Trap Comparison and Thought Process, Modern Trapping Series Part 43

Description

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Tags: Pathfinder,Survival,Bushcraft,Trapping

Video Transcription

good morning guys Dave Canterbury at the Pathfinder school back with another video in our modern trapping series and what I wanted to do today was I want to shoot a quick video that does a little bit of comparison of different types of traps as well as walk you through a little bit of my mentality as far as long-term trapping goes and we're not talking about running a trapline in this day and age of easy freedoms to do whatever we want and be able to you know go out and buy a trap tomorrow if a trap breaks I can go buy another one tomorrow it's no big deal what I'm talking about is long-term self sustainment or family sustainment where you may not have the ability to go out and just buy another trap those items may be scarce in the long run and traps may be right up in there with guns and ammunition as far as availability so what I look at is what's the long-term on this trap and why do I choose one style trap or one brand of trap over another trap for long-term sustained 'men and that's kind of what I want to talk to you about today I'm not going to get over specifics of I would take this of this type and this many of this type in this many of this type because all of that stuff is environmentally a dependent depends on what animals you have in your area and what you're trying to trap I may be in an area that's loaded with beavers well you might be an area that's loaded with racoon while somebody else might be in an area where there's nothing but smaller game or you may be an area where there's a lot of coyotes and things like that to trap so or you can have a mix so all of those things dictate what your long-term trapping strategies are going to be whether it's running a line for fur or whether it is long-term sustainability of your family the other thing that you need to realize is that most of us in this day and age are not going to abandon everything that we have and walk off into the wilderness to try to survive long term we have families that will have to care for and take with us we'll have homesteads like I have here or we'll have cabins and things like that we'll have vehicles we'll have horses will have canoes will have boats we'll have trailers bus sleds all of those things dictate what you can carry where and how or you can take it as well as what you have for surrounding area maybe you live in a suburban area and you have the traps of urban environments maybe you live out in the country like I do and you've got access to thousands of acres of wildlife area and part of the argument to that that I hear from a lot of people as well if things go bad all of these people in this city are going to flood the wilderness and the trapping is going to be non-existent because all the animals will be taken I don't believe that philosophy because I don't believe that if someone can't do it today they're going to go out and do it tomorrow people who live in cities and don't practice these skills are not going to be any better off today in the woods than they are tomorrow in the woods they're going to stay in those urban environments to try to make the best of it they're going to be worrying about living off cans of creamed corn not going out and trapping raccoons so I think that practicing these skills now is very important and learning these skills now is very important so that if you have to use them you are able to do that you're not just walking out there because you can't trap if you can't control your body's core temperature if you're going to die of hypothermia when you walk out there doesn't matter how many traps you've got in the process you're still not going to be around that's all long-term methodologies and theories that you have to think about when you talk about trapping so back to the original intent of this video and again these are just my opinions I'm not arguing with anyone's opinions of what they've said in other videos everybody has their own opinion of things what I want to walk you through is my methodologies of why I choose certain things and certain brands over others and that's what we're going to talk about today so the first thing we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about coil spring type traps coil spring spring type traps are very good in a modern day and age for trapping they take up less room they're easier to bed they're not as good in water as they are on land in my opinion but they're very good land set traps the problem with them long term or for sustainability is how hard they are to repair okay and you have to think about those things when you're talking about long-term how can I repair this trap how easy is it going to be and what else can I get out of this trap well we'll talk about that when we get to long spring type traps the other thing about trapping is that I have to think about it that I would think about as far as my long-term mentality is the safety of that