4fur: Haines Coni-pans

[jkl]

How did the experimental dry mink line go for you?

[4fur]

As soon as I get time to upload pictures I plan on a complete report, JKL.

[necoon]

I'm waiting also. Curious to see how you attacked them strictly on land.

Thanks in advance Wayne.

[4fur]

Sorry for the delay! I went through pictures this morning and uploaded some. It is going to be tough to explain something that many of you have never seen, let alone tried. Especially without showing you my set, which I'm not going to do. 

[4fur]

For those who have not seen the coni-pans we are talking about, here are some pictures. They are some really light sheet metal with some rods and washers welded on. Some I used were covered with sand paper and others I just sprayed with Rustoleum. You need to bend the washers to make them lay flat when set on the trap, too.








The washers fit under the jaw and the cross rod rests on top of the protruding dog...











When set properly, the pan lays flat and parallel to the ground...






Of course the pan sticks out from the side of the trap the animal will approach...

[blackhammer]

Have used a few conipans before but not enough to answer my question ,do you catch coon by the legs too often using them? To me I can just see them reaching in and putting their foot on the pan?

[4fur]

The wire trigger must be removed from the 220 to accommodate the Haines coni-pan. I had some traps which needed the triggers replaced any way, and it was easy enough to remove the bolt on replacement triggers from other traps.

The cross rod sets on the lip of the dog when set. So any pressure on the pan pushes the dog down which disengages it from the jaw and the trap trips. Of course the pressure to trip the trap increases if the first notch on the dog is used. I have caught many mink in a baited 220 set using the wire triggers on the bottom jaw in an "M" configuration, but there are two problems. There is still plenty of room for a mink to avoid my trigger wires as it enters the cubby, and often there is just too much tension on the trigger to fire even if the mink does hit it. BTW, most of the mink I do catch in baited 220s are caught while they are trying to pull the carp head out of my set. I have tried other pans including the clip on Barker which reduces the chance of a mink slipping past the triggering mechanism, but it still has way to much tension to trip on every mink that works the set. I still have some Barkers in use. It was 2-3 coon after this one that the pan came off and I frisbeed it into the weeds...









While I haven't used the wooden pans, I imagine they have the inherent problem of having too much tension to consistently take every mink that works the set.

I could explain my mink set a lot easier and better if I showed it to you. At this time I do not feel comfortable advertising a set which will kill a domestic if they stick their head in it on a public forum to trappers of different skill sets, experience, etc. I learned my set at Trappers College over 20 years ago and I assume other graduates were also shown this idea. And they were also sworn to secrecy.

The set I use is a little different but is still just an enclosed bait guarded by a bodygrip. Here are some boxes Furgood loaned to me which work good with the Haines Coni-pan. But they will also work with buckets square or round...








Notice the deep spring slots which allow the trap to be placed inside the box so the pan does not protrude. The inventor of this pan uses boxes with a similar design. 

IMO these pans set inside a bucket or box are way less likely to take a domestic when compared to a standard triggered bodygrip.  Impossible?  I'm not saying that, but I will say highly unlikely for a full sized canine.   
    
I guess this about as far as I can go explaining the Coni-pan.  I'll start another thread to show some results.  

[4fur]

Good question, Hammer. I did not catch one coon by the legs. Nor did I suitcase any. Every coon right behind the ears. I was baffled on how this could be happening. Until about the tenth coon which had both front legs still wedged in the jaws of the BMI Mag. Obviously, the coon ducks his head under the top of the set as he steps on the pan.  As they do their death dance they must pull the foot (feet) which tripped the trap from the jaws.  This is as far as I can remember any coon making it into the trap...








I did have some problems with some thrown traps. Some may have been coon working the set from too far out but I believe most were coyote (or fox) getting a sore nose, traps dry firing because of such light pan tension or a coon working and shaking the set from the back or side. I did have this interesting catch though...

[jkl]

Thank you 4fur. Cant wait to hear more and see the results.

[riverbandit]

Very interesting idea.

Noticing how that grinner was caught, did you have many fired traps? Just wondering if a coon had its head up when the trap fires if it may miss altogether.

