Having the Trapping DT's

Anyone else having trapping DT's? Don't know if there is a cure, or even if I want to try to cure it. When I'm driving, I find myself looking for sites to place a trap, droppings and tracks in sandy washes, or even the site of an animal running across the road. Guess I'm a hopeless case.

Have you thought of trapping mice, gophers and moles?

I finished working on my fur shed, then I jacked up the fur shed and mixed some concrete and poured a footing under one end of it where the moles have tunneled under the cinder blocks and dropped that end of the shed, did some wiring in the shop, worked over the urine cages, wired up flood lights over the urine cages to make it easier to feed in the dark, made more devils hat pins, sorted traps that need modifications done to them and I have been working on the fur tumbler. I’m still waiting for the belt I ordered to come in so I can finish the tumbler. I’ll post some pictures when it is done. I hope it will be this next week. It is really looking good. I still have a lot to do before this fall.

Aren't we all Ridge. Thank god for the rumble strip every day on the way home from work. I am keeping busy will all my trap prep on days off and getting closer.....at least thats what I keep telling myself. I am getting pretty good at putting those PIT pans on my longsprings thats for sure!

Hey Ridge i feel your pain it hasn't been real bad till now,Track season is done and I was just up north in Reno for the championships with the 8 girls we had qualified. So on the drive up there and back that was all i kept finding myself doing was lookin out the window at likely set locations. I feel that I may be Terminal.
However, Bill may be on to something, i did get home to a sudden mouse uprising in the house that my wife was not fond of. Sooo I am 3 of 4 on mice but i'm stumped on the stretcher configuration.. Must be desert possum's .... I think i will give'em to the dog's

I have resorted to trapping crawdads.....theres no hope for me

Pulled my trail cam this morning.
Video-click picture

Not the right kinda cat. Must be a lot of ferral cats around this area. Sorry about the bright had too many LEDs on. Pulled the camera and am putting in a new area tomorrow to test some of my lure I have made up.

I've been trapping rockchucks that are raiding the garden, but it just isn't the same. The weather is warm, the "chucks" don't get skinned out and trapping where I can hear sirens and horns just doesn't do it for me. I only have a few springs to put on the traps (when they arrive in the mail), dye and boil them up. I am however scouting new country all the time, and getting ready to set out some trail cams to see whats moving, but not setting steel in the ground just makes it just that much more not right. Sure miss the days when I worked for the govt. trapping coyotes year round.

Well, I think I'm going to go out and catch another rockchuck and make believe that it is a good colored cat.

Only 155 days until steel goes into the ground, (but who's counting).

Take care.

I thought of you yesterday afternoon. I was painting a new power skinner that I made for my shop and I had just finished painting it when a fly landed in the wet paint. Well that was the first catch of the week… lol I had some complaints on beaver and raccoons this spring and I live trapped them and moved each one to a new location, but it just isn’t the same. For me the skinning, fleshing and stretching is a big part of trapping.

Bill1306,

I'm planning on making a power skinner myself (shoulder problems). I've bought a 2,000 lb. 12 volt winch with a remote and plan on putting the skinning rig in my receiver hitch. Most skinners I've heard of use cable, but I've heard rope may be a better option because it has a little give to it and is not as prone to tearing pelts. I've never used one or seen one used and am interested in your experience. Also could you post photos of your rig? Thanks.

I have always used the cable that comes on the wench. The cable attaches to a gamble and it never touches the animal or the skin. Go down to the thread on Skinning rigs https://bobcatsrus.forumotion.net/t471-skinning-rigs . I have posted some picture of the power skinners that I make for the receiver hitches of vehicles or on the wall, where I have an indoor receiver hitch. I use a simple 12 volt lawn mower battery to operate it and it allows me to use it inside or out on the pickup. They are easy to build, it just takes some steel and time.

The thing to remember about power skinners is they are there to assist you with the skinning and not to just rip the hide off of an animal. It sure doesn’t hurt to help the hide off of the animal with your knife of hands or you can tear the hides and then it’s back to the sewing table. It sure is a lot easier on the shoulders and it makes skinning go a lot faster.

I had a rancher/farmer ask me to trap some problem beaver that are causing water to back up onto his hay field. Yippie, I get to trap!!!!!! Can't wait to get to it.

Hey Bill1306, when that tumbler is done, don't forget to post pictures.

I have already uploaded some of the pictures into my photo bucket account. As soon as the belt comes in I will be finishing everything except for the wiring. The motor is already setting in place and all I will need to do is to put the outside ¼ inch underlayment on the drum and give it a coat of primer and then a coat or two of pain. It is turning out like I thought it would. I know that it is going to work well and I’m sure going to enjoy using it. The base that it is setting on is 28” X 51” and the door is on the curve of the drum. It is nice and compact and even though I haven’t greased the pillar bearings yet, it spins very easy. Heck if I had Vanna White here I wouldn’t need a motor for it… lol This thing spins a lot easier than the wheel on the “Wheel of Fortune” did.

Everything sets inside of that base, even the motor is on the inside of it. Only one belt and it is only 122” long. It is a lawn tractor type A belt.

Jack Kelley has been talking about wanting to put one together. I don't have the room right now for one, but it is something I am really wanting to build. I've seen a couple through the years, and one had a door on the side and the other had a door on the curved of the drum. I think the access to the hides inside would be easier on the curved side.

