I don't know where you are at in Michigan, the more open Southern part or the wooded Northern Lower or U. P. Here in the U. P. the only way to go is with drags and additional chain after the ground freezes or there is lot of snowfall. If you have the entanglement material in your area go with drags. Animals do not very often go more than 25 to 50 yards and are easily found. After there is snow on the ground it would take a big snow storm to cover the markings of the animal and drag going through the existing snow. Generally, one can hear the chain jingleing when they approach the catch set because the nearby animal gets alarmed. Even without snow, drag markings are not hard to follow once one gets the hang of it. Sometimes the drag markings are subtle but they are always there somewhere. One starts at the set by looking around and ahead in the direction the sand and drag mark was pulled from the trap bed. One may spot a bent over blade of grass 10 feet away so one proceeds that far and observes again. This time it many be a small pebble moved out of place so one proceeds again and observes ahead before proceeding. The next marking might be a turned over leaf, etc, etc, etc. One keeps this up until they find the animal or get close enough to hear the jingle of the chain. One should always use the stop and go procedure I just explained because if they take off searching first and don't find the trap or animal and track up the whole area searching they will have to come back to the set and start over again. After tracking up the area one will not know if the drag or themselves bent the blade of grass, turned over the leaf or moved the pebble, etc. I have been using drags exclusively year around for over 50 years and I could count on my fingers the failures at finding the animal or trap. Those few failures were probably timber wolves or black bear straightening out the drag hooks and eventually breaking the chain or trapper thieves making an effort to disguise a theft. Ace
