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Thread: TB in possums - not many if any

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  1. #24
    Lovin Facebook for hunters kiwijames's Avatar
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    Feb 2012
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    Quote Originally Posted by time out View Post
    Kimjon - you have brought out some good information about rats in this thread
    We seem to be largely focused on possums and 1080 verses trapping - but we really should be asking what predators are doing the greatest damage to our birdlife - possums, rats, mustilids, cats, etc
    I have read masses of information about 1080 and have changed from hating it to tolerating it until effective alternatives are found
    I am retired and I have spent the last 12 months on a community service project - trying to create a safe environment where the birds can return to an 80 acre community reserve close to home
    When I first went there to do native planting work - I couldn’t see or hear many birds so I figured something must be wrong - maybe possums or maybe rats - so I decided that would be my project and I got started on both of them
    I found two other old fellas to help me - 68 and 84 and we are running trap and bait stations which we jointly visit two or three times each week
    We are currently working on about 50 acres of tracked country with 50m gridlines for bait stations and traps
    I think we have killed most of the possums (133 to date) but they will continue to infiltrate from the perimeters
    But rats - they are a serious challenge - bait stations on approximately 50m gridlines - we started with Pestoff, then changed to Ditrac and after ten large buckets of that we figured we had them beat because the bait take slowed down - but they were still laying blue shit in our possum traps and stealing the possum bait - so they were happily living with Ditrac
    Kiwi Hunter advised me to change to Contrac - they wolfed it like they were starving and after 5 large buckets and 60 new rat kill traps we seem to have slowed them down - but have we beaten them - I doubt it - they are still there and are being seen - but just getting more cunning - they will take bait out of the barrel of an A24 - right up to the trigger wire - then leave the rest and they are getting trap shy
    Then there are the mice - take out most of the rats and the balance of power shifts - we then had a mouse plague - rats must consume large numbers of mice and I can tell you that mice live quite happily on Ditrac - blue mouse shit in all the possum traps - and of course rats eat dead rats - we are still seeing rat heads and parts of bodies in traps
    So if rats can eat rats - see the pictures - what do you think the bastards can do with birds eggs or baby birds just out of the eggs - dead meat for rats
    But the birds are definitely returning - Quail have had an amazing breeding season - the buggars are everywhere in flocks of 20 to 30 - the usual natives such as Tui and Fantail are now prolific along with the usual domestic birds - and we are starting to see a few Kereru - we just have to create a safe environment for the next breeding season in a few months
    So what has changed - most of the possums, rats and hedgehogs have gone - which was the most destructive for birdlife? - I don’t know but I doubt there is any point in taking out one bird predator without the others - and then of course there are mustilids which are very elusive and simply refuse to enter our 15 box traps - and bloody cats from the numerous neighboring properties
    So the end of the rant - maybe 1080 will clean up the reduced number of possums that now don’t seem to have TB and maybe it will clean up the rats along with some of our birds - God only knows because I don’t think anyone else has the total answer - and I am not sure that many hunters really care about bird predator control because I don’t see many reports of hunters actually doing it
    Trapped rats in last few weeks - I can thoroughly recommend Snap E rat traps - fantastic and don’t break like some others we use

    Great work @time out.

 

 

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