Took the g/f’s 5 year old out last night with me to put out 8 set on a long farm site driveway with coons crossing from trees&water over to corn and scored on 2 sets with 160’s and had a dirt hole set raped with fox tracks but no fox to show for it. Plan to put out a dozen more over the weekend. Putting fur up finished for the first time ever so I am sure they will look like swiss cheese by Sunday
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Jealous!!!
Decent score Erick. The season opens here the 5th, thought it was the 1st but haven’t trapped in 40 years. A friend and Myself put the boat in and checked about 2 miles of river for coon prints and seen alot of them, their everywhere. I’m going to make 36 sets with 220’s, half of them right on the waters edge and the other right up and over the bank and going to use a 7″ x 7″ box set there, going to check two traps with with each stop. I’m going to make another set right across the river with either a waters edge set or a box set depending on what the bank looks like.
I ordered two dozen 220’s and a dozen 110’s from Duke trap company in Mississippi and they should be here Monday he said via UPS. Going to make a few floating sets for muskrat and take the time to look for those little nooks and crannies where muskrats leave grass on the bank and in the water where they visit often. Going to make a couple box sets for mink on rocky shorelines and any creek mouth that shows their prints. I got to talking to him about furs and he said Iowa’s coons and muskrats are considered the best in the midwest, kinda surprised me and asked why. He said because of the food supply they both get big and produce better fur. He said their season doesn’t start until December when the hides fill out and get good enough to sell.
Where I put my boat in at a friends house there’s a small 2′ rise in the bank and a beaver has dug a hole and is building a hutch and is working on bringing in branches to feed on when things ice up. I’m going to leave that hutch alone to see what happens and learn firsthand what he does through the iceing up period to use down the road. It will be nice to have a beavers hutch 25′ from the ramp to see everyday and watch the progress.
Don’t know if any other guys are setting on this stretch of the river so the day before opening i’m going to cruise and look for any other sets to set away from them. If there is any other guys Its their area and i’m going to leave it alone. I’m in a boat and their on shore so I will be able to set more ground from the river compared to what their able to do, and don’t want to make anyone mad and loose my traps.
I did see one small spot where I think a young guy that must live nearby is going to trap because he has dug a hole set, in the bank at the waters edge and set a no. 2 foothold and 20′ up river he has two more no. 2’s traps with drown lines, and his traps are hanging on the sticks hes pushed in the bottom off the bank and in the water a couple feet, and those have drown lines too, their fresh sets. After I seen his sets I checked the river bank more throughly to see if anyone else is setting and there is none, but will check again when I go to put my traps down.
I bought a set of two old galvanized washtubs with the base stand for 25 bucks which is a good deal and am going to put that beside the hot and cold water outlet and floor drain in the basement where I can wash my hides and hang them to dry for a few hours before I freeze them. I’ve got to fabricate a tray that hangs on one washtub so I can wash and comb each fur. I also bought an old non-frost free upright freezer to freeze my furs for 65 Bucks.
I still have to build a 12′ by 8′ skinning shed that I’m going to put by the ramp but I’ll get that done in the next few days. Good luck to everyone trapping and Hopefully everyone will have a good season with good catches and lots of fur.
Still blue but my first time putting fur up!
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Nice Erick, I still haven’t got mine out yet. I was going to take a few weeks off and just trap but will probably work 4 days and trap friday, saturday and sunday. If it wasn’t for skinning them and the time it takes to do that I’d probably run my line everyday.
Nice looking start. I’ve had too much work going on and I’m about 3 weeks behind
Checked another spot on the Iowa river today after work and seen lots of coon prints and a decent number of mink too. For about 2 miles the banks are lined with broken concrete slabs to stop bank erosion. I know mink burrow into the cracks and crevices of those slabs, quite a few mink prints in the mud.
In another spot up river there’s an old muskrat colony with 5 or 6 holes in the bank, I’m kinda surprised no one has trapped it. The holes are from 8″ to 10″ wide and the last time I seen a hole that wide I got a 21″ rat freshly skinned without the tail and not stretched yet, That’s big for a muskrat, be nice to get 15 rats that size out of that colony, there’s a couple slides right next to the holes that I’m going to set too.
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