beginner needing help

[justwannano]

I'd start with the coon.
Get a few 1 1/2 coil spring traps.
I started with 3 #2 coilspring traps.I found they had too big a jaw spread and the coon would chew on his foot.
Basicly you just do as my father in law told me to do. "Just put the trap where you find coon foot prints."
We road trapped setting traps in fence lines.
The coons will check out your beaver ponds so get yourself a forked stick about 2 inches in diameter and 2 1/2 feet long only with the fork going the wrong way. In other words it looks like a check mark.
Make it a strong dry stick or the beavers will chew it ,and make the short end big enough that the trap ring will not pull off after you pound the long end into the ground.
Now take a nail and drive it an inch or so into the end thats sticking up. Bait it with sardines or any oily fish and you have a coon getter trap set.
Oh yeah set your trap in 6 to 8 inches of water and far enough out that the coon can't reach dry land.
I caught a lot of coon with that set.

Later the Iowa DNR passed a law that you couldn't have exposed bait.
The set works by scent anyway so it wasn't a big deal to covcer the bait but I had started looking other places for making sets because of too much walking and not enough time.
Start small and see if you like it. All my other traps were bought with money I made trapping.
Like the others have said buy some trapping books and read read read.
Pretty soon you'll find yourself asking Now if I were that coon where would I be going and what would I be doing?

Best of luck
just