This is the second year of my Airedale riding along and she’s doing good. Most times when I pull up on the UTV and the trap is gone over a bank she starts whining and squirming. She can already smell it. Before I got her I outfitted my traps with eight feet of chain and the drag. I didn’t want them to go far, or even out of sight without her help. I know it’s dependent on the area but I want to shorten my chains so they can get a little further out of sight of the usual trails I set. Thinking of cutting chains to four feet, plus the usual chain length on 3N’s mostly. How do you guys do it that take a dog along? Having more fun fooling with her than I have in a long time.

Sometimes I use 30 to 50' cable and put my traps on them, as sliders to get my coyotes off the roads and back into the woods.

In on this one

When I first started trapping I had set a few traps up with drags. Terrible setups, wrong chain, bad drags, etc. The length on the chain was about 4 to 6 feet. I caught a coyote in one of those and he packed that thing about 1 mile through this pasture that was about 75% covered in pinion and juniper trees. I will admit that the chain length was not the only contributing factor to that coyote getting that far, but it didn't help stop him either. My setups now are at least 8 feet, sometimes 10 to 12 feet depending how the chain cutting goes, and I have one of my dogs with me most of the time. Nearly all of my traps are on drags, it is rare that I stake one down. The length of the chain on a drag setup is a large contributor in the entanglement, along with drag weight and design and chain weight. Most of my catches get tangled up within 50 feet or so, I've had some go farther and many more less than that. Now, where I trap I do not have to worry about anyone other than me finding my catches, so I don't worry much about where they get hung up. I do think that 4 feet is a little short, he might take that sucker for a ride and you could be tracking for sometime, regardless of whether you have a dog or not. Just my 2 cents

What t dub said is on the money

No shorter than 8 foot of chain for me, I want my stuff found.
No gofar drag's for me, go far far away that is.
Keep the set, hide the catch is all I'm wanting.

Keep the set I guess is more important than hiding the catch any more than I am now. Most places I trap don’t have much traffic unless it comes a 70 degree day in January and a pack of ATV’s get out riding around. Coyotes are getting sufficiently hid. Cats usually tangle pretty close. My dog has surprised me by changing her ride along demeanor whenever there’s been a catch. She must smell it sufficiently just riding up to the location and when I unhook her she usually goes straight to it. I can tell a difference between her cat and coyote bark. Thank you for the replies.

The only drag I will use in this farm country w/o added weight is an 8' X 6" dia. wooden fence post (common sight here). I don't have good results without 10-30 lbs. of added weight to any (and all types of) metal grapples in the (frozen) winter field conditions here. On your questionable sites with sparse cover consider a concrete or sash weight(s) added to stop your catch sooner.......................... my take. ....................the mike

It has to be the right terrain for me to use a drag or to consider one. Otherwise I stake, or run a slider cable from the trap set area to the selected out of site position.

several years ago when we use to get rain, a farmer had a calf killer that I needed to catch but the ground was so muddy and soft a wolf fang wouldnt hold let alone a stake----- I fastened together 51 Lbs (i weighed them after the fact) of railroad plates to create a mud mound---- eight feet of chain as well. a trap on each side of the mound with lure on top of mound--- caught the calf killer--- it was open country-- he took the whole mess, 2 #2 SJ modified traps, 51 lbs of weights and eight feet of chain half a mile--- the coyote weighed 34 lbs. I didnt think he would be able to move it ten feet let alone a half mile, I dont use drags in western KS anymore !

X2 he covers a lot of things in this thread.