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Post by mountainman on Aug 27, 2007 12:53:51 GMT -6
Would it be an accurate to say that they are at times just taking the path of least resistance on land or sandbars etc? Maybe the shortest route from point to point in the path they choose to work through a waterway?
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Post by BK on Aug 27, 2007 13:11:34 GMT -6
The frozen stream question,...... yes I have and do catch mink in places that appear to be frozen solid. I think appear in that sentence is key. Because they leave no tracks you nor I can be sure how much or how hard they hunted once they entered the water. This information would help ME decide why they chose a stream to follow to begin with. Let me share a few other thoughts in regard to this set. The presence or prospect of food is huge, too much current is a waste of time. Air temp.has much to do with it, along with the amount of wind. And here are a few things I muse about,....... I think that mink is a little less comfortable once the leaves are all off the trees. I also think a mink will go through a conibear that he might other wise avoid that was set dry because of the effort to swim around it. Jump in now here Steve or anyone else for that matter I can take it without getting angry
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Post by trappnman on Aug 27, 2007 13:20:52 GMT -6
I would hope you wouldn't become angry....
I agree with all you have said in the last post- it mirrors my thoughts rather wells.
I like the word effort.....
But I'm still not clear on the frozen streams. Access anywhere is access (open water) because you are right- one would have no idea on how far they might have traveled and how.
Im qualifying it with NO open water access- like many smallers rivers here or drainage ditches. My question asks if mink will live completely under the ice, as do rats and beaver.
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Post by mountainman on Aug 27, 2007 13:42:56 GMT -6
I'm mostly just going to listen and try to learn something.
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Post by trappnman on Aug 27, 2007 13:54:27 GMT -6
come up to the WI convention- worth the drive....
very important point bk made- WHY they are on particular streams.
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Post by seldom on Aug 27, 2007 13:55:58 GMT -6
I agree with everything you've said as well BK including your musings. How about submerged entrance rat feeders and dens with a dry, possibly high top hole such as one would setup as an elbow set. Those are the type of locations I'm seeing mink access seemingly frozen-over waterways. I feel it'd be pretty hard not to have open water access along any river, stream, or ditch that has or at one time had a rat population.
I guess I would think they would as long as they have prey. If prey is found to be more abundant under the ice then above, I don't see why they wouldn't stay there. Rat den- to rat feeder- to any dry cavity they need to use or hunt for that matter. Darn few predator problems for them under the ice compared to their contrasting against the snow!
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Post by trappnman on Aug 27, 2007 16:09:33 GMT -6
seldom- I'm surprised you don't have creeks like that- that are froze from end to end. My son in law had a farm in Chester Iowa, and it had 2 creeks and a river on it- all forze sold. I know cause I deer hunted the whole farm for a week.
Drainage canals further north, are the same, as are the back channels of the Mississippi.
The Whitewater river here, was straightened back in the 50s for maybe 5 miles on the flats before it enters the Mississippi River at Weaver. Abotu 5 years ago, they blocked up all the straightened channel, and let the river river back to wandering through the marsh. Good move btw. These old channels, are stretches of a couple of hundred yards, dammed off. With no open water, a couple of times we had radioed otter beneath the ice. Obviously accessing form old dens and tunnels.
So I wonder how often mink do the same.
Because that would be the only real application of the BE set for me, where I feel footholds won't do as well. Open water is a bonus, for sure.
This many times comes down to I don't like or think BE sets work. And as I have said many times, this simply isn't true. I run some each year and catch mink in them each year.... but they aren't my set of choice.
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Post by BK on Aug 27, 2007 16:34:09 GMT -6
Who here on this site has like a trap supply business that sells Ken Smyth's book? I wish to make a gift to someone. Hopefully you take the card.
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Post by seldom on Aug 27, 2007 17:07:55 GMT -6
Hi Steve, What I do have are creeks that freeze over 3"-4" and all the while the water level is dropping naturally and we get thick shelf ice. It's under this my mink spend their time popping up here and popping down there. I seldom see much distance running on top of the ice then by mink as you would expect under these circumstances. I can't recall seeing any of my creeks or ditches froze from top to bottom. If there's noting but ice, there'll always be a cavity left! Besides, you guys are all colder then us especially Iowa, there's nothing to protect you guys from the cold dropping down off the Canadian plains. We're protected by the Great Lakes.
I once mentioned on here that I had to check a bunch of mink boxes for our project (Advisory Comm. trial) throughout the last month of season a couple of years ago by snowshoeing the box line daily. The large river I was on had experienced tremendous fluctuation during a severe cold spell so there was a lot of 6" shelf ice. Once and only once did I see a mink track that whole month of tramping the river banks checking boxes. The little weenie wasn't running the bank, it came out from under the ice, did what appeared to be a quick look-see of one box and went back under the ice from where it came. Never to be seen again!
LOL, hey don't get the wrong impression about me, if I've got open water my primary mode of mink trapping is very similar to yours and like you, I use the BE when it's appropriate for me to do so. The reason I got involved so deeply and intimately with the BE was because of the toxicology project. I had to use it as it was the right type of set to use under the conditions I had to trap and it was favored above all by our Advisory/Oversight Comm.
This afternoon I stopped at one of my mink locations. The creek water is down about 2' with about 6" left and no current. Standing on the bridge looking downstream about 20' and on both sides of the creek, opposite each other were two of my BE's that produced 1 mink each last season while under ice. Two mink during the first two weeks and nothing for the next 5weeks. They stick out like sore thumbs when the water is low as it is now. Just upstream from each BE location maybe 4-5' there's some shallow undercutting with several old rat dens. The WHY!
