Idstone Trap Pit

Anyone remember when I said, on THL, how I'd always fancied trying out an " Idstone Trap Pit "? I got the idea from Carnegie's excellent little book; " Practical Trapping ".

For those of ye outside the loop the, it's basically a square hole with a lid over it. Ye bury pipes, leading down into this pit. Inside the pit, where the pipes lead in, ye set traps. In Carnegie's time, only Gin Traps were available. Today, of course, we'd use a more humane type of trap, designed to kill outright, rather than possibly just hold the victim.

So, anyway; I long since announced that I really should get round to constructing one and trying it out. I then went quiet about it and, knowing THL, there would've been plenty enough people murmuring, knowingly to each other that; 'There we are! All talk, that Ditch Shitter! Always full of bright ideas ~ Never actually gets out and Does anything though!'.

Well, little might they realise that Ditch Shitter is more the other way. I get so bloody busy doing things, I simply haven't always the time to sit and Write about what I get up to! Can't have it both ways, see? That's why I'm rather late in bringing ye a report on what happened with my own Idstone Pit. And, unfortutely, I was a few years too late in ever trying to action the bloody idea in the first place! I should've done it back in Hampshire or Hull. It's ~ as I'd suspected ~ just not a project suited to the local conditions I now live and work with.

Here's what happened then: First of all, I bought a nice, galvanised Inspection Cover. 'Man Hole' cover, if ye like. That gave me the exact size of my hole in the ground. I then built a four sided wooden box. Idea being to use this box as a sort of shuttering, to stop the pit walls from ever caving in and firing the traps or otherwise just making a mess of things in there.

To the top of my box I fitted the frame which the cover sits in. At two sides, I cut through circular holes. These holes being a perfect fit for some plastic land drain pipe we get around here. And there I was, all set.

Here it is, look, without the cover on and not showing the pipes I have to connect to the two holes. Nice, neat job. All heavily creasoted, to give the wood some protection against the damp earth.




As said, all I needed to do now was to dig myself a nice, straight sided, square hole to exactly accept this box. I set too and, before very long, I dug out and bottomed off a nice hole to fit it in. Only, it was getting on a bit, by the time I'd finished. I had the Dogs and horses to feed, so I thought I'd give it best for now. Come back to it and dig the pipes in the next day.

Trouble is, next day I found This ....!





Lot of fucking good, eh? Made a bleeding paddling pool, haven't I? And, if I leave it like that, it'll just become a breeding place for mosquitoes, of which we have more than enough round here as it is! So, having left it a month or so, to see what might happen (It just filled with even More water!) there's really nothing else for it but to fill the bloody thing back in again.

So much for my bloody Idstone Trap Pit. But, as ye can see; I did do it. Or at least I tried!

Just wondering if I can do anything useful with it now. Maybe use it as a ground level trap cover or something? Possibly. Bit too busy to think about it just now. Other things on .....