In search of mink

[Guest little_lloyd]

Ditch,..I reckon youll be lucky if you keep going, It took me weeks upon weeks to catch a Squirrel in a fenn, Now im bringing them in a few by the day

I was watching the warreners Mink,Rabbit and Fox snaring video last night!! Now i know youve already tried the snaring but im not on about that!!

 

He made some blind sets as he called them, Where he dug a hole in the bank, Then dug a hole on top of the bank to meet the hole!! Put a few feathers around as an eye opener to the mink or that gland stuff and it looked as if it worked a good un

 

Maybe if you dig the hole for the pipe trap to fit you wont worry about having to set a fenn or snare. Then if Mink is working the top of the bank he will pop down to see what all the feathers are about and leave via the pipe trap,..Job done! Or he could be traveling the bank and want to investigate where the feathers lead to or the lure,..Job done

so you seen the warreners films and now you know it all , loyedy boy do you.

look mate there are boys on here traping before you were born

so be caerfull what you say mate

 

 

I should imagine there is tawny

 

Its not just the warrener who does all this blind setting , I know a few people who have had great sucsess with them .

 

 

[Guest JohnGalway]

Afternoon folks, I had the mink researcher out to me this morning to collect my catch. He said it's a male mink from this year We discussed culling options and he's going to get back to me on it, may change from live cage traps to fens but that won't be possible in all areas.

[Guest little_lloyd]

Afternoon folks, I had the mink researcher out to me this morning to collect my catch. He said it's a male mink from this year We discussed culling options and he's going to get back to me on it, may change from live cage traps to fens but that won't be possible in all areas.

 

Told you so it was a dog John A fair sized one too,Even tho ive seen bigger

 

Did not have any more this morning then bud?

[foxdropper 17,097]

Ditchy -Just a thought mate but your a smoker right .I was until recently but have seen the light , and by feck do i see a big difference in catch rates ,especially the first night of a set when there is no nicotine to wear off .I have an ongoing problem in my lock up with rats that until i gave up were ,to me untrappable but now the tally is 25 with a fenn and live trap .Your success will come sooner or later and i look forward to the 1000 word description of events lol.

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Good god! Drops; I genuinely feel that may well be the most valuable piece of opinion ever yet bestowed on me! Seriously! I'll be f*cked!

 

Know what? I had Mr Waters himself closely mentoring me as I went out after something. I bought the same traps he used. I treated them as he did. I set them just as he did, in the same situations. F*ck All! I eventually made One catch, almost by default. I was ripping my hair out. Mr Waters must've been ripping his hair out. My client was rolling his eyes and shaking his head. We just couldn't, for the life of us, figure out why in hell it worked every time for Mr Waters and I was an abject failure, even under his direct tutilage.

 

Mr Waters had no way of knowing I smoke like a f*cking stack and my hands must REEK of tobbacco!!!

 

I genuinely reckon ye may have cracked the biggest mystery of my life! I shall now get some gloves on and set those traps again! Thankyou!

[Guest JohnGalway]

Hi Lloyd, no mink today I'm afraid. Best I could do was a maggotpie on my rounds Plenty of vermin around but had to do other things today, work is getting in the way of my preferred activities!

[micky 3,325]

Afternoon folks, I had the mink researcher out to me this morning to collect my catch. He said it's a male mink from this year We discussed culling options and he's going to get back to me on it, may change from live cage traps to fens but that won't be possible in all areas.

Near where i live are some large rabbit warrens on B.R. land,it looks good on top but underneath its a mass of wood ,and concrete sleepers, lorry tyres,and old tree roots, which had been pushed into a dissused cutting and grassed over,the rabbits love it here. Every year groups of young lads creep on with there nets and ferrets and try there luck, but they are impossable too ferret, after a long wait they get there kit and clear off, often leaving there ferrets behind.I trap these sets with fenn sixs and check twice a day ,over the years i have caught quite a few lost or abandond ferrets usually alive,i also use bodygrip traps and last year caught two very large well fed fitchitt bucks,both dead. so in my opinion a fenn six is not up to the job of killing mink unless coupled with a secondary killing device,but the bodygip is.

micky

[Guest JohnGalway]

Thanks for that Micky, Snareman was also onto me about other types of traps and methods for trapping I like the look of those body grip traps, I think I'll learn how to set them properly and invest in some

 

I caught another mink this morning, in a different spot about 2 or 2.5 miles from the first catch. I think it's a small female but I'll confirm that when the mink researcher comes out to pick up. I don't have a picture at the moment as there wasn't enough power in my phone to work it's camera but I will post one later on today.

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

I caught another mink this morning,

 

 

You are taking the piss, sir! Stop it, please!

 

Bloody hell, John; There's just no stopping ye now, is there?! More power to ye, mate! I mean, this isn't " Begginers Luck ", is it? This is just plain f*ckin anhialation! Ye jammy sod!

 

And tell me; Do You smoke???

[Guest JohnGalway]

Here it is I'm going to try (if my phone always has enough power) to keep the picture format like this with the mink ontop of the cage to provide a bit of scale. As without something in the picture it can be hard to tell.

 

 

Ditch, no, I'm so anti-smoking that even the smell of it won't stick to me No one in the house smokes either and I'm very rarely around smokers.

 

If it's of any interest here are the pics of both of the sites that have caught mink so far for me. In order of when they caught.

 

 

Edited November 23, 2007 by JohnGalway

[OldTrapCollector 376]

here are the pics of both of the sites that have caught mink so far for me.

 

I thought that second site looked like a good set John, well done!

 

OTC

[Guest JohnGalway]

I thought that second site looked like a good set John, well done!

 

OTC

OTC, you were the first person I thought of when I saw that cage door shut, I knew you'd be happy to see that set catching I think this mink trapping is going fairly well now.

[Guest little_lloyd]

Looks like a B-I-T-C-H John?

[OldTrapCollector 376]

OTC, you were the first person I thought of when I saw that cage door shut, I knew you'd be happy to see that set catching I think this mink trapping is going fairly well now.

 

It is just the sort of place I catch mink best in cages, like I described to you earlier.

 

If you fancy a bait change or if the weather warms up a bit try kippers - they last a lot longer than the tinned fish and are just as effective as bait. They are really good in the high summer as they don't tend to get flyblown as much as other fresh baits, but in the cold winter weather I doubt it would make that much difference.

 

Is there a really fast, white water section of the stream you're trapping, or a weir? If so try the run along the very edge of the stream or just off it, that will give you good results - they won't travel the white water. Chuck a big slab boulder or two into the edge of the stream to create a little channel between the main stream and the water's edge and try a trap there too.

 

OTC

[Guest JohnGalway]

Lloyd,

 

yeah it does to me too. Though she didn't do anything (that I know of) to deserve being called names

 

OTC,

 

The first set to catch is right beside a little waterfall (glorified title, water is holding up behing an old stone wall in a field that's on a higher level to where I have the trap). There's a small pool there but the water runs a bit quick into and out of it due to the steep (ish) terrain. The second set that caught is beside another pool on a different stream, less fast moving but runs along all the same, there is already a bit of a channel off the main stream towards my trap because of the flood current carving out a bit of the bank under that rock.

 

These are really small streams I'm trapping by. I mean you can walk over them in one stride pretty much anywhere along their entire course. The water is coming down off the local hills and right into the Atlantic

 

Now, what I'm going to do next is to use my two remaning traps maybe Sunday. One will be going on a proper river nearer to the sea and the other I'm going to do a bit of speculating and put it by a lake (hope to raft it). I'm going to give the other two traps that I have out, which haven't caught yet, a few more days then I'll move them to new areas I have permission in