For under ice beaver and perhaps other conibears, use a length of insulated wire like fine speaker wire, split the two wires for a few inches, when building your set wrap one wire around one jaw and the other around the opposite, then twist the ends together to form a circuit. Run the wire up to the surface on your pole or whatever. When checking traps your ohm meter function of your voltmeter, when connected to the separate wires above the ice will indicate a circuit, with either a tone or reading, when the trap snaps it breaks the circuit and you will not get a tone on your ohm meter and it will indicate an open circuit.

Eliminates a lot of chopping and shoveling.

Oh, don't let the bare wire touch the trap, just the insulated part or the trap will complete the circuit.

Thats a good idea. Hi tech hits trapping world. Thats cool!

won't the water alone complete the circuit?

No, water will not complete the circuit in this case.

Good idea.My cousin was tellin me about tryin that.Said it worked good.

phone wire works great and breaks easily when the trap fires. only problem is if you dont get a beaver in a week, you have a weeks worth of ice to chop thru when you do connect. on the up side, you can check em faster and without disturbing the area as much.

How about rigging up a cell-phone to the wires? With just a little tweeking it could call your land-line when a beaver's in the jaws!

I like to cover my sets really well with snow if available. If no snow, I pile on the cattails for insulation, don't like chopping ice any more than anyone else. 20 or more traps to check and you will have moved alot of ice and snow, some of it for nothing.

Your voltage won't be high enough for the water to complete the circuit, unless you have some terrible pollution. The warden would be confused watching you with his spotting scope from a mile away like they sometimes do up here. He or she would think you are nuts.

Hey swamphaunter, I live about 45 minutes north of you. Rural gilbert on the St. Louis river.

Great idea!

Wonder if you put an old telephone crank down there you could shock the Beaver up like the old timers done fish? LOL

Its Like MacGyver lol good idea though

Thats a true Wisconsinite thinking there! Kick it up a notch!

Nooooooooo.......I think a Californian who Thought of it. It was Available at the Big ADC Convention In Vegas.....

a flashlight works good.. if it lights up then trap is empty.

Luke

And the wheel keeps getting reinvented - lol. Len over on the Wilderness forum told about doing it this way years ago. He had pics in the post and everything. Sure saved that Alaskan a lot of chopping.

somebody should put some pics and info togther again for this and save it to the archives pretty neat trick i think

Paul, is this hooyey, or not? Sounds like swiss cheese, as in more than a few holes.

Its real, check with Family Trapper on the Wilderness Forum to see what I mean.

If you paint your conibears, that could be enough insulation to not allow conductivity on the trap itself.

Instead of wrapping the bare wires to the jaws, wrap them (a couple twists) together, around both jaws. When the trap snaps it will pull the wires apart, leaving an Open Circuit.

When checking thetrap,if you have conductivity, the trap hasn't been snapped. If there is no conductivity, the trap hasn't been snapped.

Use very light wire, not anything large enough to hold the trap in the set condition if/when the trigger is tripped.

There is a POSSIBILITY that the two wires could come into contact with each other, after the trap is snapped, but that's not very probable....

There is an article on this in the Dec TPC magazine.This is not a new idea. I first saw it in the Canadian trapper magazine back in the 70's Somebody used to sell a flashlight with a couple of outside contacts to check traps with. Necina maybe? The idea is OK, but usually you should only have to check those sets once or twice, then you should have enough to pull them.

There was an article in Fur Fish and Game back in the 70's that had the same information in it.

I was a day late and a dollar short on this thread, I got my trapper the next day and it had the beaver light article.

Sweet idea.......keep em coming

First of all I just want to say that you need to make sure any of these hi tech methods really constitues "checking" a trap or do you have to have "eyes on".

Certain hunting dog tracking collars are turned on by removing a magnet. If you ran a thin cable or wire from one of the 330 jaws to the magnet so the magnet would be pulled out when the trap fired you could tell if the trap had been fired, depending on terrain, tracking equipment and collar type, up to 15 miles away!