School me on hog trap door.

[kmack]

Picking up an older thread here, but wanted to add a setup that we finished this past weekend.



Pen is roughly 35' in diameter, feeder is slightly back of center, gate opening is 7'-10" x 3'-0, trip wire runs underneath the feeder @ 12" high and is spring loaded onto a pin holding the cable that is attached to the gate. Trip wire pull is about 4 lbs (roughly measured, but takes hardly any movement to trip) 2 bolts slide into the gate guide to hold the gate up when feeding.

Currently, we have about $95 into this pen, but's only because this pen was a previous deer setup and everything we needed, we pretty much scrounged from the property!

If the video link works, it shows the gate in action.
(bare with me, I'm getting the video link to work....)

https://youtu.be/edWIe4C26Aw

[Tejas Wildlife]

Love the design Kmack! You have any closer photos of the spring loaded trigger?

[Homer75]

That gate looks great.

[kmack]

@Homer75, Thanks!

You have any closer photos of the spring loaded trigger?

I should have taken some, but we were in a hurry to get going home (I was already running late and she was mad!).

But I got the idea from this link: Mississippi State Univ Ext.

At the bottom of that page are 3 links to .pdf files. The Figure 1 & Figure 2 links show the trigger setup. The Figure 3 link shows a general idea of the pen layout.

We added the spring for additional tension and it made it a little easier to adjust the cable length for our setup.

[kmack]

You have any closer photos of the spring loaded trigger?

Just following back up on your request...

3/32" cable holding the gate on an 800 lb-rated pulley. A little overkill, maybe, but it's what we had available!


Gate cable coming back to the trigger post...


Close-up of the gate cable with washer, and the trigger pin. The pin is nothing more than a 5/16" bolt with the threads cut off. Then a hole drilled into the head to attach the spring. We found that adding the spring allows some minor play in the trigger cable itself, so our length didn't have to be dead-on perfect (we can stretch it some...).


Trigger cable stretched out underneath the feeder. Pull is still estimated to be between 2-4 lbs. I'll bring out a scale next time we go out. I forgot it this time around. Trigger pin and cable is set about 8-10" off the ground.


Two hours after setting the trap gate this past Friday, we caught these two little 40 pounders!

[bswift355]

I too am very interested in this. So for the stationary trap like the figure 6 hog trap guys. How long does it generally take before the pigs get educated to the trap? I heard that if they smell old blood on the ground they would stop coming into a trap. What has been your experience?

[Drycreek3189]

My trap is much like yours, but I use a different trigger. I like yours too, seems like it might trigger on smaller hogs than mine does. The tire is filled with soured corn and they have to root it forward to get all of it. Rooting it forward pulls the pin out that holds the gate up.

[Drycreek3189]

It works !

[kmack]

Nice!
I had seen the tire/corn setup for a trigger and really thought about using that initially. Glad to see it works well. We might try that on a 2nd setup later this year.

[dustoffer]

I too am very interested in this. So for the stationary trap like the figure 6 hog trap guys. How long does it generally take before the pigs get educated to the trap? I heard that if they smell old blood on the ground they would stop coming into a trap. What has been your experience?

Erected the trap in Post #12 in February and have caught 65 pigs since then, in 5 or 6 different episodes. Pulled the camera card this afternoon and the pigs were back in the trap the night after the last 10 were trapped/shot and without any rain to wash away the blood. In fact, you could see blood residue on the ground today, and camera showed pigs in the trap the last 3 nights.

So, guess I'm saying they aren't always skeered off by blood in the trap.