anybody ever try trapping rats with leg hold traps?

J

Jill

New member
i'm trying to trap rats in a barn, don't want to use poison if i can kep from it due to dogs are about. i've only caught young ones in standard rat traps. so now i'm trying #1 leg hold coil spring steel traps. covering them up with a light cloth and fine dirt. still i've only caught young ones. i know theres some huge ones about. i'd love to get those as well. why would a rat be so damn smart? anybody have any ideas? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/angry-smiley-055.gif rats!!
 
i'd love to shoot them if they was out other than night. i've turned the barn lights on and seen the big ones running off. i've never seen one at all during the day. if the big ones won't be caught with bait and a hidden coil spring trap, that when i'm finished setting i can't even see. i doubt you'd get them into a live trap. if i don't trap them i will wind up poisoning them. i can put the poison where a dog won't get it and i'm 99.9 % certain my dogs are well fed enough they won't eat a dead rat. but still if they did and died i'd hate it.
 
Make a box out of wood and drill a hole in each end make it 14"-16" long in side each hole place a 0 or 1 trap with light pan tension in the middle put corn in there. You will catch rats this way. The more they pee inside the box the more rats you will attract. Attach the traps to the box with a fence staple on the inside. Place them by bales or runways they would use.
 
Jill, Try building a plywood box just big enough to house the victor standard rat trap.Cut the hole as you see in the attached pic.When cut this way, it will force the rat to commit it's weight to the front feet.When they do that it makes it impossible to roll and spring off of the closing jaw.As you can see, it works pretty good on weasel/ermine too.
Ermine113004.jpg
 
i've caught them with the #1 by putting corn inside the jaws and setting the pan light, keep trying different ways they do get smart real fast. i'm constantly at battle with them.
 
Use bales or board to create some tunnels along he walls, haystacks, grain sacks etc... Blind set those tunnels.
 
thanks for helping me out everybody. i think the blind set will be what i'm gonna try, any bait at all seems to send a red flag to these grown rats. and for some reason they seem to know what a regular rat trap is as well. who would think a rat would be harder to trap than some furbearers are.
 
Try this, I've caught loads of rats doing this with leg holds:

Find a shallow bowl about 12-14" in diameter or make a plywood box 14" x 14" x 6" deep. Take some #1.5, #1.75, or #2 coil spring traps, set them and put as many in the box you can get. Take dog food or cracked corn and scatter it around and under all the traps and thier pans.

They will kill the rats as they trip them when they are trying to get at the bait.

CB
 
ok i boiled my #1 coil springs in walnut hulls, took cloths and soaked them in too. now i've dug places where rats go in and out of holes, set the traps on extra light pan tension, covered them with the cloth and lightly sprinkled dust and bits over them, till u can't tell a thing is there. if they can still avoid the traps i don't know what else to do as far as trapping them. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/angry-smiley-055.gif
 
try the #0 it is by far the better rat trap and what we did as kids was to boil them in chicken fat the rats loved our traps............
 
i know 0 is a better rat trap used to see them for sale all the time. when i wasn't in the market for any. #1 was as as small as i could find.
 
My grandmother lived somehwhat near a dump of sorts and she'd get rats every winter.
I'd take peanut butter and place right on the pan of a #1 muskrat leghold trap set "hair-trigger" and catch em every time. Good bunch of fun on the weekend when I was a kid, I'd stay up most of the night listening for the squeal then I'd reset lol.
 
use a piece of 4" stovepipe and lay it against the wall let it set a couple days then set a #110 conibear trap at each end rats can't resist running through a pipe
 
For pack rats in the outhouse or barn we use a section of 6" stove pipe butted up against a wall with a 0 or 1 single spring about halfway down the pipe with a few chicken bones or a ball of tin foil in the far end(blocked off end). That was a trick of the old miners around here for cleaning the rats out of a mine tunnel. I don't know if I would worry too much about concealing the trap. They don't seem to be too trap wary and seem to be more concerned about food or shiney things.
 


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