Did you try these with the pan away from the approach at all? You would most likely end up with suit cased coon every time I suppose.

[4fur]

Guess I'll just continue on this thread.

I'm sure everyone wants to see some mink pictures from the dry land experimental mink line, and I'll get to those shortly, but first a little more background. I didn't set out these traps until December 20th and ran them for 4-5 weeks. I only had about 18-20 sets out but they were in proven mink spots where I have had super catches in seasons past. I ran about a 40 mile line mainly on the Missouri River bottom drainage ditches. These ditches are almost all completely dry now. There was little snow to see sign in Dec. and then in Jan. it seemed to snow about a half inch three times a day and then it might blow or all be melted the next day. So it was virtually impossible for me to read sign of mink or anything else working sets for that matter! Scat and sign on a previous scouting trip showed the presence of some mink, though. This was a fairly typical set location...










A week before setting out the mink line, I set a few traps in prime coon spots because I have no use for a set which will not take coon. They caught coon...












And skunk...













And possum...












I have no problem suit casing, but it is really cool head catching stuff! Even...

[x-demoman]

I used a few of the Haine pans on 110s. I set mine in cubbies but my triggers were inside the cubby so the animal(hopefully a mink) had to pass through the trap before the trap would fire. I did not catch anything but only had 5 sets out for a week or so. Getting the pan tension was a real issue and seemed like they wanted to go from hair trigger to elephant trigger. On the duke magnums I was using required that I grind the washers on a angle so they would fit inside the humps. Although I did not catch anything I will experiment with them more next year. I did not use any of the 220 triggers. I also painted my and on a couple sprayed on undercoating so they were not so slick.

Gene

[4fur]

Mink pictures are my favorite! But please be patient.




I hung a big bloody carp head in the back of my enclosure to start, which is what I do with all my conventional trigger baited 220 sets. But since the great flood of 2011, there are very few houses left on the MO River bottoms. No dogs allowed me to break my no red meat rule so I gradually added rabbit, chicken heads, feathers and chicken livers. I didn't use a loud call lure because I was right on location. But there were very, very few possum, skunk or coon to plug my sets so I could have stunk things up. I did use a weasel lure, a fox gland lure and even some 15 yr. old mink gland lure a friend gave me. I grassed up the enclosures and even covered the floor. Mice and shrews were not a problem because of the shear volume of bait I was presenting! BTW I could see where they were crossing my pans in a couple of light snows and they did not trip any of my traps, but a friend who ran these over around Brayton did catch a pack rat.

Want to see some weasel pictures?

[blackhammer]

The pans are status quo for most bobcat trappers in northern Mn along with fisher and marten. I have caught weasels with coni pans in my limited trapping up there. So pan tension must have been ok. Used wood pans a guy sold along with the barker pans you can buy.

[4fur]

The experimental dry land mink line didn't catch one weasel, but...

I did not catch a single mink either!!!!!

Not one.  Surprisingly, I'm not the least bit disappointed.  Like everyone on here, I check a lot of empty traps, but I must say that I am not used to checking the same traps empty day after day, week after week!  But these sets looked SOOOOO good, I just knew the next day was the day!  A lot of us have caught muskrats or beaver in sets we had just completed, sometimes still holding onto the trap when the animal swam through it!  I would not have been a bit surprised if a big mink would have emerged from the slew grass or cat tails and charged my set while I was still kneeled in front of them!  They just looked that good!

So what went wrong?  I was hoping you might connect with the 110s in trail or baited sets, Gene.  You pointed out you did not have many traps set, and I really didn't either.  In years past, I remembering having over a hundred mink sets in the water over a couple hundred miles and come home some days with not a single mink!  But I might come home with 2-3 dozen over the next two checks.  That's mink trapping.

Mink numbers were definitely down in this area.  This was about 2/3 of this years mink catch...









Maybe just as startling is the fact that you are looking at nearly my entire 'rat catch.  Here was a sale form 3-4 years ago (before the flood and following drought)...

And this was another good sale the same year...

