Coyote Trapping Ain’t Playtime

“An old trapper gave a buddy of mine six traps and told him to go play with them,” Josh Hall recalls with a grin. “That’s what we did, and that’s really how I got started in trapping. But it didn’t take long to find out that it wasn’t playtime, and that there was a whole lot about this stuff that I didn’t know.”

Twenty years have passed since those early days, and during that span the 39-year-old Hall, an Emanuel County native now living in Johnson County, has compounded his knowledge of the art of trapping many-fold. That knowledge—both gaining and sharing—is important, even a driving force to him. As current vice-president of the Georgia Trappers Association, a lot of his precious time each year is spent passing on hard-earned gains. If it’s trapping wisdom you’re after, Josh is among the top guys to listen to.

Josh Hall with a middle Georgia coyote caught in an MB550 leg-hold trap.

When Georgia hunters, and especially deer hunters, think of trapping, probably the first image that springs to mind is a coyote. There’s no doubt that coyotes are major whitetail predators, picking off fawns, especially, at every opportunity. Crunch the numbers anyway you want, but the gist is that population dynamics are responsible for how wildlife agencies determine harvest quotas for hunters. That includes reducing the totals of antlerless deer that can be taken. Bottom line: who’s going to harvest those whitetails, you or a coyote?

To that end, we’re focusing primarily on the yotes here, and as you’ll soon see, now is among the very best times of year to get after them. But Hall, trapping in Johnson, Emanuel, Treutlen and Laurens counties, has taken a wide variety of Georgia game animals, including gray and red fox, raccoons, possums, beavers, otters—and one very special catch at the top of the list.

“I had a rare catch on one of the first cross fox I had ever seen or heard tell of,” Hall remembers. “I had to call a taxidermist to tell me what it was. That was a big deal to me. I kept that one, and he’s mounted at home.”

The cross fox, a variant of the red fox, is indeed a rare catch in Georgia. And they don’t come easy. Like coyotes.

“It was three years before I caught my first coyote,” Hall says, “because they’re smart. Really smart.”

This is serious business to him; before you acquire a half-dozen traps and go out to play, you might want to heed his advice.

“There’s a lot to trapping. Not a lot of folks realize that. Make sure this is what you want to do before you go out and spend a bunch of money on traps and lure and travel. You have to commit to trapping; it’s not laid back like going out and sitting in a deer stand. Once you set a trap down, it’s your responsibility to get back out and tend it the way it needs to be tended.”

The very beginnings of his trapping career prove that point perfectly.

“My buddy that got those first six traps got me started, but he didn’t want to get up every morning, because trapping is a job. He wanted to sleep in, and I wanted to go check traps, so he just kind of eased out. I kept at it for about a year and then job, family and responsibility came along, and I got out of it, too.

“The very first thing I would recommend for anyone considering taking this up is to sit down with a copy of your state game regulations and fix it in your mind how to do things the right way. There is a trapping season for   most animals; coyotes and beavers have no closed season and can be taken year-round.”

As an old game warden friend told me of beavers once, “A beaver is like a coyote or a crow. He’s always destroying something, on the way to destroy something or on the way back from destroying something.”

“You need to be sure of the when, as well as the where. For instance, whenever you’re setting up close to houses where maybe a landowner has had trouble with predation among his animals, always take pets into consideration. Find out exactly what pets are in the neighborhood, and if they’re free-roaming; that’s just one of the many things you have to work around.”

There’s no “sleeping in” when a trap has been set, and for a couple of reasons.

“You’ve got to go every day and check traps because state law says traps have to be checked at least once every 24 hours. Too, you want to go right at daylight because predators start to get scared, and they fight that trap more. They’ve been running all night and that darkness is their security blanket. They’re just the opposite of humans, who are ready to get started at daylight. It’s more humane to get them out of the trap early, and when you’ve got that early start then the whole day is ahead of you when the trapline is done. I’ve got a full-time job and a family, so I can’t just pick and choose what time of day I want to check traps.”

So we’ve established that this trapping business is not for everybody. But if you want to dive right in, we’ll get into some of the hows and whys from a guy who allowed the animals to teach him along the way. It will head off a lot of trial and error. And just what was it that got Josh back into all this?

An animal, of course.

“I had been out of things for a while, but one day there was a red fox in the yard,” he said. “I saw him, wanted him and caught him! And I was in it from there.

“When we first got started, I wanted to catch coyotes; but back then there was no Internet, no Facebook, no videos to learn from, so I just kind of learned it all on my own. One of the most important things in trapping is having a prepared trap. Think scent; always think scent. A coyote doesn’t want anything to do with you, and if he gets a whiff that a man has been around, he’s gone. If you don’t properly prepare traps, you’re wasting your time, your effort and your money. Forget it; go deer hunting. It’s that important.”

Prep includes boiling traps in logwood dye, then coating them with scent-free wax. Both dye and wax are available from a variety of trap dealer suppliers. Each trap has to be tagged with your permanent trapping number, which comes with a required state trapping license. And be sure there’s a solid anchoring system to hold the trap and animal in place.