Buy him the book BK but be careful, you know what seems to happen to the "reformed" and what they can become! ;D ;D
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Post by BK on Aug 27, 2007 17:41:47 GMT -6
Yup,..........
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Post by trappnman on Aug 27, 2007 17:55:30 GMT -6
Seldom- I didn't mean top to bottom- but certainly more than 3-4 inches.
We do have an odd thing here on some of the creeks when they get close to the Mississippi where they are shallow, slow and 100% sand bottoms (poor minking) that freeze from the bottom up.
I'm just not a conibear man in about anything. Didn't set but one 330 last year, never set a 220 but do use several doz for mink. I probably take 5% of my mink in them- they compose maybe 10-12% of my mink line. Far less rats than mink in them. I didn't even take 1% of my rats in 110s this year.
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Post by billmeyerhoff on Aug 27, 2007 18:08:34 GMT -6
I enjoyed reading the posts and will be doing a little experimenting with the set for mink this year. I'll be trapping open water, it just doesn't get cold enough long enough to freeze the creeks over here.
Hope you catch lots of mink this season and have a heck of a lot of fun. I'm going to try to.
Bill
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Post by seldom on Aug 27, 2007 18:13:49 GMT -6
Dang Steve, and I thought I was the odd duck! ;D LOL Seriously though, this is a good example of why we on these forums need to understand that no two parts of this country should be assumed to be the same or identical! IMHO, the only thing similar is the principle and animal.
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Post by lumberjack on Aug 27, 2007 19:27:57 GMT -6
I can think of maybe a dozen spots this year that caught mink and I doubt they were hunting and its crazy to think they were just traveling. They were hummocks protruding in very shallow water with some current speed, not much, but enough that prey probably wasnt there and travel would have been easier any other way (kinda like they had to work to get in there.). Most often I had to yank out a rock or two just to get the 110 under water. Not my typical bottom edging but after the first few catches cant pass them up now. Like Smythe says they are drawn to it. I cant explain the whys and hows but I set them up all the time when I find them and do well.
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Post by trappnman on Aug 27, 2007 20:30:43 GMT -6
if they were not travelling, and not hunting, why do you think they were there?
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Post by Kyle on Aug 27, 2007 20:51:03 GMT -6
I'm mostly just going to listen and try to learn something. I am too, I wanna use this set some this year. And I want to be successful to a degree, I won't chime in on Mink behavior under water or Bottom Edge sets, because I've never caught anything in one. ;D
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Post by HappyPlumber on Aug 27, 2007 22:09:22 GMT -6
Steve, We have streams that never freeze solid in Eastern Wisconsin. As far as watching mink feed under water, I have watched them for hours at a time.. Where a creek or river is frozen solid, supposedly, there is always rapids and shell ice on shore where they enter and exit. Sometimes they come out of a tree stump in the river. These are all places for sets in the late winter. Apparently you must live in an area where there are no springs bubbling out year round. They will also use musckrat houses to enter and exit the water even if it means making a hole in the muskrat house. HP
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Post by lumberjack on Aug 28, 2007 5:10:15 GMT -6
I really dont know, it was fast riffles in between pools. All the room in the world to go on land and miserable hunting conditions.
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Post by billmeyerhoff on Aug 28, 2007 6:15:46 GMT -6
Where do you walk when your going upstream in an area of heavy current? I know I walk near the edge of the stream where the current is slowest. I would imagine I'd do the same thing if I was swimming. I didn't use 110's in BE sets for mink this year but will be doing so this coming season. I doubt that this is a one dimensional set and that there may be more than one reason that critters use the BE.
I did use this set for otter with 330's and caught 4 with it, our limit is 5. I also caught enough beaver and rats with it to know that it works and all my sets were placed in areas of fairly heavy current which I theorize causes the critters to use the BE as a travelway. I have to agree that in areas of little or no current that current doesn't play a role in location, by definition it couldn't.
In Ken Smythe's book he states that most of his catches are made when the mink are traveling upstream. He says that this is because they are trying to approach their prey from behind. That makes a lot of sense to me and he is probably right that they are hunting, I doubt a mink does much else other than hunt, sleep and crap with a little time for breeding when the time is right. But I doubt that the rats and beaver are hunting and when you consider the fact that he catches twice as many rats as mink at least some critters are using it for a travelway and maybe, just maybe sometimes the mink are too.
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Post by trappnman on Aug 28, 2007 6:15:54 GMT -6
Mink never, ever, ever, erver hunt underwater.
There- since thats what everyone kepes thinking I said, I said it.
But thats of course false.
WHAT I did say, that in good weather on the mink I observed, they didn't seem interested in WORKING THAT HARD to hunt underwater, that instead, they hunted the stream edge, in and out of the water at that edge.
And that of course is true- the mink I've SEEN in good weather, did just that.
And the point I was making, is that given a choice of easy hunting along the stream edge or expending energy in hunting deep water, the mink chooses the easiest hunting.
Does a coyote eat in a meadow filled with bunnies, mice, etc..or does he most often climb a mt 10 miles away to hunt every night?
lumberjack- what I'm curious about, is why do you think its poor hunting? lots of things would wash up on that hammock in the current. Frogs, crayfish etc would be at the downstream side at the very least.
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