trap coil spring type traps have very small ears on them to get them open because of that they're very hard to get out of when you get your hand in one and I've had my hand in wanting anybody who's trapped for any length of time has been hung in their own traps because they have these very small ears on them and you have to smooth both of them out of the way to open the jaws of this trap if you get your hand hung up in this trap now I've got to figure out a way to get my knee on one ear and my hand on the other ear and try to open that trap up to get my hand out of it that's very hard to do with a double with a double coil spring or a quadruple coil spring trap it's much easier to do with a long spring trap that you can just step on the springs with both feet and open the trap up or one spring whatever the case may be so safety is a factor when it comes to a coil spring trap so let's talk about brands for a minute I want to show you a big difference in traps between something that's made in America versus something that's made overseas and I'm not knocking overseas product by any means or product is made specifically by a certain country that's not my way I use a lot of items that are made in China I sell a lot of items that are made in China but my company spends thousands of dollars in Rd to bring samples to the US and we go back to those companies and say we want this different we want that different buy more samples and bring them into the US and test those products thoroughly until we know what we've got and then we buy a thousand of them it's the same thing with traps you've got to be aware of what you're getting and I'm going to show you some very big differences between an american-made trap and a trap that's not made in America and we're going to talk about an older trap versus a new trap this trap right here is a wood stream soft catch trap it's the same size as this one and 3/4 coil spring made by Sleepy Creek it's the same size as this trap made by Duke these two traps are fairly new this one is brand new this one's fairly new this one's very old now all Springs on traps wear out over time I don't care what kind of trap it is it gets weaker with time all you have to do is go grab any trap that's old and you can operate the springs a whole lot easier than you can on a trap that's new and I'm talking about kana bears at this point I'm talking about coil spring traps and long spring traps so I can take this old double coil spring and very easily pull it straight to the bottom and loosen the jaws with just two thumbs our pressure and my hands very very easily will this trap still catch animals it absolutely will here's the problem the weaker the Springs get the easier it is for the animal to pull out if the animal pulls out of your trap and you lose him then that's one meal your family goes without in a long-term sustainability situation you just lost it it's a wasted bullet and you've educated that animal now so you're probably not going to catch them again that's the problem but will this trap catch it absolutely will is it a hundred percent effective now compared to when it was new absolutely not okay this is a sleepy Creek trap double coil spring and it is fairly new there is no pulling this thing down to the bottom with two thumbs I don't care who you are you're not doing it it's hard enough to do it even on a flat surface to get it down what I have to do with these in the field is break them down over my leg and then even then their way difficult to set it is no fun to have to set in a bunch of these sleepy jerk traps in a day's time because they're just hard to set because the springs are so heavy-duty on them okay we'll talk about the springs in a minute we'll take a close look at them I'll show you what I'm talking about this is a brand new doop trap okay again not banging on Duke I'm saying that in the long term it's not what I want this traps brand-new out of the box I can bring it all the way down and pull out the jaws with two thumbs those Springs are not near as strong as these Springs are again over time they're going to loosen up and get worse just like this old wood stream and this one's new so over time it's going to get worse and worse I'm going to get more pull that's a problem now let's take a look at these springs up close I want to show you the difference between the two Springs on these traps okay here is our Sleepy Creek you can see how heavy that metal is in those Springs and how there's no space in between any of the coils that's a very very strong spring this is our brand new Duke you see the space between those Springs and how spread apart the last three coils are we have one two three four five six seven coils they're in a tight pattern one two three four five six seven coils there but they're already spread out and opened up there's a huge difference in the strength of those two Springs anyone who has any mechanical knowledge or understanding of mechanics would know that and I just showed you that on camera so we already have a weak spring going in and over time it's going to get weaker

