I tried spraying following the instructional video on the Meat Trapper channel and it looked ok but the coat was pretty thin and it didn't bond all that well to the new metal. After a couple months banging around, being chewed on and drug around by animals, etc. a good bit of the paint had chipped off. After the first dip, my traps looked much better coated but I dipped them a second time and they have a good solid coat on them. I still have to dip in the finishing wax and then see how they hold up out in the field.
As a subscriber to your channel, I know you have a very nice property,. I've declared war on predators here on my property as a land management tool designed to reduce the predator population and give other game species a better chance to thrive. If you have too many predators on your land, then I would encourage you to add trapping as a tool to rid your property of as many predators as you can. Basically, the best thing a land manager who wants to enhance opportunities for game animals like deer, turkeys, quail, etc. can do is to kill every single predator they ever see on their land. I only wished I had started trapping years ago when I first bought this land rather than wait until I am 66 years old to give it a try! But I am sure enjoying it and I know it has already helped reduce a known predator problem at one specific location where I have predominately been trapping. On my game camera at that location, I've counted 10 different predators that have walked by my camera within a 30 day period. So far, I have eliminated 5 of them and I will trap or hunt them until I get them all, then move on to another location. It's going to be interesting to see just how many predators I can take off my 20 acres in one year. I don't think it is an exaggeration at all to say I likely have at least 50 raccoons living here as my game cameras pick up several groups at roughly the same time but at different deer feeding locations. I have fox, coyotes, bobcats, hawks, owls, possums, skunks, snakes, and domestic dogs and cats. I truly believe there are easily more than 100 predators that regularly prey on the game animals on my land. It's gotten so bad my rabbit population is nearly wiped out, my wood ducks are reduced, turkeys flocks are lesser, and even fawn production is being set back. The squirrels are also being impacted by too many predators. So I am hoping trapping will help swing back the pendulum toward a more balanced environment by taking out a lot of these predators. Thanks for your comments!
Hard to say that the smell really ever goes away. I'm pretty convinced from doing a ton of research that the nose of a canine (and a deer) are so extremely keen and capable that those two species of animals can likely always detect a trap slightly covered with dirt. Whether they are smelling paint or smelling odors such as rust or even human related odors from where the traps may have been really doesn't matter I think. What those animals know is that whatever they are smelling coming from the trap isn't something in their natural environment. Thus many times the trap is either avoided entirely or dug up by one of these, or even some other keen nosed animals. The bottom line is you cannot defeat the noses of most animals regardless of what you do, especially when they have all night to study the scents close up. Jeff, the reason I dipped these traps was for a test. I planned on using them in water settings, such as for raccoons, where the paint scent wasn't going to be detected by anything. I found the dipped traps worked excellent when set underwater. I have a wetland area on my land that is a great trapping location. But I did have a lot of dig outs when I tried them on land. Having seen that, I would NOT recommend dipping traps that are going to EVER be set on dry land. In fact, this year I am stripping off the dipped coatings from those traps and won't be doing that again unless I want to reserve a few traps only for water sets. I would also recommend using just one dip rather than two coats. The second coat put too much paint on the dog to suit me. I felt it hindered getting the right pan tension and made the traps harder to fire. That said, if an animal made a direct step onto the pan, it always fired. I only had one animal pull out last year and I honestly think it was a deer that accidentally stepped in the trap. I have so many deer here that they show up first most of the time and sniff to see what the baits and lure scent is all about. All that said, quite a few animals don't seem to care one bit about what scent might be on a trap. All they are interested in is a chance at what they believe is a free meal. Possums never care about scent. Raccoons often ignore human scent as they smell it so often when they raid garbage cans or live close to people. Domestic cats and dogs completely ignore humans scent too. It's the bobcats, fox, or coyotes that shy away from strange scents. However I still managed to catch one red fox and one grey fox last year in these traps, so they do still work even when dipped and set on dry land. Thanks for watching. I appreciate you checking out my channel. Good luck with your trapping.
If you didn't show your face, i would of thought Jimmy Stewart was talking. How did the double dip turn out? You're pretty much the only one I've found on the RU-vid that paint dipped canine traps. How did they work afterwards?
Justin, I had intended to do a Part 2 and now that you asked about the final results, I may do a follow up Part 2 video. In general, the double dip made the Rustoleum primer too thick. I feel it hindered the traps snapping shut cleanly. Doing a double dip was my own idea and I can't recommend it. One dip is plenty, even though the coat looks thin. Overall, the traps held up fairly well I guess but by the end of a four and a half month season in Mississippi, the wax coating was worn off and a lot of the rusty metal primer had been scratched or chewed off by animals in the trap. It's definitely only good for one season, in my opinion, unless you have a really short trapping season in your area. The real problem, I discovered is getting the primer off the metal to be able to start over. Unless you use something really strong, like acid, getting the traps back to bare metal so you can dye them the normal way isn't easy. I have to mention that the Meat Trapper uses this method ONLY for his water sets. I used the traps both ways, on land and in the water. They may do better and last longer if only used as water sets. Frankly, it was just an experiment and I didn't like it well enough to do it again. I'll just stick to normal dye and wax from now on. Thanks for watching the video and commenting.
@@TrehanCreekOutdoors I noticed the latest craze is dipping it in floor wax twice after the paint has dried or full metal jacket if you prefer that name for speed dipping. But like I said, i havent seen anyone do it to canine traps. So I'm more curious now after one paint dip and two speed dips ( 1 each 12hrs). Wish i was still in the Army where acquiring 5 gallon buckets of wax would of been easy and cheaper lol to test this.
@@justinhall2117 Most likely one paint coat and two speed dip coats would have been better than what I did, which was two paint coats and one speed dip. As for canine trapping, I only caught two fox in the traps after dipping them. One was a grey fox that was sound asleep when I came down the trail. But she was a mean one and had chewed on the trap for a while trying to get free. The other was a red fox and he was just laying around peacefully until he saw me coming. He didn't do much damage to the trap paint. A good lesson learned from this experiment is that the traps, once fully dry and coated with wax, apparently didn't have any objectionable smell that drove the critters off. I caught plenty of other critters with them besides those two canines. A friend who traps in Alabama, Chris Gilliam, has a video on his channel showing how he spray paints all his traps instead of dipping them. That works fine for him. I don't remember what spray paint he uses however. There's lots of ways to prepare traps and so I think it just boils down to what method you prefer. Good luck in all your trapping!
