Modern Trapping Part 7 Bedding Foot Hold Traps

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Tags: Pathfinder Survival Bushcraft,Traps,Foothold,Bedding Traps,Setting Traps

Video Transcription

back in the woods morning guys Dave Canberra at the Pathfinder school back out here at the Pathfinder school property for another series of videos in our modern trapping segment today what we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about how to bed your traps how to bed a double long spring trap and how to bed a coil spring trap betting your trap is very very important once you've decided your set location and what type of set you're gonna make you have to be able to bed that trap so we're gonna talk about that first then we'll move on to the other things I have over 4,000 acres at the Pathfinder school now and we have a large wilderness area behind us that we're gonna go through we're going to scout for trapping locations we're going to videotape all of that show you how to Scout show you good locations for trapping show you good sets and all those things that make a long series out of this modern trapping series but we've got to get the basics covered first and part of our basics for upland sets for things like fox kyle raccoon and what have you is getting a good trap bed so we're going to talk about that today stay with me okay guys there's a little bit of a dirt mound here beside me on the corner of a wooded area and then another wooded area like a wooded island right beside that the area I hurt the Pathfinder school is very very good for hunting and trapping because it has quite a few open fields in the front acreage that are split up and boxed in by different wood lines and edges are always good places to trap and through ways that go across from edge to edge are always great place to trap as well so there's a little dirt mound out here we're going to use that is right outside this edge in a cross way bit up a trap right here will bit up a long spring antic oil spring and show you how that's done so let's talk about tools first there's a couple tools that you're gonna want to have the first thing you're going to want is some type the heavy duty hammer that's got a chiseling device on the back for digging your hole and pounding your steaks this one happens to have a shovel on the other end this is called the groundhog tool we do sell these on our website I use this all through the trappers college and I was very very pleased with this performance it's very good at pounding stakes great for digging trap beds and you can even dig your dirt hole with it or your cubby with it as well the other tool that I do carry is I carry a dirt hole digger basically it's just a piece of pipe that's been cut out so that you can drive it into the ground to dig your dirt hole in front of your trap set which we'll talk about more we get into different types of sets beyond that you're going to want a sifting device to sift dirt back over your trap to camouflage yet to make it look more natural and we'll talk about that when we're betting our trap as well and then I've got just a bag of sheep's wool here you could use any kind of cat tail down or anything like that that will hold your scent you're going to put that in the dirt hole or pin it to the ground we'll talk about that as well later on in this series I've got coyote coon bobcat and make bait in here and then I've got some latex pan covers that go over the top of your pan to keep it operating and keep it from getting dirt underneath it so that it can't operate and I'll explain those things to you as we go so what we're gonna do first is we're first going to use a coil spring type trap this is the number one and a half or a number one Victor coil spring very small this would be for something like raccoons fox things like that it's got a double swivel point at the bottom that you can stake I don't have any stakes today but bear in mind that every one of these traps would have two stakes in the ground in these state points below it that would be below the dirt underneath the trap it would be staked two feet in in two different locations so that that trap couldn't be taken away drugged off and the EM wouldn't escape with a trap around his foot okay so let's get after it I'll get a close-up of this okay so we've got our location picked out and it's just a mound of dirt right here and we're going to dig ourselves a trap bed in this trap bed some grass below this that's fine this trap bed needs to be big enough that we can put our check deep enough that we can put our chain down inside of it and cover that up and still have our trap up at the top we don't want to trap buried we want it right on the surface I'll get all this grass and stuff out of my way here okay now so we would take this chain and we would stake this with double stakes pound those stakes into the ground and then I'll shove this down the dirt just a little bit we would set our trap and we'll set our trap out here on the outside remember what I said long as you're holding that strong jaw you're in good shape drop that over the top hold on to our trap frame and set our pan okay now we'll reach up through the trap frame move our weak jaw make sure that we're nice and level there we go that's what we're looking for now we're always going to put the dog toward the front of our set what I mean in front of our set means well we're gonna put our tracking point okay so we'll get that chain buried down in there and again we're not going to be very far off the surface once we get done with this I'm gonna pack this in real tight just like this then we're going to come over the top with our trap we're going to push that thing down into the dirt real good moving around a couple times just like that make sure that no dirt at this point gets under your pan now you want to pack a little bit of dirt around that trap you can move that weak spring again make sure that there's nothing getting under your trap when you're all sudden done with this and this trap is bedded properly you're not going to want to move you're not going to keep this trap or make this trap not operate don't worry about that but you want that thing better than they're tight because you don't want him to walk up and step on this trap and it rocks because if it rocks in the dirt when he steps on it he's much more likely just to dig this trap up out of curiosity for what it is then he is to step on your pan or check out your attracting you see it's still moving around a little bit we want to bed that thing really tight and you can see that that pans almost level with the ground that's okay but I want to make sure I don't get anything underneath it that can make it not operate okay

