What Lurp said: "They’re also nice in freeze thaw conditions as they’re much less likely to freeze down."
That's been the conditions around here this year. I have some exposed trap sets out for cats and I'm having zero issues with my longs, but my coils are a pain in the rear! I've made small blocks to keep them up off the ground, but then they wanna wobble, so I'm stuffing sticks and rocks under the jaws and levers to try and stabilize them. Gonna start phasing the coils out and go with all longs eventually.
Lurp, I'm surprised you only use them 5% of the time over there in your neck of the woods.
Last season I ran a lot of my line with expanded pan DLS as I was primarily targeting cats. This year I ran more of a mixed line and have been just running mostly coil springs with an occasional DLS on very rocky ground. I find my MB650 with a roofing shingle paper clipped to the pan does the majority of what a DLS will do outside of a few specific circumstances. It also didn't help that I bought all new pit pan systems for my DLS and was in the middle of swapping them all out when the season snuck up on me so now i'm stuck with much fewer DLS than I usually have. I will probably run a few more next season once my DLS arsenal is back in the game. For some reason I have a soft spot for a nice western cat in a DLS, nothing looks as good.