whereas this strong spring is going to get weaker over time but it's going to take a long time to do that like that old Victor wood stream we share that old wood stream I showed you it's probably a 40 year old trap okay now let's talk about one more important aspect of these traps all right all of these traps have a screw right here that is made for adjusting pan tension and the reason you want pay attention on your trap as we spoke about early in this series is to prevent non-target animals from easily tripping this trap if they stumble onto your set in a long-term situation I don't care what stumbles into my trap I want it to set it off and I don't even want these screws in my trap and we'll talk about that when we get into long spring and Victor traps and stuff like that a little while because it's just a moving part that I've got to mess with screws loosen up over time if they fall out and I get them lost and I can't replace them then my trap is junk but for sake of argument and talking about you know current conditions and longline trapping and providing food for your family and things like that or making money off of fur you can see how heavy-duty that screw is in this trap it's a pretty big diameter screw

and it's length is the length goes all the way through the bolt that's a good adjustment screw that I can easily turn to adjust that trap if I need to I need a pair of pliers on the other side really nope I can hold it man and I can adjust that trap very easily to get as much tension on that pan as I want to keep it from being floppy to get that four pounds of pressure I want bar caios let's go to the Duke okay this Duke is already completely buggered up right here because it's got a really cheap small screw in it that only goes just past the bolt itself the pan is floppy in this thing and just trying to get the pan tension I needed to get that for pam-4 pounds strip that screw out because it won't tighten up so now I got a floppy pan I can't do anything about I'm going to catch non-target animals in here no matter what I do and that screws completely buggered up so now I've either got to replace this screwing bolt with a better one or just deal with it why would I want to do that alright that's my point okay so now let's talk about long Springs for a minute okay all of these long Springs here are Victor double long Springs I use single long Springs as well but I prefer the double long Springs the reason I prefer the double long Springs is holding power and pull outs again I don't want pull outs especially in a long-term situation I don't want to lose animals so with both of these Springs coming up to close the jaws they hold the animal better than a single spring does single springs are good traps there's no question about it I've got plenty of them in my in my string but I prefer the doubles especially for a long term now these old Victor traps don't have any kind of screw in them all they have is a clamped on plate I'm going to get a little closer to the camera to show you that they have a clamped on plate that holds that trap on that holds that pan on there okay it's right here and it's clamped at the bottom you can adjust that by squeezing that together heating up and squeeze it together but you have zero pay attention for the most part again in the long term it doesn't matter I want to catch whatever stumbles into this trap I use these around water when I'm trappin because I want to catch those smaller type animals like the Coons and things like that anyway so I use these around water so that screw being not in there doesn't matter to me and it takes away a moving part I don't have to worry about trying to replace in a long-term situation now let's talk about why the long spring as I said I can step on this and compress both Springs with my feet to get my hands out of this trap in a long-term scenario if I need to the other advantage to this is if I have any kind of simple forging experience or I can do anything with my fire in a wilderness situation I've got a great big long spring here that I can make a knife out of if I got to sacrifice one trap because something's happened to my knife I've lost it I've damaged it I've broken it something like that I can make a very good skinning type knife out of one of these trap Springs very easily especially the bigger ones you know like these number threes there's definitely a good knife in that spring no doubt and I'll show you how to do that when we get to our blacksmithing series after Christmas I'm going to make a series of several parts on blacksmithing and woodland blacksmithing and camp blacksmithing and things like that and I'll make a knife out of one of these old trap Springs I'll find an old trap an old victor somewhere I don't want to I don't mind sacrificing and we'll make a trap spring knife and it makes a very nice knife so I've got the ability to multifunction this thing because I can make something else with this trap in an emergency if I have to now this one is a sleepy Creek again it does have a long screw in both it goes through it but it's a very high quality screw and a very long bolt that goes through there to adjust pay attention and like I said if I'm trying to target certain animals then I like these in my sets for you know long line fur trapping in the long term what I want to use this if I weren't going to be around anywhere I could do repairs no I would go with something like these victors and I've got big Victor's number three's and number 4s as well but I'd go with these Victor's

