There's a friend of mine that expressed interest a while back, so I wrote up a beginner's guide for him.
I've been learning about trapping for several years and started my first trapline a year ago. It took a while to accumulate all of the equipment that I'd need on a trapline. I have
traps out on a neighbor's land and on Redstone. My buddy, who used to cut my grass said "take all of them you want" when I asked him on facebook if I could help with his coyote problems. There's 100 acres, but only about 20 are accessible by truck in the winter, 90% of the land is farming property and is too soft to drive on. I found out he owned land using the HuntStand app that shows parcel owner info.
When trapping, it's easiest to set
traps nearby a dirt or gravel road so that you can quickly cruise through your line and see if anything has been caught.
Unintended targets are a part of the game. A skunk will clog up a set and you'll hafta try to get a
syringe close enough for a lung shot full of acetone. A half-buried skunk set would arouse some curiosity in a coyote. If it’s a bobcat out of season (Mar-Oct), then you can put a large
pan over them and
release their leg. Coons can also clog up a coyote set. There are so many of them, it wouldn't hurt their population to dispatch them then toss them into the woods or skin and tan them. Possums and raccoons are nest predators, so you’re doing the turkey population a favor in eradicating them from an area. Coyotes love decimating deer herds and neighborhood pets, so eliminating them to the best of your ability is a civic duty for responsible land managers.
The best way to make sets is using
knee pads or a
gardeners kneeling pad . You'll be down working in the dirt for a while, about 30 minutes per trap at first, and anything that you can do to be more comfortable helps. You want to use shoes that you only wear into the woods, never out in town/at a gas station. Coyote’s sense of smell (220 olfactory senses) is nearly as good as a deer's (300 olfactory senses) and you have to work hard to leave as little human scent as possible at a set. Most trappers use different
gloves for bedding and handling a trap than they do for baiting. Gloves can save you from painful situations when the trap closes on your fingers, too. Coyotes are known to dig up traps if there's any scent left on them.
The equipment required to trap coyotes is rugged stuff. The traps have to be bedded properly, flush with or below the grade of the ground. You'll need a
cookie cutter or a
sod buster mini sledge hammer to dig the footprint of the trap out of the ground. Then, you compact the soil under the trap. You don't want the trap to rock to one side or the other or to press into the dirt when you're done bedding it. The coyote needs to be committed to placing its foot down on the pad of the trap.
To attach the trap to the ground, you can use rebar stakes or
cable stakes. I'm using Wolf Fang anchors attached to cable stakes. They are set into the ground using an
anchor driver. The trap and chain are attached to the anchor using
Minnesota Brand Crunch Proof Swivels,
Barrel Swivels, and
Quicklinks.
The coyotes are very strong and can wreck a cheap trap or pull out of a trap.
Shock springs keep this from happening, they do just what it sounds like. Every time the coyote pulls, the shock springs absorb the energy. It reduces stress on your trap, the animal, and the staking device holding the trap to the ground.
Trap screens go over the trap pan or you can use some
polyfill/pillow fluff to go under the trap pan. It's important to keep the area under the pan clear of clay, dirt, mud, or rocks. The pan should release the jaws of the trap with 3-4 lbs of pressure and anything in the way of the pan traveling downward will prevent the trap from firing. To cover the trap, you'll need a
dirt sifter. It helps to carry a 2-gallon bucket of peat moss to cover the traps with, as it’s light, absorbs moisture well, and won't clog up the jaws of the trap when it shuts.
While checking traps, it's state law to carry a
catch pole/choke stick.
It may be easier in your area to call coyotes in using electronic game calls and shoot them when they get within range, using a shotgun or rifle. Trapping equipment can get expensive and it's a daily responsibility to check and clear any traps. There are so many homes around me that it's not an option to predator hunt. If you have pets, they may get caught a few times before they learn a lesson about suspicious smells.
Once you have the trap bedded and anchored, you'll want to bait your hole, pipe, or tire. For dirt hole sets, you want to have backing to make the animal funnel into an area that the trap is hidden inside of. I use logs that I find in the woodline for backing, but sometimes you can use grass clumps. I try to place the trap 9" in front of the hole and 3" to the right, and left sometimes. It helps to have your trap off-center from the hole in order to have it aligned to attach to the leg of a coyote.
One
bait and 2 lures is the standard for baiting sets. I use Elk River Lures, No BS Lures, Caven’s and Pro Line. The bait works best when it's applied to some
sheep's wool. It causes the coyote to get curious and dig it out of the hole, pipe, or tire. Coyotes think that dirt holes are where mice are hidden or where a fox has buried a nice snack for later.
The
limit for inside jaw spread on a leg-hold trap in Alabama is 6". The K.O. K9 Xtreme traps are more than 6" unless you order them with inside and outside laminations. The lamination is just a small gauge wire that is welded to the contact surface on the jaws of a trap. It spreads the pressure over a larger area of the coyote's leg. They call jaw type traps leg-hold traps. The more springs on a trap, the faster they shut but they also become harder to set. If you were in Kansas or the Midwest, where the coyotes are huge and powerful then 4-spring traps may be best. A 4-coil trap also breaks icy ground better than a 2-spring trap for those who live in icy climates. But, our coyotes in Alabama are smaller, our weather is warm and a 2-spring trap is usually plenty. The K.O. K9 Xtreme would need to be inside and outside laminated, 2-coil, with offset jaws, if you decide on those. The
550 traps are best with offset jaws, 2-coil. The offset jaw will let blood flow to the foot of the animal, they're easier to release non-target animals from without lasting effects. If you were on a ranch where there were no non-target animals, like housecats, then a closed jaw trap would hold the coyote better.
A good trap with laminations, swivels, and shock springs won't hurt animals that get hung up in them.
Snares are illegal in Alabama for that reason. Snares are the best way to trap coyotes but they're indescriminatory and will kill anything that gets hung in them, like chihuahua's and housecats. Trapping coyotes in leghold traps is extremely difficult. You have to make sets (dirt hole, T-bone, pipe dream, tire, and urine post) to trick the yote into stepping on a 3" x 3" area (the trap pan), whereas if you set snares, you can place them where coyotes travel. They're cruising the woods and all of a sudden they're hung and choke to death.
Alabama Trappers and Predator Control AssociationTrapper's PostElk River Lures Trapping & Customer Appreciation
