Thread: Possum Traping In The Weekend

Originally Posted by Dundee

Traps and Devices | MPI Biosecurity New Zealand

Cheers Dundee, still confused, but the way I read it is if they can sell them they are legal. I use victors. If they want to come to South Westland to inspect them they are welcome.
Retards.

Sounds to me like it only went to court because he was on someone else's land?

The rules pertaining to trapping are getting harder and harder to abide by every year. I think it is part of a very long term policy of keeping trappers and hunters out of the forest because it doesnt really fit with the touchy feely tourist image. Its hard to handle that over the last few years our 100s of traps have become illegal and our Lifetime Cyanide licences have been taken away from us. Now thats a great way to reduce the number of hunters and trappers in our forests for a start.

Take NAWAC... National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee. They set standard for traps that are really stringent and often hard to understand and comply with and dont often make sense. There are rules for Africa about use of gin and leghold traps even if you are using them on your own land.

Take the Kill Trap..We have been through the testing process.... and if you want to test your trap on a mulitude of animals (Stoats rats etc etc) you will have to take out a morgage..The kill trap must kill within three minutes????? or it fails and your money has all gone down the drain.

No such requirement for poisons though to meet any Welfare standards.... Yet 1080 takes anywhere from 10 to 15 hours in some cases more to kill a possum...2 to 3 days of 'unspeakable agony' according to our RSPCA to kill a deer.

Of course there is the fact that the poisoning industry is a 100 million dollar industry and we wouldnt want any rules about animal cruelty to derail it would we?.

I'm still pissed off about having my life time Cyanide license taken ,use to make a few dollars annually out of possums.Kept my access sweet doing the pest control thing for mates on farms round here. But with a few greenies & tree hugers stuffing the fur industry in this country.Appears that 1080 is the only solution DOC & Central government can come up with.Perhaps they should of controlled the Greenies & there wouldn't be a need for 1080.
Would like my Life time license re-instated but not willing to pay hundreds of dollars to get it so I can provide a pest control service with no or very little profit in it.

The problem with the trap shown is that it's size 1 1/2. only size 1 traps are legal now! yes PC madness I agree.

keep at em possom trapper & everyone else your efforts are respected and hugely valuable.

Get amoungst em!!

Just seen this on u tube
The Possum Whisperer, fur trapping new zealand - YouTube

hey mate ive just started trapping possums aswell,ive been using aniseed oil mixd with sugar and flour,seems to work but i have alot of traps set off with nothing but a bit of fur in them haha pisses me off.its gud fun tho.

Originally Posted by possum trapper

On Friday 15th of June 2012 Hellaman my neighbor and I set out to bait my traps for the weekend. We travelled two kms on our push bikes. I have 12 traps but I only set 6 because where I was trapping was too little for 12 traps. For bait I use flour and cinnamon and spread it out on the tray of the trap. The possums smell it and walk over to it. They can also see it well because it is white and they get distracted. Then they put their foot in it and it shuts and their foot gets stuck.

The following Saturday morning I set out to check my possum traps. I walked up the bank to my first two traps and their was a possum in it. It wasn’t very big, but it was better than nothing. I killed it then plucked it. I didn’t get much fur off it but its a start because the week before I sold my 1.28kgs of fur and got $153. Now I have to start again. When I got back home I dried the fur on a tray because it was wet it rained during the night.

After I check my traps in the morning I set them off so I don’t catch any stock and then I re-set them again in the afternoon. Before I went to set my traps on the Saturday afternoon I thought I might make up a bait that doesn’t blow off. Because most of the time when it is raining or windy it get washed off. So I mixed together flour,cinnamon,sugar,water and golden syrup so it would be a paste. It was brown so I would just put some of the normal powder on it and it would stick to the paste so it would be white and the possums could see it at night. After that I went and set my six traps. Dad gave me a ride on the motorbike to set them.

On the morning of Sunday Ryan came with me to check my traps. We walked through the paddocks. When we got there we got to the first trap nothing was in it so I set it off. We climbed up the bank to the second trap and there was a big jack possum in it.

Then after I killed it I plucked it. I got quite a lot of fur off this possum because it was big. The one that I caught the day before was too little but it was still worth the money.

That is what I do most weekends.

By Daniel
Age:13

I couldn't put any photos on because they are to big for this forum.