What I'm getting at, it seems like on this side of the state any way, when you find the rats you'll find the mink.  Water quality is so poor here we just don't have many fish, minnows or chubs.  Our watersheds don't even support otter.

I also thought about the abundance of mice this year.  Maybe the mink just weren't hungry?

Maybe disease played a factor?

Maybe I'm just a pretty poor mink trapper?

Any other ideas why my mink catch in general was so humbling and the experimental line using baited 220s with the coni-pans didn't produce?  I have an idea but I'd like to hear some others' opinions.  

[cottonwood]

I don't have a good reason as to why there was fewer mink this year. But my mink catch was also way down this year. I caught maybe 1/3 of what i normally catch.

Although I targeted rats more than I normally do, I caught more rats than I have in many years.

Less mink = more rats ? ? ?

[LLLTrapper]

Could it have been a poorer quality fish head this year Wayne? I hardly think it was that you are a poor mink trapper. Maybe it had to do with water that usually stays open freezing up or you definitely could be on something with the mouse thing. I was talking with another good trapper that was saying the carcass pile trappers had a hard time catching yotes this year and they thought it was because of a huge mouse population and they were not hungry, LLL

[fishingron]

I tried the Haines pans. I put the pan inside the boxes. Most were neckcaught.I had coon take the pans off several and steal the bait

[hooter]

Numbers of mink CAUGHT have been way down here the past 2 years, more so this year. Does that mean the pop. is down, I don't know prolly a little. Mink don't need to hunt the water to survive they have other prey to catch. With all the dried up minky waterways around here I believe they just head out over the countryside so to speak, visiting farmyards in their circuit. Just talked to a farmer who has one living on his farm. There was a thread on here or T-man awhile back that talked about the mink pop. follows the rat pop. to a certain extent. May be more to that than a guy thinks? Could be the mink just weren't there anymore after you set for them Wayne?

[4fur]

I'm glad others on here tried the pan set up, too. I saw a set up in the ROW which had the pan facing inside the box. The trapper had the pan at almost a 45* angle rather than flat, kind of similar to the way wooden and Barker clip ons are set. Looked really good but I wondered how he placed the pan on the trap without it firing? Remember, the main feature of this system is less than 1/2 lb. pan tension that causes the trap to trip so easily. I also wondered if it might be too easy for a coon to flip off the pan without firing the trap. Of course safety grippers are mandatory using these things!

Interesting you took weasel in the conventional coni-pans, Hammer. I would suspect you weren't taking every light-footed animal that worked your set. Do you tune your bodygrips? I did hear of a bobcat taken using these pans east of here. Heard he was suit cased.

Feb 13, 2014 6:38:57 GMT -6 LLLTrapper said:

Could it have been a poorer quality fish head this year Wayne? I hardly think it was that you are a poor mink trapper. Maybe it had to do with water that usually stays open freezing up or you definitely could be on something with the mouse thing. I was talking with another good trapper that was saying the carcass pile trappers had a hard time catching yotes this year and they thought it was because of a huge mouse population and they were not hungry, LLL

Interesting about the carcass piles, Larry. Lack of deeper snow probably hurt me. I know I've always had way better luck dry land foothold trapping mink in big snow seasons. Oh I am a pretty poor mink trapper! I've said before the DNR would increase my fur check if they changed the regs to one mink per season! lol

Dave, I think the possum just tripped the trap with his nose. My enclosures are about 8-9" tall so a coon must duck his head when entering. If you get on your hands and knees and crawl under a chair or table, I think you'll find it is much easier if you do it with your hands placed under your shoulders/chest. I ran some sets with the pan sticking completely outside the enclosure (it would be similar to a bucket with shallow spring notches) and was amazed I still caught coon right behind the ears! I can't say I had many or any more tripped traps either.

[4fur]

I' think you're right, Hooter. I talked to a farmer who had a mink living in his rodent infested Morton building less than a half mile from two of my sets!

Yes the mink pop. was down and you can't catch them if they are not there. But twice this happened. This set was on top a beaver dam maybe 30' from a river and I was SURE it would produce my first coni-pan mink...
















