Finish Your Trapline Strong

Finish Your Trapline Strong

By JD Rogge

Trapping season in Iowa begins each year on the first Saturday of November at 8AM, and runs through until the last day of January. On opening day trappers take to the fields, creeks, and ditches in numbers, excitement is high, and trappers are working hard to fill their trucks with fur. Statistics would show that the vast majority of fur in Iowa is caught during the first two weeks of the season. Depending on the year, water trappers often only get a few weeks of open water to trap prior to freeze up.

In the early season trapper’s production is high, furbearers are plentiful, moving well nightly, and there are many, many productive techniques that work very well early in the season. As the season wears on a few different dynamics face the trapper that traps deep into the season, but with the proper strategies, and knowledge, there’s a lot of fur to still be caught late in the year.

The first difference for the late season trapper is competition. During the first week of season, I have crossed lines with as many as 16 different trappers, many of those trappers are running lines before or after work, or using vacation time to trap. Generally after the first two weeks of season trappers have gone back to their day jobs, or tired of burning the candle at both ends by running early or late. The trapper that pushes past the first two or three weeks of the season will usually find little competition, except of course for an uptick in activity during the longer holiday breaks.

Locations are another factor that will somewhat shift as the season goes on. The furbearers we pursue need three basic things for survival, with a fourth playing a part late in the season. The first three consist of the obvious food, water, shelter, with the fourth and often overlooked breeding drive. Shelter areas become very important late in the season as the winter weather becomes harsh. Shelter areas to take notice of late in the year consist of farm buildings, abandoned or not, brush piles, hollow trees, culverts, den holes, junk piles, etc. Water also becomes scarce when Iowa becomes a deep freeze. Any fast moving water which stays open during the freezing temperatures becomes a magnet for furbearers. Locations such as running tiles, ripples at rocks or beaver dams, springs, etc, are excellent late season locations for coon, mink, and otter. Seeking your late season furbearers at food sources also gives you a lot of options to trap where the critters are concentrated. Late season coons can be found hunting any open water, farm buildings or confinements especially where livestock feed is present to be scavenged, silage piles, corn cribs, etc. Coyotes in the late season often hunt brushy areas, terraces, farm groves, scavange dead piles at livestock sites, etc. There is an old saying, “where there’s cattle, there’s coyotes,” they find easy protein sources late in the winter near cattle. Coyotes will even eat cattle feces for the leftover feed in it late in the year, as well as cleaning up afterbirth during calving season.

Breeding season, for coon in particular, presents some interesting opportunities.

Raccoon breeding season runs from late December through January, and the large boars run very hard during this time. During the coon rut, the boars are aggressively seeking out mates and are highly attracted to any glandular smell. Coon gland lures work well during the rut but fox, coyote, cat gland smells work just as well, and any coon set I make during this time of year gets a smear of gland lure of some kind.

Trapping techniques also change when the winter cold sets in. Coon techniques for me turn to trapping near farm building sites, den trees and other denning areas, and any open water. Dog proofs are my preferred tools around the building sites and dens, baited with Drybait and lured with a smear of gland lure. In areas of open water I prefer the Fish Stick set, as late in the season the banks are often very difficult to dig into. Predator trapping in the late season comes with its own challenges, most of those challenges consist of freeze proofing sets, and staking. Common methods of freeze proofing predator sets consist of bedding in peat moss, or waxed dirt, or using salt as a freeze proofing agent. I don’t prefer salt do to its corrosive effect on my gear and its tendency to attract deer to paw at the area. In my opinion waxed dirt is the best bedding material to freeze proof sets, though it isn’t as readily available as some other methods.

Snaring can be one of the most effective methods for taking coyotes late in the season. When the weather turns cold coyotes are on the move, and it you’re lucky enough to have snow, they will show you exactly where they’re going and where to set for them.

Late season also brings another type of opportunity for Iowa’s trappers, a marketing opportunity. The Iowa Trappers Association fur auction will be held at the Boone County Fairgrounds on January 5th 2018, with the doors opening at 7:00am and the auction starting at 9:00am. There is usually around 10-12 buyers at the auction to bid on your furs, and I have always been very happy with the prices that I have received. Anyone interested in selling at the ITA auction can contact the ITA for more details.

The late season can be an extremely productive time to be on the trapline in Iowa, focus on the basics the furbearers need for survival, stay motivated, and you can have success.