Snap traps

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AfterBurners

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So I have some unwanted guests and I set a couple snap traps. They seem to be the best option. I use to use electric traps and I don't like glue traps, but the snap traps have been around for awhile and proves to be the most reliable.

So is it just me or does everyone have a problem setting them and getting that lever to stay on the hook. Drives me crazy. Takes me 5 minutes or sometimes longer just to get one set. Then it's matter of placing it. I found that depending where you have to place it. I nail the trap to a 2x4 about 2-3 feet long. this way your hands are far away from the traps and if you have to place it in the attic you can without much of an issue and do it safely.
 
Depending on which size visitors we are talking about, depends on the trap I use. For the smaller visitors I use a modern type snap trap that is both easy to set and empty ( it kind of looks like a spring clamp/clothes pin type action), squeeze till it clicks and its set, to empty squeeze again and the deceased visitor slides out or you can dispose of the whole trap. For bait the best I have found is peanut buttet, and setting the traps along the edges of hallways or against the walls near doorways.

Attaching the old school traps to a board is a great idea for attics and crawl spaces.
 
Peanut butter under the trigger, then arm. I like to put two next to each other pointed opposite each other near a wall ( travel path ).

The price you pay for living in a big grass field.
 
Actually we get pretty big rats sometimes so I use the biggest snap trap by Victor. Found droppings in one of draws we keep place mats in. I bate with peanut too. Use a bit of cheese to stick under the pin and then coat with peanut butter.
 
I was using the classic snap traps baited with peanut butter. I got pretty good at setting them quickly in the right place.

Then, I had a few feral cats arrive on the property (I live way out in the boonies), and I started feeding them a bit. Now, over a year later not one single rodent visitor has made it inside it seems, to be trapped.

Always being a dog owner the last 40 years or so, I was not used to the ways of the cat. My last dog passed on in 2013. I guess the cats and I are getting used to each other now. Cats get a bit of free food, and rodents stay away, which works for me.
 
take a very small wad of cotton and mix the peanut butter with in the cotton fibers.
The varmint can lick off the peanut butter but with the cotton peanut butter mix he has to
pull on the cotton to get the peanut butter off .

I remember my aunt having one like a box and you wind it up and as the varmint runs across the paddle it throws
varmint in a 2nd section of the trap still alive
 
Youtube is full of videos showing interesting homemade traps which appear to work well. Some are sadistic though, for example where the rat drowns in a bucket after it gets too exhausted to swim. If it is necessary to kill a quite intelligent creature, it shouldn't involve senseless suffering.

Reinhard
 
There was a mouse plague back in the 70's that I remember. We used to catch around 100 mice a night in a trap.

Take a full-size beer bottle (not sure it would work on a stubbie) and pull a sock on the lower, straight part. Insert a piece of cheese in the opening at the top. Lay the bottle , with the neck of the bottle hanging over the edge of a bench or something. Below the bottle neck place a bucket about half-full with water. The mice want the cheese. They climb the sock and try to get to the cheese in the opening. They overreach and slip off the unsocked neck, falling into the bucket and drowning. Works a treat, especially when you have more than one to catch!
 
Out of the box, some mouse traps (snap variety) aren't bent quite right and are hard to set. Sometimes a little tweaking with a pair of needle-nose pliers is needed to be able to set them properly. The best configuration I have found is to put peanut butter on the trigger, then wrap a narrow layer of saran wrap/plastic wrap around it, then add a bit more peanut butter. The plastic wrap requires that the mouse paw at it to remove it and can't just delicately lick all the peanut butter off (which I have seen many times).
 
Get the ol' plywood torsion spring steel kind. The mini ones I call finger smashers. And the hardware store staff always laughs. You can put the glue traps on the rafters for rats. Oddly, bright yellow glue traps worked for red hornets by accident, and I have no clue why hornets wanted a yellow glue trap so bad. They were obsessed with attacking it.

You can also pick up a powerline by daisy or a higher quality GAMO air gun in excess of 750 fps and a .177 cal lead pellet does the trick for small game. Not legally a gun so no paperwork or regulations for city use. Noisy compared to rat trap.
 
I also use peanut butter. I take a piece of cotton string and wrap around the trigger then coat with PP. The little varmints tug on the string and it is all over. Back in my youth, I used bacon rind which the critters like because of the salt. I just cut it into slices and shoved into the trigger.
 
I use these steel snap traps for rats: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0190GMLUG/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Much better than the Victor rat traps: easier setting of the trigger, more force, and serrated to keep them in the trap. And they last longer.

I mix peanut butter with oats. They stay there chewing longer instead of licking and leaving.

First line of defense is to remove the places they like to live. In the desert where I am, that means getting rid of plants with soft roots that they like to burrow under. If they're persistent, mix up some quikrete and fill the holes. Also, remove "safe places" that are covered... log piles, tires, and other junk. If you have vehicles outside, leave the hood up, and leave a light on underneath. Put perforated metal around the foundation of sheds or crawl spaces.
 
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Personally, I hate the one mouse per setting type traps... Sure a snap trap might get a pair of mice once in a while, but self resetting traps are far better at eliminating the problem.

I actually enjoy following this guy's videos...
Mouse Trap Mondays


[video=youtube;6SIlYiiCGLI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI[/video]

[video=youtube;nsoVcrFyrF8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsoVcrFyrF8[/video]

We then have the DYI traps such as the "Quicksand Trap". Take a bucket, pour in some water, high enough to drown a mouse, but not so deep that it can "reach down" to the water. Add a layer of Pearllite (from a garden center) that is deep enough to appear like a solid "floor", but not so deep as to allow a mouse to walk on it. Add bait (peanut butter is good) placed on a wire bent to keep it up and out of the water. Add a ramp to help the mice access the bucket. And place where the they will encounter it. Multiple kills... no resetting. Video is of a kit you can buy on Amazon.

