Trapping Voles (Field Mice)

[claybusers al 9]

We have two voles; the field vole and bank vole. Neither of which are rare or protected and I believe can be controlled as they come under "small ground vermin".

 

The water vole on the other hand is locally rare and definetely fully protected.

 

I have never trapped voles personally but have been asked a couple of times so the video was useful. The other alternative would be a live catch such as the Longworth trap and relocate away from human habitation.

i stand corrected every days a school day sorry

[Steve Albano 21]

So why not use mole traps to trap them in their runs?

 

 

We actually catch a fair number of voles with the little tunnel traps we make for moles--see picture below. Sometimes we see moles and voles in the same area, and often using the same runs. The same set up using inside-the-tunnel mole traps will catch both the moles and the voles, which is nice since in many cases, you don't know which animal will get to the set first. Mole traps like our Out-o-Sight or the Talpex trap when set in a blockage in the tunnel will not catch voles, as they will not dig through the blockage as the moles do. You might be able to catch voles with a Duffus, if the triggers were sensitive enough.

 

 

But we don't set mole traps for voles if we're setting just for voles, because as Stubby said, digging out the tunnels and setting traps inside the tunnels just takes longer to do. The set up with the mouse traps only takes about 10 seconds to set up, and uses two traps that cost less than 50 cents per trap. It's a very cheap and efficient way to get these guys, and that's important with voles because sometimes there's a lot of them.