Thanks, Hank! Yes, we'll definitely get some things mounted later on; this one would have actually been a dandy as she was furred out really well without a rub mark on her. My taxi said she was pretty old too, as her teeth were worn pretty good. Number one on my list is a big ol' tom bobcat; as soon as I catch one that pushes 30+ lbs. he's going straight to the taxi. Might not even take that much. As far as attracting them, any trapper worth their salt will tell you location is the key. The second-most important ingredient is location. After that, it's all about location. Aside from that tidbit... This particular set was your basic dirt-hole set with a small mouse-sized hole dug under a tall clump of grass at your standard 45-degree angle going back under it to a depth of about eight inches or so... My pan was about six or seven inches back from that, ever-so-slightly offset to the right as most animals are right-footed. I mentioned above that I made the set a little "loud"; I did that by sprinkling a couple puffs of goose-down feathers from a Canada goose I found on the way out of the woods on one of my last bowhunts... great visual attractor that something lost its life in a tussle there. I hung one of the goose's flight feathers on a piece of monofilament line with a barrel swivel above it to help it to spin freely in the breeze above the whole set, and placed some Badland's Bob gland lure on a stick and a cotton ball and stuffed both deep into the hole so the cotton was just visible to make the target animal think its next dinner was waiting down there for it. I'll have to upload a pic to photobucket, but I did take a pic of the remake of the set. It's not as pretty as the initial set since the fox tore up my clump of grass I used as backing (this helps steer the animal to the front so they'll work the set from that angle and increase the chance of a catch). I'll try to get it up tomorrow if I can to help give you an idea of what I'm talking about.
OK Hank... to expound a bit here now that I've got the photos loaded. In this particular location, we set up on a spot where a couple turkeys had been killed by something on the edge of a huge thicket leading into some high grass. There's a mowed strip separating the two, and it leads into a corner that makes a great entrance and exit way from one ecosystem to the other. We had also found several piles of coyote scat right there, too.. although the area looks more "catty" to be honest. Either cat or gray fox, which often inhabit the same area. Here's a shot to show you the location I'm talking about. The really thick stuff is behind the set to the right on the other side of the fencerow. I'm standing up on the rise I talked about coming over when we found our gray in our set. You can see the goose feather I've hung as flagging above the set dancing in the breeze as well. This is a close-up of the actual set. The grass serves as backing, and I placed a pile of coyote scat to the right of the actual trap bed to act as guiding to steer an animal around to step on the pan. It doesn't look quite as good as it did originally before the fox tore it to shreds, because the backing was a big clump of that grass growing about three feet tall. It really stood out, but looked natural at the same time. Kind of hard to describe, but it felt really good! The hole you see goes back about eight inches or so at a 45-degree angle with a cotton ball stuffed in tight with some gland lure on it. If I had some rabbit fur, I'd rather use that but I'll have to wait until next year to build up my collection of that. Hope that helps... we're having a blast. Matthew woke me up before dark this morning to go check our line. I really thought we'd nail something in a new set we put in last night, but I've still got high hopes for that one. Also found some fresh bobcat scat in a creek bed we'd been using to walk in and check another set location, so we probably put it in just a bit from where it needed to be. If I get home in time, we'll build another really close to the stool in hopes he comes back that way to check on everything.
