Mole or Vole ?

[Rolfe 2]

Just been to a customer convinced he had a mole problem.........turns out it was a Bank Vole. A series of exposed holes always denotes a vole is present.....BUT......as they frequent old mole runs it can often prove misleading. In this case i had removed a mole some months before, and this particular set of runs has now got a Bank Vole as a resident. It is interesting to anyone who is unsure of what signs to look for. Note the well worn and smooth entrance hole.

[zig zag wanderer 0]

Also, if the holes are in grass the area surrounding the holes will be well grazed and cropped. The holes will normally be closer together than mole hills too.

[Steve Albano 21]

The first picture shows a setup I use for voles, with two mouse traps set under cut open section of downspout. The voles naturally want to hide under the cover, and the cover fits just over the traps, forcing the voles right onto the trigger, and putting them in a position on the ends of the trap where the trap will be most effective. There's no bait on the traps, as baiting the traps is not necessary, and will just cause other scavengers to disturb the setup. I drill holes in the traps and stake them down with a nail, as it's very important that the traps don't move when they spring. In this picture, I set the traps with both triggers facing an active hole, but when setting on a trail, of course the traps would be set back to back with the triggers facing outwards.

 

Anyone want to take a stab at describing what the second picture shows?

[Steve Albano 21]

Here are a couple more pictures of vole damage to suburban gardens, and in next post, a picture of a vole caught in underground tunnel in a tunnel trap for moles that I make.

[Steve Albano 21]

Here's a vole in my tunnel trap

[OldTrapCollector 377]

What type of trap is that you are using Steve? Can I see a picture of it without the vole please?

 

OTC

[Steve Albano 21]

Here's a picture of the trap. I use them mostly for moles, but also for juvenile gophers who's tunnels are too small for my full sized gopher traps, and sometimes I set them for voles where there are both voles and moles present, as the same set up will catch either animal. If there are only voles in a yard, I tend to go with the mouse trap setup pictured above, as it's very fast to set up, very effective, and cheap traps and materials.

[OldTrapCollector 377]

Interesting Does it have a name?

 

OTC

[Steve Albano 21]

OTC, I call it the "Trapline Mole Trap", and I've just started manufacturing them in the last few months.

 

I've made and sold a larger version of the trap for pocket gophers for just over a year now. I call that one "The Gophinator", and you can see some more pictures of it at www.thegophinator.com

 

I do have the mole trap for sale on ebay.co.uk, if anyone's interested. Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into an advertisement for my trap.

 

Regarding the voles, their populations seem to run in cycles, and we've seen more voles here than in any other year in the past 16 years that I've been in business. By far. We're just swimming in voles this year.

[Rolfe 2]

Great pics Steve............i have been using the two traps you sent me in certain situations (where discretion is needed) and i have had some good results......!

 

Rolfe.

[Steve Albano 21]

Rolfe, good to hear your catching moles with my traps.

 

How tight do they fit in the tunnels? What I noticed as I was designing the trap is that if the jaw spread is even a little narrower than the diameter of the mole tunnel, the moles will tend to dig around or under the trap. If it just fits into the tunnel, it's catches them pretty consistently. I make a little bit bigger trap for the Euro mole, as your moles are a bit bigger than ours.

[Rolfe 2]

Rolfe, good to hear your catching moles with my traps.

 

How tight do they fit in the tunnels? What I noticed as I was designing the trap is that if the jaw spread is even a little narrower than the diameter of the mole tunnel, the moles will tend to dig around or under the trap. If it just fits into the tunnel, it's catches them pretty consistently. I make a little bit bigger trap for the Euro mole, as your moles are a bit bigger than ours.

Steve.......i push the traps up inside the tunnels and they sort of "cut themselves in" for a nice tight fit. Any loose soil i just leave covering the traps.......and also let some soil fall over the trigger bar to disguise it a little. I am experimenting with different settings as well..........until i find the most productive method of all.

 

Rolfe.

[Steve Albano 21]

Rolfe, here are a couple of pictures showing the wrong and right way to "bed" the trap into the soil. If the trap is pushed down into the soil a bit, it doesn't move when the mole crawls over the front tines, and the mole is more likely to come on through his tunnel and into the trap.

 

A couple of guys over here that I sell traps to were bedding the trap by pushing the spring down after the trap was placed in the tunnel. What we figured out is that doing it that way tends to cause the front end of the trap to "see-saw" up into the air, giving the exact opposite results of what you want. This is shown in the first picture.

 

The best way I've found to bed the trap is by pushing downwards and forwards on the spring handle or the "spring catch" on the back of the trap, as shown in the second picture. This downwards and forwards pressure drives the front tines down into the soil, which is what you're after.

 

It's hard to see what goes on inside those little mole tunnels, so you might want to experiment with this just in some soft soil on the surface, to see what I mean.

 

Several people who use my trap reported much improved results from doing this.

[Steve Albano 21]

In the second picture that I posted above on post #3, what's happened is that the two voles came out of a hole that the traps were set on, and then a mole came back through his tunnels and plugged up the vole's surface hole. But before plugging the hole, the mole ate the back end of vole number two(the unfortunate fellow in the lower half of the picture).

 

The moles and voles here are constantly going back and forth over ownership of the tunnels.