One of the most sought
after furbearer for most trappers is the red fox and a valuable
prize for those who attempt to catch it.Its smaller cousin the
gray fox is not as valuable as the red and is not as common but
have a habit of confusing those who have one visit their sets and
not get caught and never come back.
      The first thing before the season you have to have your traps
tuned properly to maximize your chances to hold the animal when
its it caught. In this part of you trap preparation is to adjust
the pan tension, shortening the dog to the right size squaring
off the dog and pan notch. Adjusting the pan tension on the
coilspring is achieved by loosening or tightening the brass bolt
to increase or decrease the tension. I used to shorten the dog of
the trap and the notch after squaring up the notch now I just
square-up the notch and dog. Instead of shortening the dog and
notch I now do what is called night latching. This is done by
taking your file and filing a notch into the top of the pan notch
so that it goes 1/16th to 1/64th of an inch back into the pan
notch and file it high enough for the dog to fully engage the
night latch, the reason for the name is that you can set this
trap in the dark because when you put the dog in the main notch
and into the night latch you hear an audible click as the dog
slips into the night latch. Now with this almost as soon as the
pan falls the trap will fire, knowing this it is important to
have a little extra pan tension then with the normal notch.
      When trapping on land often dyeing is not necessary but is a
good thing to do since there is the chance of your trap covering
coming off because of the wind or it being eaten in the case of
using poor buckhulls. You also need to wax your traps. Dyeing
traps is done by boiling traps in logwood dye or walnut hulls and
other methods. Waxing traps is done to protect traps from rusting
and lubricating the trap adding speed. All you do here is melt
wax in water or just melting it on its own, but you will need
much more wax doing it that way. Dip the trap in the wax of two
minutes then dry. Another method of doing this is using sped dip
or cold dip that lubricates and dyes.
      When trapping canines it is important to be as clean as possible
to prevent scaring away a sharp nosed canine like the fox.
Cleanliness, the hardest to maintain and easy to forget. When
constructing a new set wear clean gloves, there are a couple
trappers I know that handles his traps barehanded because of the
canines' being accustomed to human smell, use clean traps (clean
meaning no smells),and have a kneeling pad commonly used for
gardening so you can sit down on and keeping your smell form
further being add to the set site. When you add the lure, bait or
lure to the set take off your gloves and put another pair on or
just don't put another on if you prefer and remember not to make
contact with anything except the air and the lure bottle.
      When you ask permission to trap on somebody's land you just don't
wait till season and set traps anywhere on the property and
expect to catch a fox, you have to scout. When you are scouting
you are looking for trails,tracks, dropping, signs of feeding.
When you find the sign of an animal record its location in a
notebook and when you come to make your sets, set near where the
sign was found. I would suggest that you make a map of the
property and map the location of the sign you found so see where
the concentration of sign is and to identify the common travel
ways.
      Sets used for foxes are the dirthole and the flat and their
variations. The common dirthole is made in ht following way:
First dig a trap bed just larger than the set trap and about 2 in
deep, stake your trap (or use grapples) and cover the stakes with
1 inch of dirt then place your trap in the bed and pack the dirt
around and on the inside of the jaws and leaving no dirt under
the pan and then shift dirt over the trap and blend in ht trap
when necessary. After bedding the trap make a hole about 3 inches
in diameter and 12 inches deep, it can be shorter if you can't
dig that far down but add a plug of grass to make the canines
work the set better. After making the hole place your bait ,
lure, or urine in the hole or use a combination of the three.
Remember to use different combinations at each hole and never use
the same one twice in one area. Also when choosing a set site
make sure there is a backing, clump of grass, rock , something
that keeps the animal on the trap side of the hole. Here's a
little tip, if a gray fox visited your dirthole set and didn't
spring the trap fill the hole level full of debris and usually
the next day you'll have a gray fox waiting, sometimes you mighty
have to wait a couple days. Variations of the dirthole is a
double dirt hole which is two dirthole with one trap and the trap
is placed in the middle of the two holes. The distance between
the hole and the trap is about 6-8 inches back and 2 inches to
the right of the hole. For the gray fox I'd use 4 in back and 1
inch to the right, remember that the gray fox is a smaller animal
than the red fox, unless you are in Texas :). The flat set is
constructed the same as the dirthole, except that there is no
hole but some kind of object big enough to keep the animal trap
side scented with a gland lure or urine and use the same trap
placement as with the dirthole.
      Remember to keep an open mind while trapping foxes or any other
species of animal. Try new things and see if they work, do not
get in a rut and do just what you been taught to do and nothing
else. Never make each set the same in the same area, make
variations, use lures made for mink or raccoons at some sets
where you have a trap smart animal.
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