The mink
is has most luxurious fur of all the major furbearers and is
always in demand despite fluctuations in the fur market. For the
beginning trapper this is their third milestone in trapping after
the first muskrat and first coon ( I caught three coons and three
possums before them before I caught my first muskrat). I
attribute most of my mink knowledge from Tom Krause, Charles
Dobbins and the writers of F-F-G magazine.
      Compared to the raccoon and muskrat, the mink leaves very
little sign in the way of tracks and dropping for us trappers.
The secret to finding prime mink habitat is you have to
understand their behavior. You have to find places where a small,
serpentine animal be looking for food while trying to avoid
being eaten in the process. One thing that gets many trappers is
that they believe the mink along with the coon are water but this
is not entirely true, mink and coon are land animals that
frequent the water and many times these animals are taken in land
sets.
      When mink are hunting they are usually up against the side
of the bank or other object in the water. Places where it would
be a good idea to set your traps are under undercut banks, where
the stream gets real narrow, the bottom edge where the bottom of
the body of water meets a near vertical bank,where bent over
grass forms a a funnel, the list can go on forever.
      The best mink sets are blind sets. The reason for this is
since most of the time the nose of the mink is under the water
its hard to draw a mink off its line of travel short of a brick
wall. Another reason is that there are more raccoons caught in
baited sets for mink than mink. If your in one of the states
that don't have any time limit to check traps and your running a
mink line and don't check your line every day, in a way that is a
good idea if running a mink line, raccoons don't stay in trap and
cooperate and usually still alive when you come back. Many times
you can make an underwater pocket that is guarded by a conibear,
the freshly dug hole is irresistible to a swimming mink and
undetectable by the passing coon and the lowly trap thief this
set is as effective if not better than the baited pocket. When
you do make the baited pocket make the no larger than the set
trap and place the trap in the mouth of the hole. When you do use
a baited set the pocket set is the best and if your just want a
mink make the hole or put the bait in a spot where only a mink
can get to it. So remember to be a successful mink trapper you
have to be very precise on your location and put your trap right
where a mink would be forced to travel.
      After you made your catch on mink its time to skin and put up
the fur. Next to the fur, the glands of a mink.These glands are
a real valuable attractant for other mink and also a real good
lure for canines in dirthole set and the meat of the mink is
another attractor to the canines. Have fun .
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