Crossover Set

A crossover set can be used at any location where two bodies of water are separated by a small strip of land.  

If the bodies of water or surrounding areas contain mink or muskrat, there's a good chance they will "crossover" the land to get to the other body of water.

These crossover points create a natural funnel that increases the odds of an animal entering your trap.

Mink and muskrat are great animals for both beginners and seasoned trappers to target on the trapline.

They're usually easy to find and they're relatively easy to trap compared to other more difficult furbearers like otter, fox or coyotes.

Plus, when trapping mink or muskrats you don't need a lot of specialized equipment or expensive traps.

A 110 conibear, also known as a body gripping trap, works great for both mink and muskrat.  

The traps are inexpensive to purchase and the springs are easy to compress making them easy to set without setting tongs.

Ideally, a foothold trap would work great too but a lot of times the water is not deep enough at these locations to effectively drown the animal.

Without deep water, a trapped mink can escape or muskrat will "wring off" their foot. 

Muskrats have very delicate front feet.  

Their bones can break easily which allows the muskrat to wring off their foot and escape leaving behind nothing more than a foot in your trap.  

To prevent this, make sure there is deep enough water for a drowning setup or use a conibear trap. 

Constructing The Crossover Set

An easy way to make a crossover set with a conibear trap uses a brick with a small clip attached to it called a Killer Clip.  

Killer Clips can be purchased at many trapping supply stores and they're very versatile.

They can be screwed to a brick (like the image shown below) or they work great for leaning pole sets because you can just pound them into the leaning pole which is typically a log you find in the woods.

Leaning pole sets are one of the best sets to use when trapping pine marten.  

The sets are really easy to construct but sometimes it's hard to fasten a conibear trap to the pole.

The Killer Clips make it so much easier and I highly recommend them!  

The trap chain is wired to the brick to prevent the loss of your conibear trap.

The brick is heavy enough to hold a mink or muskrat but it's light enough to carry through the woods without exhausting yourself.

The above picture shows a 110 conibear trap resting in the Killer Clip stabilizer.  

This set can be used anywhere but it works really good for areas that have a hard bottom like culverts where driving a stake is not an option.

Here's the trap set in a heavy run that leads over the strip of land to the other body of water.  

The bottom here was pretty soft so we were able to bury the brick in the mud. 

This is the small strip of land that divides the two bodies of water.  

The set is on the left side of the picture in a run that leads to the other body of water.

Another view of the location where the set was made.

Crossover Set - Overall

A crossover set can be a very productive set for trapping mink and muskrat.  

If you don't have deep enough water to make a drowning set with a foothold trap or if the bottom is too hard to drive a trap stake, consider using a Killer Clip mounted to a brick.  

The crossover set is easy to make and it works really well.