Okay, here we go. I always take new traps to the car wash and throughly get all the grease off them before waxing them.

BUT

This weekend I was talking with A VERY GOOD trapper on the phone and he said that he likes to leave "a bit" of that grease/oil on them and wax em that way. Said it will stop them from rusting so easy under the wax, or when some of the wax gets rubbed off after repeated canine catches. Coyotes/Fox/Cats we're talking here.

I questioned him and said that oil/grease will contimanate your wax bucket, get on all your traps and have digouts.

He said he's never had the problem, and his traps don't rust all to heck so easy!

Any thoughts??

I think you misunderstood me Andy.

Sounds like you better get all your traps back out, boil them clean of the new wax you have on them, give them a good coat of WD-40 and then re-wax them.

If you really gave a crap about rusty traps you'd stop using salt for anti-freeze.

I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but I won't do that. Alot of trapping is having Confidence. Confidence in your location, Confidence in your set, Confidence in your lure choice, and Confidence in your trap. In that case, I wouldn't have confidence in my trap. That's just me though.

Wax will come off easier than before!

I agree with Bottomline. If you tried that everytime you looked at an empty trap you would wonder if you did the right thing, and pretty soon you would start losing confidence. I can't imagine leaving a trace of oil or grease on a trap before I wax it, and I'm not as concerned about odor on my traps as a lot of people.

i agree with bottomline on that one. however i have thought of adding rosin to my wax to make it more durable.

..........how many 'possums did he say he caught a year? Hahahahahahahaha

Oil and wax are soluble in one another. Any oil on the traps would probably dissolve pretty quickly with the melted wax in the pot or drip off with the excess wax. I don't see any advantage to leaving the oil on, and I thnk the wax would stick better to a clean, dry trap.

Hold on. I don't think it’s a matter of sanity.

Personally, I'll continue to boil off the factory oil before I wax a trap. But I don't necessarily see that dunking an oily trap in wax would necessarily be a deal breaker. I've almost given up thinking that traces of oil and the like are particularly noted by the canines. I got broke of that when I dipped some traps in gasoline dip, and caught critters in them.

I don't think traces of oil in a wax pot would necessarily be an odor that would be alarming to, or attract the attention of, the target animal.

Me, I like to keep all contaminants out of my wax pot, but I really wouldn't doubt the success of a fellow who just went ahead and waxed oily traps.

-- Hal

it does not concern me, alot of other trash and miscellanous stuff has made its way into my wax pot.

It doesn't concern me either..I think human sent is something you should worry about--more so then oil.

ahh memories of the human scent thread!

Trapping wax is a by product of......petroluem!
( you did know that...right?)