Trap Sets The Step Down Set Modern Trapping Series Part 48

Description

http://www.thepathfinderstore.com

Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

more than folks Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school what I thought I'd do this morning is give you a little bit of a video about trapping that just involves a couple tips and tricks especially when you're talking about canine sense I just got back from the four tickers of America trappers college I took three of my instructors with me to that college and we had a very good time learned an awful lot there were things that I learned last year that I actually had forgotten that I learned again this year that reinforced some of the things that are more important that you forget over time and I learned a couple neat tips and tricks that I want to share with you guys today and the first one is the first thing I want to share with you is I want you to understand that what we're going to talk about today is we're gonna talk about setting for canine in particular but any animal that you're setting a trap for you need to set that trap where that animal is going to travel travel routes are your best locations for sets even if they're travel routes along the water for water type sets and most of your critters like canines and things like that your fox or coyote they tend to travel on well-worn paths or roadways dirt paths and things like that because all animals will take the path of least resistance so if I have a really long dirt pathway right here that goes for a few miles I may set three or four canine set strategically along that path but I'm gonna set them right on the path I'm not going to go off to the side 20 or 30 yards to the wood line or over to a water area that's over here to my right because those animal are going to travel this path they may go over to water area and come back there's a creek that goes across right here they may go down that Creek and they may hunt in there and then come back but their main travel route is going to be on this path so I want my trap as close to this path as I can get it now the other thing I want to do is I want to decide where I want to put that trap on the path and that's determined by the wind because I want the wind to blow across that trap and carry the scent of my lure or my bait to that animal as he's coming down the path now most of the winds are coming in to my face at this point so I'd want to put my back to the trail like this and I want to put my set here so that my backing

if I'm gonna have backing is here the wind's blowing across that backing and taking my scent down the trail or that animal

now do I want to take this side of the trail or that side of the trail well that really depends on a lot of things inside corners of trails are always going to be the best animals are lazy just like people they cut corners just like people doing they're gonna take that shortest route around the bend this is a little bit of a bend right here but it's pretty straight I'm still gonna take the inside of this Bend because it's closer to the water area it's closer to the creek it's closer to a little bit of a crossing with a pipe over here

and it again it's the inside Bend so I'm gonna set my trap right here and this is gonna be a mock set I could trap coyotes right now they're open all year in Ohio but the first not prime so I would just be wasting that coyote because I probably wouldn't use the fur for anything anyway but we're gonna make a mock set today and we'll pull a set before we leave but I want to show you a couple tricks and a couple different sets while we're out here stay with me okay so what we're gonna do is we're going to dig ourselves a trap that and the first set that I'm going to use here is called a step down set and this is one run legis favor set for Fox but he's cut a lot of coyotes in this set as well and what we're going to do is we're going to dig ourself an area that's about the size of our trap wide just like this then we're going to go up we're gonna dig a slot in front of that and that slot is going to be about four to six inches up from where our trap bed is gonna be then we'll continue to dig our trap that out if you're in hard dirt this might take you a little bit of time now don't think for a minute that you're gonna fool these animals into thinking that there was no human here it's not gonna happen

those animals are gonna pick up human scent no matter what you do the object of the game is to overcome the fact that they are cautious with curiosity so we want to give them something that they can't resist coming over here and sniffing out and then they get into our trap

what we want to do is we want to dig this trap bed a little bit of an angle and you can see I'm going out a little bit of an angle here where I've got a steep greed going down into the trap bed now I don't want to get too wide out here on the backside with this I just want enough room for my trap to sit in there well and I want it to be pretty even with my slot there's a lot of coal in this ground right here so it's a little tricky I'll dig that slot as deep as I've got my trap bed or off the bat like that now what I'm using here is an MB 550 trap Minnesota brand 550 these chops are pretty expensive but they come right out of the box ready to use you don't have to mess with pay attention and all those types of things you do need to dye them and watch them if you want to but I know a lot of guys that use them right out of the box so we're gonna set this trap real quick and this trap comes with what's called a night latching system so once you've set the pan on that trap you can actually pull that pan down until it clicks and then you know that it's ready to go now like I said you've got to have this bed wide enough for this trap to go in here so we'll have to dig it's just a little bit wider on this side I'll take it into coal here little hard ground what I'm gonna do is I'm going to sift a little bit of dirt down in here right off the bat get some of these clumps out of here you just try to sift a little bit of dirt for this trap to sit on down inside here now I'm not wearing gloves a lot of trappers weirdal us it's not one of those things where it's going to be that much of a killing matter in my opinion because like I said you're never going to kill the human odor it's going to be here it's going to dissipate over time but it's going to be here now what I would do is I would stake this trap down with this double staking device right down the bottom this trap I Drive to 18 to 24 inch long rebar stakes right into this double stake holder and you want to stakes in here crossways don't want this trap to walk off these traps are about 20 25 bucks apiece so once we've got that pounded in like I said this is just a simulation so I'm not gonna pound that all the way in I'll cover that with a little bit more dirt to give myself a solid place to bed my trap just like this and I want that trap to be in there my slots not quite wide enough yet I need to go just a little bit wider these bigger traps you're kind of at the mercy of that a little bit and I want to really kind of push this dog and pan you see this dog over on this side you want that pretty much right up against your slot that you dug like that now I would take a pan cover and I would cover this over if I didn't have a pan cover I might put a leaf on here and all that's going to do is keep dirt from getting underneath my pan as I'm filling in my

