Thread: Bird Predator Control

Well done Time Out .... but how many more down the hole?

I'm starting to like these live traps.
There is a lot more cats out there than I realised, just scoping the terrain and stalking.
But what really surprised me is that this didn't trip in the wind last night.

I'm experimenting with the traditional design but altered it, so the cat pushes past the trip stick (which usually has the bait wired to it) to the left side, to bait at the very back of trap. The stick balanced on the trip stick and has the noose and rope attached to bent sapling then pulls to the left. (Traditional is set to center) Hitting cat in face as it starts to close noose. Cat keeps backing out in hurry as noose tightens and the left hand entrance stick which is barely in ground (it's the rocks to the right that stop it pulling out same lever principle as trip stick) comes loose, the entrance pops out of ground and sapling it totally free to deal with cats weight. Only been in a couple of days so probly still stinks of me setting it up.

there is allot of pleasure removing predators like cats. you will find the more you remove the better the bird life will be - especially those pheasants

Just to show you what can be achieved with intensive trapping around a 70 acre community reserve – approx. 200 trap sites – targeting all the animals seen on the graph below – we use approx. 160 Kness snap-e rat traps
A team of four still doing the rounds every week – just four kills in July and seven kills in August. The 2021 year to date total of 314 pests. Mainly rats but a good number of the other prolific bird killers – hogs continue to invade around the perimeter and threaten our Quail population. The cats were seen and reported by visitors and were quickly removed. One ferret in a Doc250 was quickly followed by its Mate in a nearby Doc250.
Possum paste is still our trap lure of choice – the ants and cockroaches clean it out in a couple of days but the Cinnamon odour seems to persist in the bait cup and still trips up the odd rat
One of our team checks a line around our internal roads and gets good numbers of rats from the traps – and keeps bait stations supplied with Contrac poison, about six buckets so far this year - so we kill more rats than what shows in our kill numbers
We have been doing this level of pest control for about eight years – but they always come back
Rabbits are controlled by a Council night shooting contractor – so I don’t have the figures but they are now under reasonable control
For those that think that pest control is a simple task of setting up a few traps per hectare – sorry – they are smarter than we think – I have a variety of eight traps in my one acre back yard – all our neighbors have multiple traps – they don’t like mesh on boxes, or a GN A24 – I mostly trip them up running over a Fenn6 in an open Phillproof tunnel – they keep coming up from the nearby estuary

Maybe intensive traping is needed here. 1080 ain't the answer
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-z...kills-kea.html

Giant Eff up.
But honestly, is anyone surprised ?

Originally Posted by Pointer

What your best tips for trapping cats? Have been using an enlarged Timms with limited success. What is the best bait for cats?

victor no 2 trap - Victor 1 to small but you could use two together side by side two no 1 would hold a cat - secret is to haze trap well - hazing involves building walls of branches etc leading up to trap- guiding cat up to trap - almost like a hedge -now most important camouflage trap - dry leaves really good especially those dry ones that have become skeletonized -make sure trap cant be seen - bait well rabbit works good -pin big fresh piece fur and all about a 700 cm up tree - trap placement is important -imagine cat coming along sees rabbit smells it -walks up and reaches up to get rabbit - so trap needs to be about two hand widths out from trunk - this works and is what we used to teach until DOC became to PC - fresh poultry works to

I just caught part of an artical on TV about sausages being used with good effect on cats and Stoat in a trial in nz. I think it was a rabbit and chicken sausage. Could anyone fill me in on details please?

Originally Posted by kruza

I just caught part of an artical on TV about sausages being used with good effect on cats and Stoat in a trial in nz. I think it was a rabbit and chicken sausage. Could anyone fill me in on details please?

Likewise I only got part of the article.
I did hear that when testing the dyed green sausage bait with game cameras set up a stoat went for one sausage only three minutes after it had been placed.

Yep it sounded good from what I caught but I missed the beginning and that held the story

Here's my Starling trap.

Originally Posted by SL600

Here's my Starling trap.Attachment 210158

HW97k. A recent one judging from the stock. Congrats! The starlings will hate you.

Fandangled trap seems to be working as it should. Pretty cool really !!

Nailing them two at a time



Logged onto it this morning, not surprised it hasn't encountered many possums as we only get one once and a while but it seems to be accounting for a few rats



A mate has one and he is in an area with heaps of possums. Has caught 24 so far, even got 2 last night. His dogs getting a bit fat

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

A mate has 3 or 4 of these A220s at his work and the record is 4 possums in the one night in the one trap. Great trap

They say the smell of a mustelid is the best lure for a mustelid.....

Its amazing how many times I have done this now.

Caught a weasel and then left it on the top of the box (minus its tail of course) only to return a day or to later to another one in the trap.



Interestingly the bait in this trap was a fake egg so they do work Well enough too fool the first one at least



Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk