Urban, I think we have talked a while back, we have certainly had our share of nasty weather down south! When I 1st got on the forum a year or so ago I had to get advise on " dry land trapping". I hadn't trapped in a long time and trapping coyotes and fox in the hill country and piney woods was new to me. I had grown up trapping the bayous of south Mississippi and Louisiana, and mink, coons, rats, beavers were main target. I'm not by any means an authority on the subject, but an old trapper showed me a couple tricks trapping muddy trails and marshy muddy conditions. He very seldom covered his traps like you see land trappers doing w/ a sifter. Most heavily used trails had standing water or soupy mud in them. He would take mud from the trail and cover the pan of the trap. Sometimes he would even take a leaf and stick it to the pan. Then he would just ease the trap down in the muck. A lot of times if you looked close you could even make out the outline of the trap in the mud. He usually set 2 traps pretty close together and anchor them w/ pieces of bamboo cane we would cut on the river. Most of our northern brothers probably wondering how you could catch anything like this, and I agree a coyote or a fox probably wouldn't step in this set. But then again you wouldn't see a coyote or a fox in this part of the world unless they had a pirogue! It was so wet and muddy lot of times we worked most traps from the boat. Well, didn't mean to ramble on, your post / question just reminded me of how we use to deal w/ those conditions. " bayou"
