Mountain Cur

Chuck, I'd like to add one other thing, If you are gonna be trapping in an area where there is a possibility of catching someones dog then there a couple of things you should do. First of all you should use either the softcatch traps, these have rubber on the jaws, or use traps that have laminated jaws. Laminated are jaws are nothing more than a piece of metal, either flat or round stock welded to the jaws, this increases the surface area, or you could use traps with offset jaws, these have a small gap cut between the jaws, and you can even have offset laminated. These type of traps will cause hardly any permanent damage to a dog. I know I'm throwing a lot of info at ya' and all, but you need to learn all you can to be a responsible trapper. No one wants to catch someone elses pet, but if a dog happens by a dirt set baited or lured for fox, coyotes, or cats, he is most likely gonna get caught. Out of all those traps I mentioned, the laminated ones are my preference, they are easier to tune and just generally better made, and they won't cause any more paw or leg damage than the rubber jawed traps. As far as releasing animals, you should invest in a good catch pole, most all trapping suppliers sell them. Another thing you should do is, if there are people living around the area you have permission to trap ( or maybe it's your own land ) you could let them know what you'll be doing and ask them to keep their pets up, and reassure them that the type of traps you'll be using won't cause any permanent damage if the worse should happen, but you can't gaurantee it so make every effort to keep their pets up. This may be greek to you, but trapping season is still quite a ways off, you have a lot of time to do research on the net and trapperman.com is the best trapping website that I know of! I get the feeling you may be a youngster, if so you may be limited as to where you can trap wich is fine, but if you have other choices the best bet is to stay as far away from folks with pets as you can.