[video=youtube;_c8ETJ3v7zE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=_c8ETJ3v7zE[/video]

Here's one of my favorite DIY traps, but it requires resetting.

[video=youtube;FPSlzg-oqoo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPSlzg-oqoo[/video]
 
We use snap traps at the homestead. I prefer the Tomcat brand with the wide yellow plastic bait holder. For me they are much easier to arm. The Victor traps with the copper bait holder I have never been able to get set without a lot of frustration, if I can get them at all.....
 
You can also pick up a ... air gun .... Not legally a gun so no paperwork or regulations for city use.

This is very dangerous advice.

Although it might not be an NFA firearm, many municipalities define spring, pump, & co2 guns as firearms and prohibit their use within their jurisdiction.
 
I use sticky traps and old school Victor spring (snap traps) traps. I have had the spring traps cause a bloody mess that was pretty nasty to clean up the next morning. The sticky traps are cleaner. I tried a humane multi catch live trap and never caught anything in it. I am all for humane treatment and all but for mice and rats I couldn't care less. Quit using my kitchen drawers as a toilet and eating my potato chips you filthy rodent.

I've baited 3 traps side by side before, one with cheese, one with peanut butter and the other with bread. The mouse went after the bread first. So that is what I use now.

While setting one of the Victor types (it may have been an off brand don't remember) one of the infernal staples holding the spring pulled out and the arm snapped the edge of my thumb. That really made my day for sure.

I have never heard of an air rifle being classified as a firearm but it very well could be in some places. Last I check though federally, they are not firearms and are not regulated as such. But they are most definitely a gun and in some states are illegal to hunt with, Louisiana is one such state. They implemented that a few years ago when people started hunting with them. Is popping mice in your barn hunting? Don't know. Is firing your firearm from your truck after dark and hitting a robotic deer decoy considered hunting? No but you will get a ticket for hunting after legal shooting hours all the same though you technically aren't hunting. No I didn't do it but two of my friends did. Game Wardens put the decoy out to catch poachers. If a Game Warden (or whatever you happen to call them) is having a bad day or just being a jerk then you get in trouble for popping mice with a BB gun.

I did manage to kill one with a blowgun years ago. Stay outta my chips!
 
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OK... So, you don't like DIY traps. Still check out the Mouse Trap Mondays website. He tests dozens of mousetraps from around the world (and throughout history). I'm sure that you'll find a design that will be an instant kill, and perhaps even self resetting.
 
Easiest solution: get a cat (or two). Mine keep the house (mostly) free of all critters. Spiders, they won't touch. Crickets, they play with until they're "all broke". Mice don't seem to be much fun and are dispatched/eaten quickly. My biggest concern is that occasionally (once a year or so), a small snake gets into the house. Like they do with birds overhead*, cats have a certain signalling "trill" that means nothing else. When I hear this sound, I run to try and save the snake. Anything that eats bugs is OK, and deserves to be rescued.
*cats have a special "chitter" that means "birds in the tree". It seems to be universal. If you ever hear it, you'll know what I mean.
 
We only have problems with elephants throwing themselves out of the treetops. Damn forest elephants.

They're easy to spot if you know what to look for. The biggest give-away is the green feet with red painted toenails.
 
Peanut butter works.. But ive personally found that FRESH Bread will work the best, Brother had an issue.. There was alwalys a hold in the bread the next day after buying it.. he thought it came from the store like that so he bought another loaf, checked it. and the next day.. a small hole..

He asked me to help him with the traps, We put 3 out, with fresh bread.. and within 20 minutes.. all 3 had tripped.

Also, some bending of the trip wire I found was very helpful. Practice with a stick to see the amount of force needed to spring the trap, adjust the wire holder until your satisfied.
 
We used poison bait at the old shop where I used to work. First step was to open a can of sardines. Then you mixed in the poison pellets to a nice mush consistency. Then set the sardine tins in the highly traveled areas. Luckily, the shop wasn't very tightly sealed (thus the mice...), so the aroma of dead mice and or fish wasn't too over powering... :puke:
It usually only took two days to empty the tins... :eyepop:
 
We used poison bait at the old shop where I used to work. First step was to open a can of sardines. Then you mixed in the poison pellets to a nice mush consistency. Then set the sardine tins in the highly traveled areas. Luckily, the shop wasn't very tightly sealed (thus the mice...), so the aroma of dead mice and or fish wasn't too over powering... :puke:
It usually only took two days to empty the tins... :eyepop:

The problem with that is if a cat gets a hold of the mouse it will ingest the poison and due. Happened my friends cat. Her cat got a hold of a mouse and a day or two later the cat was dead as well.
 
The problem with that is if a cat gets a hold of the mouse it will ingest the poison and due. Happened my friends cat. Her cat got a hold of a mouse and a day or two later the cat was dead as well.

Yeah, I'm not recommending it by any means... Just telling of the nasty things I had to do in my yoot... If you thought sardines smelled bad when you opened the can, imagine adding the mouse poison odor... :puke::puke::puke:
 
Dan, a ball bearing mouse trap (Tom Cat) is a proven and effective method for rodent control. They don't eat much, love to cuddle, and also take care of birds ,squirrels,snakes, small to medium size dogs and the occasional aardvark!
 
I was renovating a house, and in the wall, as we pulled off the old plaster lathes, we found a whole mouse skeleton. Head to tail, intact. Coolest thing ever. It probably crawled in the wall and couldn't get out, curled up & died.
 
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