cats avoiding set

Hello to all this is a great site with great people and information thank you in advance for helping out! I am new here as well as fresh in my trapping experience. I have a beautiful set location on a hillside spring surounded by thick cedars with about 6 main trails leading in and out. i have set snares in some and brushed off others as well as made a walk through on what apaers to be the most used trail( judging by freshest looking sign). I just caught a nice female in the walk through. upon my following check i looked through the photos captured on a trail cam, just 20 feet away from the location of the catch, i have photos of a second cat walking in the direction of the set. this cat visited the area just 8 hours after i had dispatched and remade the set from the earlier catch. Why did this cat not work the set? will it be back? any other advice is more than welcome. Thanks again.

Welcome Stonecat1.

That is a good question and I wish I could help you. I would love to see the trail cam footage if you could post it up. Maybe there are some clues on it.
IMO this happens more than some trappers realize.

Mr. Stone nice to see ya on here man! Some great cats guys on here that will be able to help ya out. Bucks.....Cameron2.... Just to name 2.... what say you?

Wow, who knows why any cat does anything??? I certainly don't.

There are a lot of possibilities as to why one cat "avoided" your set. I'm not sure cats really "avoid" a set (which sort of implies that the cat found something potentially dangerous about the area and decided to run away). The cat could have heard, seen or smelled something that was just more interesting to the cat at the time. There could have been other odors, sights or sounds you weren't aware of that were appealing to the cat. You just never know. My guess is that if the set is properly constructed, with good lure in place, the cat will come back eventually. You might also look at your footage and see if there is another avenue or travel route the cat showed you is preferable to the one where your trap/snares are set.

One time I had an electronic squeaker set up on a big shale hillside. There were cat droppings here and there in all the little caves and along some of the dozens of burro trails on the hill. It was impossible to narrow down where the cats were travelling so I used a squeaker to draw them to a specific cave (one of the more prominent ones), and then I set heavily on the trails leading to that cave. I caught a number of cats there and was pretty proud of myself. Then I set a trail camera at the cave and saw twice where cats went past my traps so fast they never got caught because they were taking alternative routes to the squeaker. They were hunting the squeaker, as opposed to just travelling along the burro trails, and their travel routes while hunting were different than if they were just wandering along sightseeing. Just something to think about.

Thanks for the help and input. I am going to check agian on the 1st and will try to manipulate the area a little better with a few more sets. I will also get another SD card so i can bring the one in from the trail cam and try to get the pic posted. thanks again and CLAMP ON!

Well if I caught 1/2 the cats that Cameron 2 I could add to what he said. They are amazing animals and we will continue all of our trapping career trying to figure them out! Good luck mix it up with a cubby set or something different.

BUCKSNBOWS wrote:

Well if I caught 1/2 the cats that Cameron 2 I could add to what he said. They are amazing animals and we will continue all of our trapping career trying to figure them out! Good luck mix it up with a cubby set or something different.

Whatever ....

Whatevz.

Cameron2 probably said it best.
First off I am not a big number trapper like some on this sight but do ok with the time I do trap. Every time I think I find a new or better way to catch cats than I have in the past I see sign of cats being cats and me still missing cats. I asked a friend of mine how many traps he runs to catch the number of cats he does. He told me "As many as it takes". Just some food for thought. Looking forward to the pics. Good luck.

Cant wait to get out and change it up. "Bucks" i had the same thought about a big flashy cubby on the corner post of the old fence that once surounded the spring. i am so happy that i joined up. this alone has been an eye opener, it is good to know that good ethical outdoorsmen still exist and are willing to help for the love of the game.thanks "NVsage" for the invite.

no luck on the line yesterday. i did get 2 more sets in at the spring, a cubby and a second walk through.