On a warm up, I busted ice and made a fish stick set down stream 10' from the coni-pan which caught a mink night two. Had another set by a tile dump that the same thing happened except the first night! Both baited 220 sets were in action more than 10 days before I set the fish sticks.

[x-demoman]

It is very tricky setting with the pans inside a open front cubby since the pan must be added after the trap is inserted into the cubby. Saftys a must. My pans were set like your Wayne basically parallel with the ground. Maybe next year will experiment with some in trails. I have 2 doz traps and pans just did not have enough time to get them all ready for the past season.

Gene

[4fur]

Feb 13, 2014 9:15:34 GMT -6 x-demoman said:

It is very tricky setting with the pans inside a open front cubby since the pan must be added after the trap is inserted into the cubby. Saftys a must. My pans were set like your Wayne basically parallel with the ground. Maybe next year will experiment with some in trails. I have 2 doz traps and pans just did not have enough time to get them all ready for the past season.

Gene

I bet you would have made time had you caught a couple mink the first night, Gene. lol Same here. I had the equipment but the mink line definitely was a big conflict with my coon and also canine line. I think I am kind of like you in that I emphasize quality more than quantity. I like high percentage sets!

But it is fun to try new methods each year and some actually work! I bet most guys first looked at a Lil Grizz with as much skepticism as me!

[Kelly]

The reason for the head catches with the pan set on the animals approach is their head is already inside the jaws when the step on the pan and since the pan falls away below to bottom jaw comes right up in front of the feet and behind the neck. When the pan is set to the inside of bodygrip the animal is already through the jaws and more suitcase catches will result.

When set inside a cubby/box etc by more than 3-4 inches and the pan on the inside there is no need to level it. I find no problems setting the trap, put the pan on and then slide the whole works into my boxes but then my boxes are just slightly bigger than the outside of my traps/160's and my slots are very narrow so when I crank the springs down the trap is only 1/2 inch above the bottom.

To the fellow who mentioned about the coon flipping off the pan where was the pan set-outside or inside? if inside then it must be level and maybe just lay a little grass under the pan-not enough to effect the firing. Reason that could happen is the coon is crawling inside your box and when doind this there front feet are being slide forward so that it could be under the pan and then when they pick up that foot to go through the jaws they nock the pan off. If one is recessing the trap a ways into your cubby the pan should really be on the inside.

Yes these pans are sensitive but not so much so that one can not set it on the trap and then insert the trap into the box. Then when all set inplace remove the safeties. If your box/cubby/bucket is much wider than the trap then the safeties may be inside and cause problems. Coon can crawl through a mighty small opening-much smaller than the 220 size.

The smaller ones cubby with the trap set inside the more pet proof it will be. Now when I mean small I don't mean short.

[4fur]

Kind of confused on your inside/outside, Kelly? Inside meaning pan beyond the trap and that is where it is important to be level, or the opposite? 

[Kelly]

Sorry but yes inside means inside the box so the animal goes through the trap to fire the pan. Outside means the pan is outside of the trap so the animal steps on the pan before the trap like I'm sure you set yours. The outside ste pan needs to be level-on the inside they can tip up some but not too much.

Another thing about the washers-no need to do any grinding on them. The humps on the jaws of each brand of trap are situated differently so that maybe the washer hit these humps and don't sit right. All one needs is a crescent wrench, adjust it tight to the washer where you want to bend it and bend-doesn't take much pressure to do that. this is especially needed on Duke 110 size. Now if the pan sits too high on your version of bodygrip it can be lowered easy by just bending down the back side of washer that goes under the jaw.

When using them in a trail situation I surmise that the pan needs to sit flat. Tim nor myself have not used them in dry land trails but we have used them in the water with the pan just at the surface or slightly under with good success on rats going either direction. On trails for coon am not sure how they will react to them-they just might step through the jaws and over the pan-don't know.

What I do know that with these pans one can defintely go smaller in trap size to 160's and still take coon. 4fur, did you have any snow where you could see a mink jumping over the pan-I would think that is possible with 220's because the opening is so large.

