One of the hardest things about getting into a new hobby, sport, or practice is figuring out what tools you need to start. For many, especially myself, this is one of the most frustrating aspects of starting off. I want to move. I'd rather someone much, much smarter than myself to tell me what I need to kickstart the process. That's a HUGE obstacle when it comes to trapping. I don't want to scare anyone...but you need a lot a lot of stuff. Luckily, nothing is overly expensive. But piecing together gear as a new trapper is tough. And like with many other practices, when you search online, you d ..read more

Nope. We're not talking about knowing any particular material. We're not talking about knowing techniques. We're talking about CONFIDENCE (see our confident faces above). To be a successful trapper you need confidence. And I prefer a lot of it.  You need to have confidence in what you know, your plan, your execution, and your ability. Everything you do, every set you make, should have purpose. I don't set a single trap with low expectations. If you do, you're wasting time. Every trap I put in the ground, cover, and blend, I walk back to the truck telling myself, "oh, that's gonna cat ..read more

Everyone knows coyotes are killing their deer fawns. But how many? Well, while it's hard to make a statement that covers predation in the entire country, university studies in Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama have shown a significant amount of deer hair in coyote scat during the fawning season.  In studies conducted by the University of Georgia Deer Research Laboratory, during the late spring and early summer months, they would find fawn hair in 50-60% of coyote scat samples!!! Coyotes are opportunistic eaters and will eat whatever is in abundance at the time. This means, the faw ..read more

When starting a new trapline, the last thing you want to do is too much too soon.  It can be hard at the beginning of the season or when you're getting your first sets in the ground to avoid throwing the kitchen sink at 'em. We've been there - you're down digging in the dirt, you've got three jars of new lures, a couple baits, some urine your buddy SWEARS by and you can't wait to put em all to the test. But having restraint here will go a long way to increase first night catches and prolonged success of your trapline. We tell our members, for a new line, LESS IS MORE.  Here's ou ..read more

When a substantial snow is in the forecast you need to be prepared to locate your already well-hidden sets! Finding your sets can be difficult enough without snow. But when you get anything more than an inch or two, your sets will COMPLETELY DISAPPEAR. And when you get snow there is some update work your trapline will need so it's extremely important to mark your sets ahead of the snow. That way you can quickly find your sets and get to work.  Before the snow comes, we like to use a natural object to mark and point towards our set. This marker is placed anywhere from 5-8 feet directly beh ..read more

There are a lot of pieces that go into deciding exactly where to place the sets on your trapline. Once you know what to look for, finding a good macro-location and choosing your micro-location is a breeze! When creating Rex Predator Academy we decided to break down how we talk about "Location" into more specific terms. Generally when thinking about location, you should view it from the top down. Meaning first, you'll look at the big picture from a mile high view, and then you slowly zoom in while you account for terrain, wind directions, landscape opportunities, and more.  We break this p ..read more

The dirt your auger frees up while drilling dirt holes is excellent dirt for sifting - don't let it go to waste! At RPA we use a LOT of dirt hole sets. And in our time running these sets we think the auger pull is worth pointing out as a trapline tip. Of course, this tip may seem microscopic...but it is important!  When drilling a dirt hole the most important things are depth, angle, and distance from your trap. But there are other things to keep in mind. Like how you remove your auger from the earth.  If you just hit the gas on your drill and quickly pull it out, the lush dirt from ..read more

Being a successful trapper is a combination of numerous quick and detail oriented tasks.  Here's one of those detailed tips that'll make you look like a pro.  Blend Where You Been.  After you've made your set, bait and lured, and packed your tools the job is done, right? Wrong! There is one last task to complete: Brush out the impressions your knees and toes made in the dirt.  This is an easy task to overlook. You just finished making a beauty of a dirt hole set and you remain there on your kneeling pad admiring your work. Everything is blended beautifully, nothing seems ou ..read more

Snow can add a little bit of extra work to your trapline but one HUGE advantage it gives you is the ability to scout with extreme precision.  It doesn't matter when the snow comes. It could be pre-season, mid-season, or post-season - traps in the ground or not, you NEED to get out on the property you trap or plan to trap coyotes on. Predators can and will use nearly identical travel paths every single year. So when you've got a fresh snowfall, you've basically got a live heat map of where the predators on your property are coming from and going to.  Snow makes identifying natural "pi ..read more

One of the simplest ways we can increase efficiency as trappers is to BE CONSISTENT!  Every outdoors pursuit is a game of inches and we want to stack every inch we can in our favor. A great place to gain an easy inch is by intentionally doing things the same way every time. Something as small as grabbing your gear in the same hand each time you hop out of the buggy/truck.  This might not seem like a big deal - and in reality, it probably isn't. BUT when we go out to do something, we do everything we can to be successful. If that means we thoughtfully implement an organizational stand ..read more