Thread: Possum trapping

Try scraping a small hollow, use your hammer. set trap so its more level with ground, then you can sprinkle a little soil on top of trap to hide it a little. Very frustrating hobby. them bears have been avoiding traps, poisons, bullets all there lives and they are not stupid. good luck

Good to see some good advice

Lures make sure your lure has icing sugar in it a possum will lick flour and move on if it is sweet it will keep licking until it stands in the trap, If you are trapping on a big tree lure it on all sides so any passing possum see the white blaze and comes looking. Possums only smell lures from about 2 to 5 metres. Even lure between traps it is not wasted as if your trap is full that other possum will be looking for that sweet feed tomorrow night.

If you only have a few traps prefeed ahead of your self so that the possum is visiting the site you are going to put your trap on before you get there and you will increase your catch. You will get to know how many nights a trap will catch for and just keep moving the if walking past your old sites lure these up as you go and when you see a possum is eating that lure each night set a trap often the best possum to get caught are the big fury does. Fur prices are good and skin prices are getting better so hope you all have a good season.

The Feral Action Network runs a good insurance scheme of $10 million Public Liability and $5 million Rural Fire for trappers and environmental workers costs under $300 well worth belonging contact nzferalaction@hotmail.co.nz

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.