I can't wait to try these pans on 155's in top edge situations like bridge walls, culvert corners, etc for swimming mink/muskrats. In this scenario the pan would be level and just under the water about 1/2" to 1" so it would be bi directional. Biggest problem with mink and bodygrips is the trigger wires hanging down creating the illusion of an obstruction. I believe these pans will eliminate that problem because all the mink/rat will see is an opening between two objects-the jaws that looks like sticks.

Duke 155 on left,Victor 110 on right.



Here is a 160 H stand set up for bottom trigger.

[4fur]

Feb 13, 2014 16:59:49 GMT -6 Kelly said:

What I do know that with these pans one can defintely go smaller in trap size to 160's and still take coon. 4fur, did you have any snow where you could see a mink jumping over the pan-I would think that is possible with 220's because the opening is so large.

I can't wait to try these pans on 155's in top edge situations like bridge walls, culvert corners, etc for swimming mink/muskrats. In this scenario the pan would be level and just under the water about 1/2" to 1" so it would be bi directional. Biggest problem with mink and bodygrips is the trigger wires hanging down creating the illusion of an obstruction. I believe these pans will eliminate that problem because all the mink/rat will see is an opening between two objects-the jaws that looks like sticks.

[/a]

[/quote][/p]

Great pictures, Kelly!  I forgot that you had a lot of input on these pans.  And I should backup and say that I don't know that this guy invented the concept but perfected it at least.  The pan has not been perfected in the field IMO though.  I had not even considered the water idea!  I would worry about losing pans in the water, I guess.  I only lost one pan but had to look pretty hard to find a few.  When the trap dry fires, it catapults the pan up to 6 foot away from the set.  With a catch, though, the pan is usually inches or less than a foot from the set and very easy to locate.

As I said, I did not get many good tracking snows to show me what was going on but don't believe I had any jumpers.  And my bait was close enough to the trap that I would think a mink working the bait would fire the trap and be caught.   We did have one wet 1-2" snow and I was concerned about the weight tripping my traps.  But it did not trip one.

OK, this is the main reason why I THINK the pan did not take any mink on my line, and I would appreciate any input from the more traveled and experienced mink men.  Iowa just is not a good place to take mink in a baited dry land set PERIOD.  How many on here have had consistent success with any baited dry land method?  Not many I'm guessing.

The basic thinking or rule of thumb is that baited cubbies work in the North, baited pockets are king in the Central US and blind sets are the way to take mink in the South.  Anyone care to comment or question this premise?

  

[hooter]

I have noticed the same thing Wayne. I used to put out a few dry sets when the weather got worse and water started freezing up. I used 120's in wood cubbies and 6inch black plastic tile. Did catch a few but just no consistency. Many times tracks would go right on by. I really believe when its below freezing all the time when these sets were out there's just not enough smell coming off the bait. There have been many different dry sets for mink over the years that have been tried and talked about. Bottom line is there's something about a baited pocket set at the waterline that the vast majority of mink just cant pass up. Any more if I cant use a set in the water for mink I don't set it.

[4fur]

Makes sense, Greg. Baits back in a deep pocket won't freeze as quick and will emit more smell.

A guy claims mink quit moving so much when the weather turns rough. Not as far anyway.

Another guy said that mink just aren't hungry when the rut starts, especially the bucks.

Both of these ideas would mean that we don't catch mink in baited bodygrip sets in Iowa because we are setting them at a time when it is just tough to catch mink period.   

The basic thinking or rule of thumb is that baited cubbies work in the North, baited pockets are king in the Central US and blind sets are the way to take mink in the South.  Anyone care to comment or question this premise?

  

A very good trapper told me the other day he believed the above statement was true. He said there was just too much food available all season long for mink to be interested in baited sets.

I know I'll give the pans another try next season. They will catch coon so there really is not a disadvantage over my set using conventional wire triggers other than a few more tripped traps. I think I will try getting more sets out, earlier and probably try some in the water as well as some blind sets.

Any ideas or help would of course be appreciated!

[jkl]

I am guessing that blind sets will out produce Baited Boxes for mink. I do like the sand paper pans. Our friend that caught the pack rat also caught 6 squirrels with the pans.