Garry,

This is a good thread. I was just trying to stir the pot a little and keep it going. Your pictures are excellent and they show a very good general mink location that when found can and will produce mink year after year if properly set up. I pointed out that there was no cover on the banks and you are still catching mink at these locations because too many times good sets are passed up by inexperienced trappers because of what someone said or wrote. I've caught many many mink in cow pastures that looked similar to your banks in those pictures. I guess some mink just haven't read the books or watched the videos.

Very informative thread Garry...I'm a visual person and it makes it alot clearer to my limited thinking capabilities when I can see it in photo's.

Mr.Computer Hater would you happen to have any photos of set locations?

Tiles are put on a floor and grouted.Culvers are for water drainage.

Oh my goodness ... look at the what the definition of Farm or File Tile is:

Farm or Field Tile. A small diameter clay pipe installed in an agricultural area to allow drainage of farmland. .... Garry-

I was joking!I've heard it both ways.

Hey Mr computer hater how many mink do you catch a year anyhow?

Now thats stirrin the pot

PS I already know.

Pasadena,
I do have some location photos but they were taken with a 35 mm camera and the son-in-law isn't here to do whatever needs done to get them on here.

Mr. Otis,
That isn't stirring the pot. If you know, why did you ask? LOL
I caught one once!!!!

For a guy who "caught one once" I have learned a ton at your demos.

Now this is a Culvert ... 4 feet in Diameter ..... LOL!



Below I am adding a tile set ... I caught a mink in this set about 3.5 weeks ago but nothing since then. I did catch another mink in a bottom edge set about 25 feet from here. The one pond where I am trapping had a pretty severe fish kill in it from being frozen over for so long ... I found a bass of about 3 plus pounds ... so I stuffed it into the tile and reset the trap in front of it .... smeared a little lure on it and we will wait and see what happens .... Garry-

Garry, thanks for the set pic!

Digital Camera caveman Digital

It would stir the pot if you said how many you caught,and that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Better than last year by the Jan.1 ?

Garry did you set two traps on them big culverts?

I don't have the culvert set at this time that I show in the photo .... but with these clean round bottom culverts this size I don't set in them, but I do look for pinch points at one or both ends of them. A friend of mine caught a big old coon in such a culvert using a weight to retrain it and spent a considerable amount of time trying to get close enough to it to get a head shot ... he would go to one of the culvert and the coon would go to the other ..... so I don't tempt such fate ... Garry-

Mr. Otis,

I'm glad you have learned some things at my demos. It is gratifying when someone tells me that because sometimes I wonder if I convey what I'm trying to show or say so that it makes sense to those watching.

Pasadena,

Catch is just a little off from last year on the mink. Didn't equal Jan. 1. No female mink to speak of this year. Don't know what the reason was. ( Drought or lots of ice on the creeks????? ) It will be interesting next season to see if the female mink were there all along and reproduced well or if they were just not there at all. Male catch is normal. Kind of puzzling.

Same here .... I only had a couple of females from all of the mink that I caught ... I think 4 out of the 19 were female .... I was wondering if this could be because the female has a much smaller territory than a male and I wasn't trapping their territory or if their was a shortage of females .... like you said ... guess will have to wait until next year to find out ... Garry-

Randy what was your percentage of male to female last year?

Also do you rotate your trapping area from year to year to let the mink population re-populate. or does it really not make a whole lot of difference with dispersal of the young of the year?

Pasadena,

Last 3 years females made up 29, 30, and 34% of my total mink catch. This year they make up 18%. 34% to 18% in one year is significant. Hopefully just a blip and nothing to be concerned about.

I haven't rotated my area at all. I've thought about it but have never had the time to go out and get a bunch of new permissions so I could do that. I'm sure it would help some if I gave my line a year off but unless you let me trap your line, lol, I'm not going to do that just yet.

Will see what next season brings. If the catch drops significantly, I may have to consider it.

Thanks Randy...your percentages kept going up for 3yrs straight...so I would think at some point it would have to drop off.

You already did run my line and caught all the big beaver remember

What effect would higher numbers of coon trappers especially early in the season have? My friends have a local sport shop, they sold I think either three or four books of licenses this year most years they sell part of one book.

It is really hard to say, but I know that the early part of our trapping season I wasn't doing very with the mink, because at about every mink set I was catching coon enough nights to keep the sets screwed up for mink .... Once I had thinned the coon population out I started catching mink on a regular basis. I am sure that some coons set for some people would catch a mink now and then, but would depend on pan tension and trap placement too .... Garry-

Pasadena

There were lots of trappers around that was for sure and they could have had some effect on the females because they have such a small home range. I wonder also could a high coon population have an effect on female mink. By that I mean could coon prey upon female mink. I've had females eaten in traps by coon occasionally. My coon catch was way up this year. I set a personal best on them. Places I normally catch 2 or 3 coon I was getting 5 or 6 and places I normally get 5 or 6 I was getting 10 to 12. Who knows? Could be a lot of things or just a blip. Time will tell.