So far I have been lucky enough not to have to set out a whole K9 line in the rain. Deer season closes next Saturday and I have to properties to set up on Sunday. Does any one have any tips or tricks they want to share on staying productive in the rain?

PMs

keep dry dirt with you.

Dry dirt will be wet as soon as you put it in the wet ground. Is it freezing there?

It isnt freezing, and I do have dry dirt. I may be over thinking it, and it may not even be raining Sunday but it is in the forcast and I would like to be prepaired or have a plan. It may just come down to sucking it up and fighting my way through it. I dont know.

What is your soil like? Up here I have a lot of Sandy soil so rain when not freezing is not a big deal. I fact damp or wet sand actually bed better. I know some areas south have clay, I trap a golf course with clay soil and in rain it is not fun.

We have lots of soil types, one of the places Ill be setting up is clay. The one good thing about all of this rain is it will make digging easier. The other place I have not set foot on, so im going to be scouting and setting on the go.

Peat moss has helped me more than anything

Wayne Derrick helped me with my procedure to keep sets working during and after rain events with out having to rebed my traps. It has worked well for me and I intend to keep doing it that way. Maybe a big umbrella with a stake on the bottom.

In Louisiana all it does is rain rain rain during trapping season.. peat moss and a was of grass under the trap pan.. get the trap pretty tight with peat moss. Then a little dry dirt, pack it down.. peat moss and more dry dirt. Pack it down and a light dusting of dry dirt.. blend it in and your good..

Lots of times i have dug a bed, packed the trap edges with mud and covered the whole thing with grass. Did ok that way.

I am in Louisiana and rain is a constant issue here. There is not much you can do on a big rain...2" or more. A lesser rain can be just as bad depending on how hard it falls. But when i get into a wet pattern I switch to almost exclusively flat sets/bone sets.so there is no bait hole to fill up with water and I also try to really pack inside the jaws and put a good bit of short clipped grass over the trap. It helps with the trap bed washing in and showing the outline of the trap. But like I said earlier...on a big rain be prepared to work.

If you start out in very wet conditions carry dry dirt with you.

If you set dry and know a big rain is coming you can cover the set with an asphalt roofing shingle while checking and remove it during next check or after the heavy rain. This will save you a ton of work. You will obviously not have any catches while covered, but the trap covering will be dry. Depending on how heavy the rain event was and where your set is made the trap bed may be saturated but it will dry quickly.

I use brown and grey/black shingles so they are sorta camo and break one shingle into 3 squares.

I really like the way zagger beds his traps in preperation for rain, the pipe dream method, worked well for me this past season in inclimate weather.

X2 on the pipe dream set

Ive used the pipe dream set for a few years now. Never had access to haylege,i use a layer of peat and grass or leaves or duff.

It's hard. All you can do is work.
Flat sets, post sets. Blind sets should make up the majority of your sets anyways. A few dirtholes along the way. Trench sets. And lots and lots of snares! A good loaded snare is killer during any weather conditions.

Lots of good advice, thank you for your help. I have had pretty good success keping traps and sets working during the rain, i just haven't had to set fifty or sixty sets while it is raining.

Ha! Here we are dealing with constant snow/freeze/thaw/snow/freezing rain/rain/snow/freeze/thaw/more snow/more rain/more freezing rain/10" of snow/1" rain/freeze/thaw/snow/ice/freeze/rain/thaw/8" snow/freeze/thaw/rain followed by 15 degrees below zero at night.

I think I'd rather trap in Louisiana.

While I am a LITTLE bit biased.....I think my Pipe Dream set will help you with your issues.

That set saved my season this year......I NEVER set 100% pipes, as I still think a dirt hole set is a better coyote set.....MAINLY due to the visual aspects of the set vs. my Pipe that I GENERALLY don't think of as a visual set (from a distance).

We had 5-7 inches of rain (depending one which farmers' rain gauge you trust!) the FIRST week of NY's land season.

For the first time ever, I actually QUIT trapping and went back to work! I just couldn't get anything new in and every day, my trap count decreased vs. increasing as it HAS to if I'm going to get the coyotes in numbers I desire.....

Weather broke....I went back at it. BIG front coming across whole country...I had two days to prepare, as I knew it would be a major coyote mover.....

I busted my hump and was ready with nearly 90 sets the on the eve of the storm. Temps in the 40's were going down to single digits.....with some lake effect snow, but not a lot. The problem? They mentioned an hour of rain before the snow and temperature drop. An hour? Depending on how heavy, could be OK.....OR it could be a disaster.

Well, that night, it all happened, and I awoke to 5-6 inches of new snow.....it didn't look too bad.

In the ultimate kiss of death, I had a buddy riding with me that day. First couple spots I clearly missed coyotes.....I got down on my knees and panicked....the sets had an INCH of solid ice on them UNDER the five inches of snow!!

Third stop, had a coyote in a bank set. Clearly, he had gotten caught before the ice.

OH, how the coyotes moved that night......I'd say almost EVERY location had tracks and/or misses on the pattern. Even my Jakes wouldn't work in this stuff, and frankly, they COULDN'T because the pans never went DOWN!

Cody kept track and felt I missed 25 coyotes or fox that day...or MORE! No BS! Now, some of them MAY have been the same animals....but even if I caught half of them, it would have been a good day! That ONE coyote in the bank set was the only catch that day! DISASTER!

Doesn't say much for my Pipe Dream Set? Well, NO set would have been operative that day!

After this event, I pretty much went to only setting pipes. The weather patterns this year simply forced my hand.

Later, in real snow, after Christmas, tough weather again. Just pipes (often longer to account for snow) got me through weather that had low percentages of success, but I was trying to get to a certain goal/number so kept pushing.

In January, I went to Illinois to trap with Randy Birdsong (HeadHunters TV) The night before we got there, it rained, and froze, and then dropped 10 inches of snow! Can I PLEASE catch a break???

I went 100% pipes and he did (initially) 100% dirt holes or poke holes. We took 50 coyotes and 9 cats in a short few days and 100% of my coyotes and cats came in pipes......and a certain percentage of his did as well, as he changed methods on Day 3 due to snow, blowing snow, etc. In the end, the pipes caught more than half of the take.....

I share this for a couple of reasons: not every season can be what we hope, and even if you plan everything to the most minute details, Ma Nature may have other plans for you.

The Pipe Dream Set came after years of fighting weather that showed me that traditional methods just didn't fit up here in rain, mud, ice and snow country. While I use the set more and more each year, this year's weather in two different states forced my hand to use it even more.

And the results were better than I had hoped.......

So, with tongue in cheek, I tell you to GO LAY SOME PIPE...........

Mark Zagger