that they don't take a little bit of dirt just go right over top of that leaf just to kind of hold everything in place and look at what I got I want to make sure that that jaw is better than nice and solid right there just like that so the traps not moving and I want it pretty level with this ground but I want it at an angle going down and then I'm just going to cover this trap up a little bit more and I got a lot of chunky dirt here and not a whole lot of fine stuff let may take me a few times a mess in the pistol get enough to cover my trap there you go that's pretty well covered right there now what I want to do at that point is I really want this trap I want kind of a dish right here and I want the front end of that filled in pretty good for the moment up here where a Doug got slot right found a couple church to dig in this trap bed when I was out to college what you really want is you kind of want this dished out a little bit right here but you don't want that jar exposed so you've got to be real careful about what you do and my problem really is that I'm running out of fine dirt I can get that squared away here a minute now you don't want anything interfering with these jaws when they open so you got to be really careful about that but again you don't want this bed too wide because that animals going to approach it from here so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to come right into the front of this trap and I'm going to punch a hole okay so I'm gonna come right here right here to the edge and I'm gonna put my hole punch in there just turn this thing it'll pull that plug out and I'll have a perfect hole

so I like about these they give you perfect hole every time and again up sweep these on the side so that you've got kind of a step down in there where you've got level ground here and everything out here is level and when the animal enters your truck bed he naturally wants to put his foot right in that stepping point now stepping point should be where your pans out now if I'm going to back this trap at all I'm just going to take some of this junk that was heavy stick it on the outside for a minute

again I don't ever want my backing to be in front of my jaw line where my jaws are might wrap around out here I don't want anything interfering with that closing up so I'm just kind of bring us in a little bit it's like this close and that just kind of forces him if you really wants to get his nose in that hole walls I don't go beyond this I'm okay he really wants to get in that hole now he's got to come around the front side you stick his nose in that hole and that's exactly what I really want not too worried about the width here because for him to get in here he's got to put his paws here or here well here so he's going to step on there that gives me a step down son okay so there's my finished truck bed and everything is just nice and smooth right here everything's pretty level with the trail until he gets up here and he's got stepped down and committed his weight to that pan which will trip it off and catch him deep on the front paw and that's exactly what I want it's a foothold type trap these Minnesota brand traps are very very good on the animal they got good thick heavy cash jaws on them with a little bit of offset so when they grab that animals leg it's exactly that it's a foot holding tight trap it doesn't really cut them up or anything like that like some of the harder steel type jaws do that are very narrow it's a really really good trap I'll give you a better look at that in a few minutes so we've got our set you can see if I put this straight across ground level there's a dip under right here and that's what I want I want about an inch or so down lower so then the animal comes in

now you can see by how wide this dirt hole punch is if deer were to step on this the trap can't close tight enough on the sides that that deer can't just jerked his leg right and walk off but if a coyote 'it's in there he's gonna get hung in there and there's an offset in there to keep from pinching straight down totally on his leg and cutting off all the circulation or breaking the bone it's got rounded edges on it's got cast steel jaws so if you are thinking about the animals welfare when you're trapping or you're doing things where you're trapping Kivus but you might get non targets like raccoons and things like that in your trap that you have to release and let go this is a good trap to use when you say you got something real quickly though you know a lot of times when I'm out on the line if I'm out on the trapline where the case may be or I'm out scouting for my trapline I don't want to start fires in places where I think I might want to set a trap or along my trapline because it just creates curiosity animals like burn wood burnt smells so generally what I'll do is I'll take things with me like a regular alcohol type burning stove that I can use to heat up some hot chocolate or whatever the case may be and this asmath stove that we're carrying our website right now is a really good little alcohol stove that really really burns nice and hot you can light it with a Ferro rod you can light it with a lighter remember this stuff burns pretty clear so it's kind of hard to see it sometimes when it's burning but I can feel that heat just hold your hand a few inches above it and you'll be able to feel that heat and then come out with a new product that's on the market now and this was another collaborative product that we did with canteen shop comm that basically is the same style stove system pack stove that is on the canteen set except this one fits on the bottom of your path on your cup it's got the same grill top on the same raised knobs to get you stuff up off the fire and it works perfect with this alcohol stove now it works good with sticks and things too but it works real good with this alcohol stove

