Hey guys, got a dozen wolf creek dogless #2 in the mail today and tuned them up tonight. Figured I would throw in a couple pics for those wondering. These cost me less than $100 for the dozen shipped to my door. The plan is to laminate, baseplate, and weld sterling swivels/#3 chain on them. I should have about $12 per trap in them. I went with the #2 size because I catch a lot of fox too, not only coyote. In NC if our jaw spread is 5 1/2 inches we don’t have to have offset jaws, so these are the largest closed jaw trap I can set on dry land.
First impressions out of the box were that the trap is actually pretty solid for the price. Quality of metal is not comparable to an MB550 or Jake but it is superior to a duke #2 for sure. The chain and swivels are actually a lot nicer than I expected. You could honestly probably get by with them but I’m not planning on doing that.
The first thing I did was set them and check pan height and loose jaw height.
Pan sits a little low so the pan adjustment nut needs to be backed off. Problem is there aren’t any threads left on the stud so you can’t do this. The stud needs to be a tad longer. I figured oh well it’s not super necessary anyways. So my next step was to cut the stud off
Next I checked pan tension. All of them were consistently 5 pounds out of the box. I like about 3 pounds, so I started filing the latch on the pan that attaches to the jaw. You don’t want to file this at an angle, you just want to shorten the nub that grabs the jaw by filing flat. Hopefully pictures explain this better than words. Take a few strokes and then check pan tension. All of mine didn’t change at all until I hit the sweet spot and they immediately fell to about 3-3.5 lbs. Perfect for me. I did get lazy and not check as often and got one down to about 2.5 lbs so you can go lighter.
Before filing
During
After
Pan brought itself up to a perfectly level height after filing, I lowered the loose jaw a tad.
I checked a few of these 10 times after filing and adjustments and the pan tension stayed very consistent. I think this will be a huge time saver in the field. No more bending dogs or tightening pan nuts again. I’ll be sure to post more pics when I finish the mods!