Live trap lines vs footholds/conibears
I grew up as a coon hunter (walker hounds) and never did much trapping other than coyote snares and I ran foothold lines for a few seasons in college.
I've been thinking about running a few lines next winter on a hunting lease I have now, but I've been thinking about using live-traps instead of footholds/conibears. I built live traps back in college that we used to trap live coons for training pups, and I still have several laying around (a few dozen). I was frustrated when I was trapping that I'd always have a lot of blown traps/escaped animals (empty but sprung) or I'd have a lot of non-target species and small game (rabbits, squirrels, rats, etc). I played with a mix of trap sizes, seems like my 1's and 11's would always be blown with whisps of hair left in the jaws, and my 2's and 3's would always have broken legged rabbits, the small ones were slipping off coons, and my big ones were always clamping down on non-target game.
At any rate, I have a lease that's pretty far off the grid, so a line of live traps would be "safe" from theft. And if I caught non-target game, I can release them without harm.
Anyone have a "pro's and con's list" for why or why not to use live traps instead of footholds?