trap stakes

[Guest Kyle]

I've seen people use rebar to chain traps to, but I don't have a welder to weld a piece on the end.. What do you use to stake down a trap when trees are not available?

[JBar]

I use pogo cable stakes on all of my water and land sets. They are called disposable stakes but I've only had to leave one or two in the ground they have worked really well for me. Light weight and quick.

[RangerJack]

I either use a 24" rebar stake with a nut welded on top, or I use a finned super stake from fox hollows, with 16" of #3 American made chain. You pretty much need a winch of some sort to get the finned super stakes out of the ground.

[swampman]

If you want to use rebar and dont have a welder you can take a nut slightly larger than the rebar and flatten it onto the rebar with a sledge hammer this holds quite well. Might want to wear some protective eyewear when doing it in case a piece chips off.

[The Grebe]

Trap stakes aren't that expensive. Instead of screwing around with contraptions that may be bulky, or not work properly, or damage a trapped animal, it's better off to buy some if you can't make em yourself.

[JBar]

Had a trap on a post set stolen yesterday. The reason I bring this up in the topic of stakes is I could see where they had to use a pickup to pull the trap and Pogo out of the ground ha. Bad thing is if they found that set probably had fur in it.

[Random guy]

Man I hate trap thieves. I caught one years back...he fell down in the mud and hit a log.

As for stakes I would love to be able to stake in this country. Mushy ground stakes don't hold very well at all. Critters work em just a little bit and they come right out. In fact I had a yote in what I thought was more solid ground pull one 28" cross stake out and had the other one 6" from coming out. A few more minutes later I would have been tracking. I have alot of brush so good drags work well for me. Still have to track those down from time to time.

I have been thinking about trying the cable style stakes, if they hold in the bog it would make it very easy for me. Any luck with those in softer soil? I'm thinking the cable makes it so they can't work the bit or blade or whatever you call it on the end.

[JBar]

They work for just about all types of soil including sugar sand. I use 18" cables with 2" washers and try to always drive them in all the way, rocky soil can make this tuff. I'm pretty familiar with you're situation up there with trapping, went to high school in Kelliher. I think drags and heavy wire are still they way to go after freeze up. Usually do a spring beaver trapping weekend up north and I use pogos on all of my coni's they'll hold beaver even when driven into some pretty soupy stuff just have to sometime push the stake into the right spots and give it a little test pull most of my water sets I can still pull the stake out and reuse some are the first put on some of my 330's. They have deffinatly saved me time.

[JBar]

On another note you might just need a pickup to get them out on dryland but i prefer a spade.

[The Grebe]

Gawd I used to hate that! The very worst one was when a guy I knew and thought I was friends with, took two fox out of a double set I had working.

For bring a trapper he sure wasn't very good at covering his trail! I found the plastic tip off a tiparillo with teeth marks in it, he smoked those things and always had one in his gob. Small foot prints, he had small feet. The tire tracks right up to the sets were distinctive and I later found out they matched the tires on his small pick up.

When I went by his place on the way in, low and behold, there were 2 nice red fox laying up by the shed. I found one of his tossed tiparello pieces and it was a spot on match, so where the foot prints and the tires on the P.U.? You could see the destinctive match without even trying!

"Were did you get the fox?" He heed and hawed and told me he got em way back in on a farm he had permission to trap. I asked what kind of trap he got em in and he said a #2....his #2's had the straight type of jaws on top, I always used #1 1/2's and the marks on the foxes feet were both arced...I was 99 % certain he had bagged my fox....and I told him I had two missing and he got all red and flustered. Not a good liar either! That ended the friendship there and then.