Thread: Possum trapping

Put out 30, catch 5 or 6 on a good night

I usually trap for a few weeks each year, being self employed I can just take the time off to suit, makes a welcome change from my usual work. In the country I work, I can effectively run 100 traps. I set approx 40-50 that I can do a drive by in the truck and the other 50-60 in lines of 10 in the patches of bush, some may take 30 minutes to walk to. I flag nearly every trap as I am on private property and the flagging tape or plastic attracts the possums - fluro yellow works the best. Once I have my traps out, I check them in the morning and reset, have a snooze if I have time and then recheck all the drive by ones an hour or 2 after dark as well as spotlighting my way around. That way those 40-50 are possibly catching twice a day. And you get the added ones from spotlighting. You need to be catching about 30 per night from 100 traps to make it worthwhile. At an average of $8-11 per possum that should bring in close to $300 per day. Take out your expenses and it works out about the same as wages. has been some good advice on here, take it all in and keep on having fun.

Prebait is a great tool, it makes your future trap sites a part of the coons routine before you get there. You can sort the best spots for traps etc with a minimum of work adjusting markers etc to make life easy. A mate does this with great success, prebaits for up to six weeks then in for the kill. He runs 100 odd traps and sits around 90% for a week or longer.

For lure we always used whole meal flour, icing sugar, cooking oil and aniseed or rose essence. The oil puts some water resistance into it.