if I just want to heat up a quick glass of water to make myself some hot chocolate I've got that available okay guys you can see that pack stove works a dandy with that you know alcohol burner underneath it good thing I know that thing I've been on it's only a half a cup but it's a twenty seven ounce cup and I know it hasn't been on there five minutes I know it hadn't been under five minutes so that thing boils water right now and it's protected it protects the flame of that stove all the way around keep your having to carry any kind of a protectant to make sure that you don't get anything blowing out your flame and high wind and things like that so it's just perfect for those alcohol stoves and great for wood as well to get yourself up off the fire and get it right where that heat actually is in your fire two to three centimeters above the base now I'll tell you what guys for just tramping around you know for the day or whatever the case may be this makes a great little cook set combination you got that 32 ounce Pathfinder water bottle put that Klean Kanteen flat cap on there that gives you a little bit more room in a storage pocket or in a pouch that you carry the stuff in whatever the case may be and it's a good heavy-duty cap I like that metal d-ring on there that design works out really well Pathfinder 27 ounce cup fits right on there and that pack so just that's perfect right underneath it so that's a great design again collaborative design between the Pathfinder school and canteen shop comm Rob Simpson great idea on that pack so that you set up for the canteen works just as good for this cup stack this right on top of here right in your pocket or the pouch I'd use my bushcraft pack and put right at the top and it works perfect okay we want to show you another little trick a lot of people will use just regular sheep's wool like this that you can buy by the bag and that's what they'll put their Center their lure end and they'll stuff that down inside the hole and it works really really well for holding your lure sheep's wool

is a very multifunctional item that you can carry in your kit it has lanlan in it so you can use it to wipe down your metal tools things like that it'll give a little bit of an oil coating to them it's also very fire retardant so it makes great why for your flintlock or your black-powder firearm because it won't come out the other end in a big water fire like some cotton patches and things like that well if you're worried about forest fire and things like that so it's a very multifunctional item now one thing that you can do what happens with this is I'm going to tell you what happens first is you stuff this down the hole push it down there with a stick an animal trips your trap and he sits there and digs around he tries to get out and messes about but it's a big trap circle out here when you go to do a reset which you always want to do a reset on an area you caught an animal because that's going to be one of your better success because it's already sent it up with the animal if he drags this out and buries it under the dirt somewhere and you don't find it and another animal comes up to investigate your set he might try digging for this instead of going for what's in the hole what you can do to prevent that or to help yourself with that is just take a used 12-gauge shotgun shell a lot of guys used to use the plastic film canisters that you could get with 35 millimeter film but those are getting very hard to get shotgun shells are very very plentiful yes it's gonna smell a little bit like gunpowder in there but like I said you're not gonna fool this animal into thinking that you weren't here anyway he knows you've been here no matter how careful you are what you're trying to do is you're trying to overpower his sense of security or his sense of danger by overpowering his sense of smell and curiosity or food was something he has to get to and he can't stand it so what you're going to do is you're going to take some of this you're gonna stuff it down inside this shotgun shell like this and just stuff that down and it would stick or whatever the case may be and pick up any stick off the ground and Ram it down in there and then go about half way put your lure or your bait or whatever that is on top of that then maybe you take a little bit of a cap over like you would if you're building a shotgun shell cap it over a little bit just like that and drop it down the hole and shove that down in the bottom of the hole with a stick that holds really not and has a rocket drop down there somewhere something that's not really deep enough like I said you want that hole about eight inches deep so you want that shotgun shell disappear in there you want him to have to go in there and try to get down you don't want it to build this reach in there with one toenail and then pull it out of there you may not mess around your trap bed long enough to get hung so you want it good and down in there that's not quite deep enough it's only about that much of the hole sticking up above the shotgun shell I'd rather have about that much so that being said that's just an easy way to put baits and lures in your hole and then if he digs things up you're gonna find this laying around or you can dig this back up without having a bunch of dirt and mud and stuff like that all over your scent or your lure canister you're gonna have this ready to go for the next set or the reset okay guys well I'm Dave cambrie the Pathfinder school I appreciate you joining me out here for this video today real quick look at the step down set that was taught to me by Ron Leggett at the Ferg tickers of American trappers college last week really good canine type set guy catches 400 fox a year on a set just like that again we looked at the Pathfinder bottle stove that's been coming for a long time I've had that prototype model that I used here in this video for quite some time but I've had a lot of people asking me when it was going to come because people have seen it in past videos it is now on our website it came in while I was at the first taken American College so I wanted to sneak that into a video today just to give you guys a first look at it and tell you that we do have it on our site for sale at this particular time I thank you for everything you did for me for my school for my family all my instructor sponsors affiliates and Friends I'll be back to another video soon as I can thanks guys you