that's not too bad and you'll get to where you can do this in a very short amount of time like five minutes or less when you used to doing it I'm taking a little bit more time here now you see I'm gonna take a stick and Rick underneath that pan just to make sure I don't have anything under there and your pan tension that we talked about before should allow you to do stuff like this without setting that trap off pretty easy now what we're gonna do is we're going to take one of our pieces of latex covering and at this point we're going to cover our pan just like this now we could have pinched this underneath our week job if we wanted to it wouldn't really matter too much but this is just going to allow us to cover this trap up and not get anything on the trap itself or under the pan so now we're going to take our dirt sifter here I'm gonna sift dirt right over the top of this thing just like this now what I like to do here is blow the dirt off my pan just like that so that I know exactly where that pan is because that pan is gonna decide the orientation of everything else and I want that pan to be the lowest point in this trap because I want that animal to comfortably step down on top of it commit his weight to that trap so that will be the last thing I'll cover up so in this example real quick if I were going to take a dirt hole I would do it right out here in front of the trap and we'll talk about offset and things like that later right now we're just talking about betting the trap then I would build a berm around it to force them in to this location so that there's only one place he can comfortably put his foot and it's on my pan and when I'm all done with that and again we'll cover that in another video I'm going to cover up this pan with just enough dirt that the winds not gonna blow and expose my piece of latex okay so once we have our trap better properly it should not move when we push around it and on the ground now I know that my bed or my pad on my trip pan is right here because in the lowest spot in the middle exactly what I wanted to happen when that animal steps on that pan and commits his weight okay so that is coil spring let's talk about a double long spring they're a little bit different okay we use this same bed we'll take the dirt back out of it here we're digging just a little bit bigger this time because we've got a double long spring it already years now same story we would take our chain stake it down and bury it before we do that we'll go ahead and set this trap and break it down and get it where we want it

level out our pan then we'll set that to the side for a minute now we would put our chain in double stake bury the chain now to get this weak jaw to drop all the way down what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to fold these Springs forward that changes the game a little bit when you're bunting to trap because now you need a lot bigger trap bed now I need something this size and I've got to secure that in the ground and that's going to be a lot harder to get secured in the ground then our Goyle spring was you've almost got a dig areas out for this thing but keep a flat area for the pan and dig out for the springs and we can put the springs right to the front like that let's get our weak jaw up in the air and out of the way for a minute the one good thing about these is is that they will tend to be more stable because you have those legs on there so even if this traps not perfectly bedded in the ground underneath it's still not going to rock around on you because it's got those legs on it right there to hold it down there Springs now I'm gonna lift my weak jaw up before I get done before I bed this trap all the way in and I'm gonna go ahead and cover my pan just like this and like I said that's going to keep stuff from getting inside and underneath my pan when I'm putting dirt in there as I got quite a bit of space I've got a fill and then I'm going to come around the outside here and pack this thing in just like I did with the coil spring

there we go get to heavier chunks out of there we don't want them in there okay now we're ready to go back to sifting dirt over the top just like this to make it look natural then again I want to find my pan because that pan is what I want to be the lowest area in that set and by blowing straight into the middle of it I've built a crater right there or a little bit of a mound and then I'm gonna cover that with some dirt again just to make sure that nothing blows it off of there a little bit of rains not going to affect anything and I want that again to be the lowest area of my set we'll talk about the different sets later on right now what I wanted to show you was how to bed the trap so anything that was higher than that would get out of our way I mean with the lowest area of this set to be right there where the pan is again as soon as he touches it convinces wait he's going to be in your trap well that is how to bed a double long spring type trap all right guys I'm Dave cambrie the pathline school I appreciate you joining me for this quick video on how to bed traps and it really is a very very important step to learning how to trap is understanding how to properly bed those traps until you've seen a couple sets that have been dug up and the traps just flipped upside down it's not set off you really don't understand how easy it is for the animals step on it feel that unsecured ground because your trap moved under his foot and then he gets curious what was that and he starts digging it up and it's very seldom he's just going to dig it up from the middle and stick his foot in the pan he's going to dig it up from whatever moved and the edge is what's going to move and that's where he's gonna put his claws in and pop your trap right up out of the ground so it's a very important step to understand I hope you enjoyed this video I thank you very much for your views for your support for all the comments that you make and everything you do for me for my school and for my family I'll be back with another video as soon as possible

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