coon buckets or coon boxes, which is for you?

[mattjones298]

i hear alot of talk on coon buckets, i have tried them, and i just dont like them.  one good thing about a bucket is you can haul alot of them in a small area.  also they are making a stabilizer that you can bolt on them now that helps some what.  what i dont like about them is ALOT of coon will refuse to enter one.  or they do for me anyway, and they stand out like a turd in a well.  but they will catch some coon.

now, coon boxes,  i like them and i run alot of them on my river line. i have access to all the catfish scraps i can haul, which is the first thing a man running any kind of cubby must have, a 1/2 a can of cat food just dont cut it.  mine cost about 6 bucks to make, i make mine out of 1x10 pine decking and put 1/4 inch hardwear cloth in them for the back,  this is why they out shine buckets, a coon can see through it.  also you can take a roofing tack on each side of your box and nail a piece of 14 gauge wireabout an inch behind the notches that your trap sets in.  this will let you wire the back part of the trap spring to the box where a coon cant flip the trap out.  this is a big plus.  also the top of a coon box is flat which will allow you to set a rock or log on it.  this will keep coon from turning over your box.  all you have to do is change your bait about every 3 days and thats it.  on the down side, you can only get about 20 in a pickup and i can get 40 in my boat, but thats what pre season is for.  i paint mine with flat black barn paint.

i was talking to red ohearn at the nta about it and he thinks a coon box will out catch a bucket 4 to one.  but they do take room up.

well thats my thoughts on coon cubbys, whats yours??

[Rob220swift]

Haven't tried buckets, but I like the ability to easily conceal my coon boxes.  I too use hardware cloth on the ends and find it helps dispersal of scent or bait smells.  I leave em out most of the year as the locations are pretty well used by coon from year to year.

[trappnman]

Very interesting matt.

I too have tried buckets, and I don't care what anyone says- you get a ton of misses. In early season with a good population, perhaps this isn't too big a deal. But in late winter when I trap most of my coon, it matters a great deal!

Never thought boxes would be any different.

More info please.

[Mallard]

I always figured it was my placement of the trap being too low. Is there any merit to that? Whats the prefered height of a coni in a box? I was thinking a coni bracket from the ceiling, turning the coni so the trigger is on bottom, and have it 2.5 to 3" up would be something for me to try. Anyway, I have little success with these and am looking for some insight!

[foxtail]

I use the buckets more than any other set with the exception of the pocket set. It is the bread and butter to my trapping along with the pockets. I use buckets and boxes, and the buckets are much easier to haul around. The boxes are real nice, but they have to be stored with a little more care. The buckets can be tossed almost anywhere during the off season except that they have to stay out of the sun. The boxes will rot unless you make them out of real good wood. Then they are too heavy to be practical.
I don't subscribe to the false belief that the slots on the buckets should be 2 inches wide and 6 inches long. I make most of my slots with a chainsaw and the notches are only as wide as the chain. They are only as deep as the ring that goes to the top of the handle bracket.
I use whole sheephead and/or bullheads as bait. I also usually give them a small squirt of fish oil.  I usually place them in spots that I can't easilly put another type of set in. An example of this is where the bank is so shallow sloped, that you can't put a pocket in there. Often the water table there is shallow enough that there can't have a dirthole either. Another ideal spot is where the coon trail goes through lots of brush. A coon in a coni is not going to power out of the trap with the help of the brush.
Wooded areas where there are coon trails going all over is another great place to put a bucket. Especially where two or more trails intersect. In many of these places, two sets will pay off often.
I also place the trigger on the bottom. This is to allow the mink to give up the ghost as well as the coon,possums, and cats that frequently end up in my sets. I also believe that the coon will go over the wires faster than it will go under them.
Make no mistake, I am not trying to put anyone off of the boxes, they do work great, but they have some disadvantages that the buckets don't have. I use them too,  but use many time more buckets.

[foxtail]

I also get very few misses.

[trappnman]

Let me ask yo uthis foxtail- How much trapping did you do in snow so you could SEE how many misses you actually got?

[foxtail]

I keep the buckets out as long as I can. This usually means that when the fur quality goes to pot, I pull them. After the freeze up, they are usually all I have out anymore. I actually have few tracks coming to the sets when there is not something in the trap. Of course there are going to be times when there are tracks to the set where there is no animal in the trap. Sometimes there are tracks coming to the set after there was something in the trap already. I don't know how to clasify these incidents.
It is habit that if I see tracks going to the set, that I expect there to be something in the set.

[mattjones298]

trappenman, steve,  just between me and you and the fence post, i got about 125 of these boxes,  the reason i got so many is they work, look at where i live on the map, it`s all rivers and water.  i`m a coyote trapper but i catch a few coon also.  if a man has the money to build some coon boxes like i`m talking about, they will out shine the buckets 5 to one, i know alot of guys will argue it.  but the screen wire in the back makes all the differance.  i catch around 400 coon in 3 weeks, most come out of coon boxes, nice dry coon.  i know alot of guys use buckets, they suck down here, but i did not want to make anyone mad.....matt

[foxtail]

400 in 3 weeks.
THat is very good.
Much better than I have done.
OK I will say it- you the mack daddy.

I do get good results in my boxes also, but I could never haul or store the numbers that you run. I wish I could.  When I was at Campbell, I saw so many dead coon on 41-A that it made me sick. There would be 10 or so easy, flattened on the road. If I could have trapped the post, holly cow, I really wonder what I could have done. I actually think that you have more coon down there than Steve and I have here.
Make no mistake, I do not put down your boxes in any way.

[mattjones298]

foxtail, i only run around 70 coon traps at a time. i put one about every 1/4 mile on the river sign or not.  the hot spots get two.  at the mouth of feeder creeks i make 4 to 6 pocket type sets and i also set up some trails with 220`s on the stakelizers like the ones gerald schmitt sells.  we got alot of coon in places and in some places not.  i skin my own coon and try to limit my catch to around 20 a day, thats all i want, i aint 21 no more.   about 3 weeks of it is all i can stand.  there`s 2 coon i like to catch, the first one and the last one lol.

check this out foxtail,  alot of times i come back to a coon box and there will be a dead coon there in the mouth of the box. now remember i wire my trap springs to the box. often you can see where another coon crawled over the dead coon and got the bait. so here`s the big plan for this year.  my normal coon boxes are 24inches long, i am going to make around 20 more 30 inches long and put a trap on each end.  i always try to figure out how to catch more coon, i just dont want to skin more lol

the big numbers coon men that catch over 1000 a season like red ohearn and rich kasper sell there coon in the round. if i had a mkt like that i would double the traps that i run. but right now with the semi heavy coon selling finished for a 10 buck ave.  i`ll catch less and finish them myself.  every year i say that i aint going to trap coon, but i do anyway....matt

[toecatch]

Off topic here, but who where you with while at Cambell? I was in 2/502 Inf Div. I too seen alot of dead coons on the side of the road.

AIR ASSULT!

[Tim B]

All the coon bucket talk is killin me.  We cant set any conies bigger than a 110 on dry land in MO.  I do lug a few otter buckets around, but of course not many coon swim the bottom of clear creeks...LOL
Tim B

[foxtail]

Toecatch, I was in C 1/377 FA, part of Divarty.

[coon wild]

i am mostly a trail trapper for coon i've tried buckets too and i just dont like em much i think this  year i'll try some boxes out too