Mole trapping

[IanLuc]

On Friday morning I spent a couple of hours setting mole traps as we have a Very healthy population of moles. By Sunday morning I had a dozen of the little sods caught with still more hills appearing all the time. Would be ok if it was a paid contract!
I set 70 traps, would that be a good enough average?
I have put up my trophy shot for you all to see!

 

[ems bach]

Keep going you will soon have enough for a pair of trousers ..

 

[Dakaras]

I usually work on 2 / 3 traps set for each mole I haveto catch, so a solo in a garden is 3, farms etc I set 2 per mole. But Im doing it for work and have mole jobs running most of the time....Good effort I think!

 

[Jagare]

You should have the best ones measured. I think a couple of them will make silver and perhaps even gold.

 

[arron]

hi ian , i usualy try to get 1/3 to a half of traps set sucess rates anything less is a bit dissapointing anything above is great , but alot depends on soil conditions and land your trapping ,do reset the traps again though in the same hole as you will still pick more moles up , have fun arron.ps the second from the end is deffinatly a gold as said above !

 

[IanLuc]

Thanks guys
How long would you leave them set in the same place? The 70 traps I have set are in 4 areas in the same field putting 15 to 20 in an area but there are hundreds of hills.
As Aaron said about leaving the traps set where moles have been caught I have had 3 in the same trap. Also am I better putting them in the shallow runs or the deep ones?
Thanks again Ian.

 

[arron]

i tend to avoid realy shallow runs , but that doesnt mean you wont catch them there , they tend to use theses when looking for a jump i believe, try to read the hills and look for runs between them usualy between 2 to 7 inch deep on ground where i trap , in time you will just no where a good run is by the slight differance in colour of grass or a very slight depresion in the ground ,if using barrel traps they will most likely need tweeking on the mechanism so they go off easy, also when putting them in the run i wedge the sides with soil from the mound to keep it in place then sprinkle a very light amount (as little as you can get away with )over the trap so as to block out light or outside air as i think it makes them wary , by the sound of things your doing ok though , look for new hills and target them areas , particularly after a downpour , good luck ,arron.

 

[User00001]

I agree with Arron. I used to use good quality half barrel traps which were carefully tuned.I would rather have half as many good traps than loads of cheap ones.

if you can, rake or chain harrow the area the day before you set, that way you are targeting your trapping where the animals are most active and also you are tidying up the ground at the same time so that you (and everyone else) can see what you are achieving.

 

[IanLuc]

Up to 14 now!