Traps \ Capture do I need to progress story to unlock?

[TheSuit]

So I bought some Traps + Sleeping bombs from the Provisioner but i can't equip them in my hotbar. Do I have to progress in the story far enough to be able to use them?

[Suzaku]

Trap Tools are used in crafting to make a shock trap or pitfall trap. Those traps are what you get the monster stuck in. You must also combine sleep herb and parashroom to make tranq bombs.

When a monster is below 25% health remaining, use a trap and 2 tranq bombs to capture it. The tranq bombs have a short duration, so you can use those first in the event that you're concerned the trap won't last long enough (trap durations get shorter with each use of the same trap).

Also, sleep bombs simply apply the Sleep status effect to monsters. This makes them fall sleep and take double damage from the first attack that hits them, but has no part at all in capturing them.

[Washing Machine]

There's optional quest fairly early on to capture a Kuju, check the item box in camp for a bunch of tranq bombs and shock traps for the quest.

Just maul Kulu until he limps home before using them.

General confusion about traps that might happen: You can't place traps on some terrain, like vine ground where Anjanath sleeps. Also you can't have multiple traps on the map at the same time, so if you left a trap somewhere and the monster moved to another area, go to the trap and break it, otherwise it takes some minutes before it vanishes.

[Xavr0k]

You don't buy traps, you craft them. I suspect you bought some trap tools which are one of the materials used for crafting traps. You need to combine it with a net (ivy and spiderweb) or a thunderbug. You also need to use tranq bombs, not sleep bombs.

[TheSuit]

Thanks for the tips.

Ya @Xavor0k thats pretty much what happened.