My first (and last) live mole trapping

[camies 1]

Personally I don't agree with live mole trapping but I had a lady who wanted her garden cleared and being a nature lover, didn't want me to use 'kill' traps.

I looked on the internet and found a few trap designs but they were all tubular and VERY restrictive so I decided to resort to olden methods and dug a large flower pot into the tunnel system. As I was a little bit nervous about it all, I included a tobacco tin FULL of earth worms to hopefully see the mole through the next 12 hours. (The last thing I needed was to open the cover on a dead mole!)

Covering over the trap with a board, the lady asked if she could check the trap occasionally. I readily agreed and asked that the trap be checked every 4 hours as that's the average patrol time of a mole.

Two hours later the phone rang. A mole was in the pot! I went to the house and the mole was frantically running round the pot looking for a way out. I lifted the pot out and took it to a nearby wood and had no sooner tipped the mole out than it burrowed into the ground. Less than 30 seconds and it was gone. Amazing speed! Returning to the garden I then infilled the hole and replaced the turf.

Luckily this was the only mole but it was one labour intensive job and I don't think I'll try it again. :thumbdown:

No pictures I'm afraid, camera ran out of battery power.

Edited September 6, 2009 by camies

[cornishtrapper 3]

Personally I don't agree with live mole trapping but I had a lady who wanted her garden cleared and being a nature lover, didn't want me to use 'kill' traps.

I looked on the internet and found a few trap designs but they were all tubular and VERY restrictive so I decided to resort to olden methods and dug a large flower pot into the tunnel system. As I was a little bit nervous about it all, I included a tobacco tin FULL of earth worms to hopefully see the mole through the next 12 hours. (The last thing I needed was to open the cover on a dead mole!)

Covering over the trap with a board, the lady asked if she could check the trap occasionally. I readily agreed and asked that the trap be checked every 4 hours as that's the average patrol time of a mole.

Two hours later the phone rang. A mole was in the pot! I went to the house and the mole was frantically running round the pot looking for a way out. I lifted the pot out and took it to a nearby wood and had no sooner tipped the mole out than it burrowed into the ground. Less than 30 seconds and it was gone. Amazing speed! Returning to the garden I then infilled the hole and replaced the turf.

Luckily this was the only mole but it was one labour intensive job and I don't think I'll try it again. :thumbdown:

No pictures I'm afraid, camera ran out of battery power.

dont agree with live catching moles ive a job on at the moment catching moles for a vegetarian talked her out of using live catch traps not very humane for the mole best use kill traps all the time , bet the mole wasnt very freindly tho they do make some strange sounds and ave sharp teath

[lilpip1234 62]

lmfao me and a mate use a similar trap before with the same result boy they can be feisty

[Steve Albano 21]

camies, how big a pot did you use? Can you give me the approximate depth and diameter of the pot? And how far did you dig it in to the soil? Was the lip of the pot even with the bottom of the tunnel?

 

Last year there was a university researcher here who needed live moles, and had written into her research budget funds to pay $100 per live mole turned over to her. And she was cute too, so we were really motivated here to catch some live moles and have her show up at the end of the day to pay us an extra $100. We dug a few out when we saw them active in shallow burrows, but we really could have used an effective live trap. I tried making some tunnel traps, but the moles wouldn't go into them.

[camies 1]

will pm you.