that have just the floppy pans that are connected on there with nothing other than a bent piece of metal that's what I'd go with so lack of moving parts safety multi-functionality of that trap those are all reasons I would carry long spring traps over coil spring traps in a long-term situation but in the short term or just for running a trapline I'm going to carry both I do like my long spring traps if for nothing else in the modern day just because they're traditional but I've got them in oversize from number one to number four in these Victor's and I like them real well okay so that brings us to body grip traps Conibear trap says they're called sometimes you know it's pretty hard to mess up a rat trap and that's pretty much what this is it is an X pattern trap that has one or two Springs on it depending on the size that opens and closes in an x fashion pretty hard to mess that up I don't care who you are so it really doesn't matter what brand of these things you buy they're going to be six and one and a half dozen the other you can always spread your Springs out in a vise if you have to to make them work better all right it's pretty hard to mess that up now with that said you know Duke is probably the cheapest Conibear out there so if I'm buying a bunch of 110 I'm probably going to buy Dukes straight-up like I said it's hard to mess up a rat trap and that's all these things are is giant rat traps for blind sets you can use them and modify them for pocket sets and things like that for mink boxes Fisher boxes all that kind of stuff but they're they're a rat trap it's that simple now let's talk about for a minute now that I've said you know any brand is okay on these things let's talk about sizes real fast and again I go back to safety concerns for the long-term a330 Conibear or bigger will kill just about anything that walks into it it will also break your arm I do not want something three or four miles out of my trapline that can break my arm and I'm not going to be able to get out of very easily if I'm by myself in a trapline on a longer term situation you carry a piece of rope with you and you can get this thing off of you but it can very easily cause a compound fracture and in a wilderness situation that will kill you very very quickly a 220 will kill a beaver beyond the shot of a doubt as long as you've got him chained down he's gonna die he might die not dying immediate death but he's going to die a 220 will probably not break your arm it will be very painful but it's easier to get off but a 220 is a very effective trap it's a little bit smaller and I would probably carry several of them I'm not going to talk about numbers again like I said on traps and what I would exactly carry because all that stuff is environmentally dependent but what I am going to say is that thinking about the safety factor alone I probably would not carry three 30s in a long-term self-reliance or sustainability type kit only because of the safety factor not because they're not immediate killers because they definitely are but they will definitely break bones at the same time I would stay with two 20s is my maximum size on a body grip type trap for that reason but any brand body grip like I said it's pretty hard to screw up a couple Springs in the next style pattern it's just a big rat trap so any brand you can find is good if you're buying one 10s duke's about the cheapest 110 out there if you're buying anything bigger than that prices vary sizes vary as far as jaw diameters things like that go just remember that pounds per square inch equals the number of the body grip so a 220 is 220 pounds per square inch a 330 is 330 pounds per square inch a 110 is 110 pounds per square inch you can modify these two 20s by taking one spring off of them I know a lot of guys that do that and still going to kill Koons very effectively and it's big enough a coon can get into it but it's probably not going to kill a beaver at that point very easy you got to have that second spring on there if you're going after beaver okay guys so I want to shoot this video today probably going to end up being a little bit lengthy on my thought process when it comes to traps and why choose certain traps or certain brands of traps over other traps both for the short-term or you know long lining right now in this day and age and long term as far as sustainability if there are issues down the road where we can't get the things that we need and we have to go out and trap our and hunt our own food trapping is obviously going to be a staple in your system for gathering meat as well as fishing as well as hunting and things of that nature but you need to learn to trap you need to understand the subtle nuances of different types traps and what I do at the pathfinder school is I test everything very very very thoroughly like I said I've been running traps out here for the last two and a half months and I did a very good spreadsheet of what I trapped and how I trapped it over the last few months and with 12 sets I was able to secure more than one animal a day on average now that's changed a little bit because of the deer hunting season in the last week week and a half my trapline slowed way down but pressure does that and you have to understand that when you're strapping to pressure on the animals changes everything

weather patterns change everything goes back to I'm out checking my trapline I've got my gun I've had my rifle my shotgun whatever my choice weapon is going to be in my situation and I'm hunting at the same time I'm checking my trapline but those traps are working for me while I'm sitting back at camp and that's what's important to understand so no videos that I do are bashing anyone else no videos I do are contradicting anyone elses opinions my opinions are my own take them or leave them it doesn't matter but understand that I thoroughly investigate and test everything before I talk about it most of the time I don't just come out here and say this is the best because I think it's the best this is the best because I've trialed it I've tested it I can show you with control groups of traps why this trap is better than that trap as far as new out of the box and that's what I want you to understand so with that said I'm Dave Canberra the Pathfinder school I appreciate you join me for this video we'll talk about snares in a different video we only talk about steel traps and this one I'll talk about snares and another one I thank you for everything you do for me for my school for my family I'll be back with another video as soon as I can you

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