Squeakers use and type for snaring.

[ramrod]

Do you use squeakers for snaring or trapping. What types have you had success with and how do you utilize them at your set. I have read advice at some manufacturer's sites that they can be used as a "Bait Station" in snaring setups. Also read about individuals using them for trapping in a dirt-hole set. This is my first post to this forum. I have read through the old post and want to thank everyone for the wealth of information shared here. I live in western Utah and will be doing desert predator trapping.

[45/70]

In some situations, and my favorite is a slash pile left behind a logging operation, I will use one to bring cats into the vicinity of
my cat sets. At times, I'll use one in conjunction with a flasher as eye appeal. Many slash piles are oval, or elongated in shape.
I like to build a cubby back into each end of the slash pile. Don't go getting elaborate. Simply "hollow out" a hole, and restrict
access to it, or set it up as a walk-thru. I prefer to use a large bait in my cubbies, for instance a quarter, half, or whole beaver
carcass. Make a slight scratch-up over the bait; don't completely cover it. Lure with a sprinkling of cat urine. The slash piles left
behind a pulpwood clear cut are often wind rowed. At points thru the wind rows you will find gaps. The ends of these gaps, facing
each other can also be set in a similar fashion. Don't know where you are from, or what your trapping grounds are like, but the
where I am, the closer to the swamp the slash piles are, the better they produce. It doesn't hurt to drag your beaver carcass along
the ground as you are taking them to your sets. Adios, 45/70, LUKE 11:21 & 22:36, RKBA .

[Snareman]

Good post 45/70.

Do cats mark their kill? I see you mentioned sprinkling with urine. I also use and like the idea of dragging a carcass. I use the method frequently for different reasons; blazing trails in snow or grass to hang snares, create scent line for target to follow, create scent line between bait stations and scent lines between fisher sets.

Wind rows? That brings up something unusual too. I haven't seen "wind rows" in many years here. I remember as a kid about all logging clear cuts were rowed after the lumber has been cleared. Now I see where the skidders will drag the whole tree off the clear cut and the limber will remove limbs at the landing, then the limbs are piled into one big pile, thus voiding the clear cut from all the wood and limbs leaving low cut stumps and certain trees left behind for habitat... like oak 'cause they bare nuts.

Snareman

[45/70]

I know that using a light scratch-up and cat urine when placing the bait in the cubby works better than simply chunking the bait
to the back of the cubby, and walking away. Speaking of using these larger baits, wire them down, stake them down, nail them down,
or loose them. We still have windrows. Some of them are from old harvests, that have been replanted. We also have the skidders
dragging the trees to the loader area, where the trees are trimmed up, and lifted onto the trucks. These are the places that now
we tend to see more slash piles than wind rows. Both sites are good. Seems like a lot of the younger trappers don't know that
you have to go to the rough to find cats. Oh you'll snag an occasional one out on the hill, or in an open field, but if you depend
on these sites to produce your cats, you won't board many of them. In my part of the world, the rough tends to be the swamps
and beaver swamps. I have trapped cats in East and Middle Tennessee, the rough in those areas are steep rock sided hollers in
the east, and the gulfs that cut thru the Cumberland Plateau, or the rim rock that surrounds it. I don't know what one of you may
have, but if your honest with yourself, and want cats, you will know where to go to the rough. When you do that, you won't have to
tell a veteran cat trapper where you caught cats. The numbers will speak for themselves, and the old timers, like I am getting along
towards, will beam with smiles, remembering when they could get in and out of the bad places, and the numbers of cats they
brought out wih them. And you will be respected by men who have been there before you, and know how it is. Being in the beaver
sawmps has an advantage that maybe some of you don't have, and that's lots of bait at hand. I remember one place... , A big time
farmer built himself a 10-12 acre pond right on a point that overlooked a pair of thick as blazes beaver swamps, in the JCT of two
creeks. I was called in to remove the otter, and I had a good otter season there. But the icing on the cake were the cats. A lot of
the dirt used to build this dam, had been removed from a sidehill to the right of the dam as you faced it. What was left was a
dirt face eroding down into the two creeks. It resembeled and alluvial fan, and was covered in gray fox and bobcat tracks. A part of
this face had eroded down from the same spot, but split and ran two different directions. The cut away dirt, and left a huge red
clay column standing in the mouth of the flow. The erosion around this column left 15 foot high banks, and narrow entrances to the
pocket behind the column. Drug a fresh beaver carcass thru the fantail of dirt, and into one of the cuts that defined this clay column,
drug the bait completely around the base of the column, so that there was drag sign, and scent going into both of the narrow cuts.
Staked the beaver down in the back. Did a litle scratch-up and sprinkled a little cat urine, and set a foot hold in each of the approaches.
The next day had a double on the cats, and the bait had been ragged out over the trapped cats, and off into the swamp. Never did find it.
OK, I had more beaver threw another one back into the pocket. This time wired him to a 5 foot steel fence post driven in to deep,
only about a foot of the stake showed. Next day another double on cats, and it looked like a war had been fought in the back
of the pocket. I trapped this site for a month. Sometimes I had one, occasionally none, and often a double. And that's not counting
the otter I took out of the fellers pond, or the grays I pulled off the farm raods and fences. I'm not telling how many cats I caught
at that site, ya'' wouldn't believe it, and then I'd have to defend my honor. But the site was so good, that after I had moved on with
my line, away from that pond, I took time to check it every day. That site was near perfect. located at the junction of two large
beaver swamps. They left the swamps and crossed over a few yards to look for beaver in the pond, and left, well bunches of tracks.
Right there in the middle of it all was a perfect nature built cubbie with two entrances, and high sides, and I had all the beaver
carcasses I could carry in there. Once in your life time, well maybe, but I still check by there every year. Cubbies, think cubbies.
a hole under a rotting log is a cubbie. You don't have to build a lot of them, look for the natural ones and maybe enhance them a
little. It doesn't take much to throw a little brush over a heavy fork in a downed tree, and you've got a cubbie. Man, it's to late,
and I'm sleepy. Dream about bobcats in holes to night. Adios, 45/70, RKBA !!!

[MChewk]

Great post ...alot of good info for US non-cat trappers. I too have experienced those honey holes on other furbearers but never on otter and 'cats....you southern guys are lucky! lol

[Corey]

WOW...45/70 that post was worth a million bucks to a cat trapper. Thank you very much!!! Corey