Here is a little sample of it. You can see the motor on its mount. The weight of the motor is the tension for the belt. It is hinged off of the bar that is on the far side of the motor. I got some really good ideas from what Garman posted. He is right on with his idea to use the pillar bearings. It won’t take very much more to finish it. The nice thing about the base is that if it bumps up against any wall the drum won’t be touching the wall. The belt will be going against the wall and to motor will be at the opposite end of the drum from where I stand to flesh. The inside is 20” wide and the door is 20”X19” and even I could fit though that hole. This thing is very solid. The cross 2x4s are glued and screwed and the base is welded very tight. Other photo angles it make it look a little different and you will be able to see how solid it is. It really doesn’t take up that much floor space and it will be setting against the wall on the left side of it.



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Bill1306, You do incredible work. So far, it looks like it was something that was made in a production assembly line. Wish you lived closer as I would love to see it in action. Looks great, and you deserve some great looking fur with this quality of workmanship. Using the weight of the motor for belt tension is a great idea (since it spins so freely now). Is the motor pinned with a rod or bolts or have you welded a hinge to a mounting plate and put the motor on that? From the picture I can't really tell for sure. Can't wait to see it all finished and how you have the door in place.

I built a plate to mount the motor on and then I made a simple hinge. The plate has four nuts welded on the end of it and then there are three nuts welded on the bar. I have a long 5/16” bolt that runs through all of the nuts and it is fairly tight, but it does move freely up and down. By using the long bolt I can use washers at each end of the bolt as spacers to move the motor left or right to line up the motor pulley with the pulley on the drum. It is just a little way to fine tune the alignment of the pulleys.

That's quite the work of art there Bill.. Great job .. What kind of Media do you plan on using to give you the fluff and shine i'm guessing thats the desired result.
These are new guy questions . Hope you not offended by my Elementary Mind ... : )

I'm only going to use sawdust. The closest corn cob grit is 100 miles from me and I have access to a lot of sawdust. Some of the guys that I have talked to that put up a lot of coons only use sawdust.

Does there seem to be a preference towards the coarseness or maybe even wood type ( hard woods verses softer types ).
I would think that softer pines would absorb oils better but they may fragment faster and leave unwanted splinters in the fur.
Maybe i am just over thinking but i am sure someone has done some trial and error with this form of fur prep.
It must be that thirst for knowledge.... Man i hope that never leaves..
Thanks Bill for the info

A lot of trappers will tell you to use good hardwood sawdust. Some of the softer woods do have a little resin in them. I have a step on my front porch that has been oozing pine pitch for over 10 years and I keep wandering how much longer it will keep doing it. I would think that it would run out of pitch someday. I have been talking to some guys that I really trust with the information that we share and they all say about the same thing. It doesn’t matter to them if it is soft or hard wood, just as long as it is the finest sawdust they can fine. If I were only doing coyotes and cats, I would probably use the cob grit, but this tumbler will service more coons than anything else and sawdust is free. The main thing I want out of the tumbler on the coons is to get rid of as much oil in the hides as it can and clean up the inspection window and this will do that. It will also speed up the drying time. Of course all of the cats, coyotes, badgers, fox and skunks will be spending some time in the tumbler also. I made it to use and it will be used a lot.

Thank you for the info Bill .There are so many different methods and processes out there it can be mind boggling if you look very deep or wide at one time. Lookin forward to good reports this coming season to come Tumblin out of Ks....As it were..

There are a lot of different things that a trapper can try out there and to be a very successful. He just needs to keep his mind open and try new and different things and if they don’t work for him, that doesn’t mean that they still might work well for some other trappers. The only one any of us really needs to please is ourselves. I try new and different things every year. Some things I have kept doing and some of them I only tried a couple of times and they just didn’t work for my style of trapping. I am hoping that the sawdust will work fine for me.

I have made a lot of cage traps over the years and each year I use the new ones that I have made and sell the used traps that I have made the year before. Each year I improve the traps by making small changes to their design. The traps work great the way they are, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t make a better one than the one I am using. I have new design modifications that I will be changing to the traps I will be making this year. For me I enjoy the challenge of designing and making the traps that I catch the animals in. Each year I catch more and more coyotes in live traps, it isn’t because I’m a better trapper, it is because of the live traps I’m using.

I came close to some of that Kansas tumbling last night. The guy that I was working with last night and I spend most of the night dodging tornadoes and then searching the destruction paths of them for damage and people that needed emergency help or worse. Today we will only have high winds here and hot weather and tomorrow the tornadoes will be back in the area again. At least this time the tornadoes were around 70 miles from my house instead of a half mile from it like the last time.

Hey Bill i agree with the trying and learning new things. I to love to create and build. And who says us Old Dogs can't learn New Tricks.
Sure hope ya'll get some relief soon from all that weather....Watch ur top knot...... Fred

Bill, I saw your design for your tumbler and noticed you are makeing it 20" wide, just wonderingif there was a reason to not go 24" wide? How many total paddles will you have or will you use the 2x4's as paddles? It's starting to get time to get things ready for the fall, takes that long anymore.

I put 9 paddles in it. I figured that if I had more it might not pick up the larger furs very well. I hope that I have made the right decision. The outside of the drum is 21 inches and the inside is 20 inches. There were a couple of reasons that I went with the 20 inch. One was the total with of the tumbler inside my shed. The other was that I wanted to overlap the wrap a little so I could take it off with the belt sander to give the edge a finished look. I will say that it did take a little more time than I had figured that it would to build it. It was a really neat project to do and it is something that I have been wanting for several years, I just needed the right motivation to build it.

I trailed a big bobcat Saturday in a new snow. I never saw the cat but found a sparrow he killed and partially ate. I bumped him off it and he never cached it. The cat probably walked down at least 15 deadfall trees in the 2 miles or so that I followed it. Got soaked pretty good in my cotton jeans. But I never felt cold. Got home and googled some good looking areas. Yeah, I guess DT's.