“For probably the first half of my trapping days, I used a couple of traps for coyotes that always needed modification to be just what I wanted them to be,” Hall says. “Now I’ve gone to the MB550 (Minnesota Brand), which comes out of the box ready to go. I highly recommend that trap; it’s almost foolproof after you boil and wax it.”

Now. Where do we put it?

“In coyote trapping, you have to be on location,” Hall stresses. “It doesn’t matter that somebody told you that this or that place is just overrun with predators and they’re killing all the deer. I have trapped 5,000 acres and caught 10 in two weeks and trapped 300 acres in seven days and caught 10; if coyotes aren’t there, you won’t catch them.

“There’s pockets that hold a bunch of coyotes. You have to see sign, whether tracks or scat, and you’ll usually find them where field edges meet, or a drainage ditch or natural funnel; 4-wheeler trails, intersecting roads in the woods, those will be pretty much where you catch yotes. Look on the edges, not out in the middle of a field.”

Getting back to scent, “Wind direction can be your worst nightmare or your best friend according to where you place your set; it needs to be upwind of where you want the coyote to be. Always wear rubber glove and boots, and if it’s hot weather, be sure not to drop sweat on any part of the set or around it.

“As far as lure, the first part of my trapping it was something I had killed, like rabbit meat or venison. But when I found out about lures, the catch rate went up. Early on, all I knew was to throw some meat in a hole and try to catch something. There are probably 50 or 60 types of lures, and according to your area, what works for you may not work for somebody else. You have food lure, territorial lure, even curiosity lure, which is something weird and different that makes a coyote come take a quick look. It can all be way too detailed to folks just getting into trapping; once they start and get around folks with experience it gets a lot more productive.”

Hall is a lifetime member of GTA, and he joined initially because, as he says, “they were knowledgeable and just all-around good folks. My catch numbers went way up because of what these folks shared from their experiences. I’m very involved now because I want to help other trappers. I didn’t have that when I started, and it’s important to pass that along. We don’t want to see trapping become a dying art because it’s a vital tool in game management.”

Well, just how do we set this thing up?

“The most popular set is the dirt-hole set, where the trap is buried just under a layer of dirt that has been sifted and brushed back in to look exactly like it did before the trap was put in,” Hall says. “It needs to smell interesting but be natural enough to make the yote look around to see where that interesting smell is coming from. You also have flat sets, scent post sets, blind sets and on and on. There’s not one coyote set, there’s several of them, and then variations on those. Just remember that coyotes are easily educated. Do all your research before setting a trap. An educated yote can be very difficult to catch. If you’re not sure you can do it or see that you don’t have time, contact a reputable trapper. Those years of experience pay off, and GTA members are always willing to share when they can.”

January and February are among the best times to trap, Hall says, and for a variety of reasons.

“Hunting seasons are dwindling down, land access is better, and you’ll need to set at least two traps now in a spot to catch a breeding pair, because they’re going to be running together this time of year. It starts warming up a little in March but good trapping can go on into it. Nothing wearing a fur coat is going to do a lot of running around in hot weather, and I kind of fade out of it after February because of the end of the state trapping season (Dec. 1 to Feb. 28 for select species). By the end of February, fur prices go down. Too, the pregnant females are going to den up and not be running around; a trapper needs to be setting traps when he can catch them, not when they’re denned up.”

In January, plan to set at least two traps in a spot to catch a breeding pair of yotes since they’ll be running together. Notice the coyote in the top of the photo.

And then there’s September.

“Don’t overlook this month, because this is when the juveniles start leaving the parents. They’re not quite as smart as the older yotes so you can go ahead and knock them out. It’s a good time to reduce the population, because after this the breeding and raising cycle starts all over again.”

Trappers get into their pastime because they love what they do. As a money-maker, decide for yourself.

“Skins pay for your trips, gas money and such,” Hall stated. “You don’t ever know how prices are going to run; they go up and down according to the market. Coons might bring $2, bobcat between $15 and $25, otter about the same. Fox is anywhere from $8 to $15. Coyotes go from $2 or $3, but I know of one that went for $100, a really heavy, good-furred coyote. As far as numbers, the harder you run, the more you catch; if you drag around you may catch four or five a year; if you hit it hard, you can cover more ground and catch 50 or 60.”

Remember that catch numbers are directly proportional to the amount of coyote-bearing land available to you. But don’t overdo it.

“The longer the trap line you have, the more animals you’re going to have,” Hall says. “Don’t set any more traps than you can check and don’t put out more than you can handle. Make sure you have time to properly deal with the animals that you catch; you have to skin them in a manner that they can be fleshed, dried and stretched. It takes knowledge to do that, another thing you have to learn.”

It’s also one of the things taught at the Georgia Trappers Association’s annual convention. It’s an end-of-summer affair, usually held in September. Traps and lure are available for purchase, as well as demonstrations on how to trap yotes, and even a live trap line. There’s also a youth event coming up in April, featuring trapping competition and trap-setting and fur-handling demonstrations. Check ‘em out online at www.gatrappersassoc.com

With the end of deer season, there’s still a couple of months ahead for hunters to be out taking down their four-legged competition. Think of all the fawns you’ll save…