Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Trapping I trapped 4 rats in my basement this week

Now the scratching in the walls has stopped.

I'm not sure how to respond.

That first one tripped a pretty good sized trap. Maybe the rest of them have just stopped scratching?

Taste just like chicken.

Good job. I detest those vermin more than any other. When they've been educated, they can be some of the hardest to catch too, so it's good you got them whacked right away.

What's with the boxes around the rats?..............

Man those are some big azz critters to have in your house,nasty

I take the pic with camera and save to my desktop in Ifanview.
That program has a tool called "auto adjust colors".
http://www.irfanview.com/
If there is a big white background I do not want to include that in the balance. So if there is something dark, I can just draw a box around it and adjust the color [brightness too] inside the box. It can act like night vision for pictures. If I had not done it, the rat would be just a dark shadow. If I do it, you can see features like eyes.


The first one I caught in my bedroom while I was trying to sleep. I realized now that people who seem nuts walking around stressed out with a gun and a club saying that rats are keeping them awake, are actually responding correctly to the situation.
I got 4 rats in 3 days, and now no rat activity for a couple days and have now caught up on my sleep.

I would bet that if there are presently more, they have figured out that 'you' are a bad thing, something to be avoided. I can recall as a kid trying to catch a rat or several which lived in a building we housed poultry in. Somehow they managed to avoid my initial attempts at catching and later poisoning them. When I finally did manage to catch the old matriarch/patriarch in a blind set some time later, one of its legs had scarring from having previously being pinched along its length. One wouldn't think a rodent would have the intelligence of a canine, but they sure seem to learn well when their life is on the line.

big ones

They can be dang smart! You can't take credit for that back foot catch one....just not cricket

That back foot one only hung for 2 hours and it was cold dead.
The trap was on a rope and fell half way down a wall.

What about hanging head down kills a rat?

IDK....maybe it was the snap when the trap hit the end of the rope.... I trap mice in the henhouse with those plastic tilt traps. They are made for bunny-huggers cause you can release the mouse out one end, but they work VERY well. They have an open door and once the mouses weight takes it over the fulcrum point the door closes behind them. Now it's just a closed off tetter-totter.

I think the mice run themselves to death going back and forth, because they are dead most of the time and wet, like they've been sweating heavily...weird. The chickens love them though! You ought to see them pull the guts out and chow down.

Couple things I've found trapping rats.........

1. a trap that has caught one and it leaves blood on the trap out traps other traps without blood on them.

2. the absolute best bait I ever had success with was lasagna. Two at once....and multiples in a couple hours. Like they didn't care if they got caught.

3. put trap under a half box like a carton used for can goods, pop, etc. Cut out doorway on one side. make sure tall enough for trap to work, although the plastic teethed push opens work well under a box. The box creates a dark space and they feel more comfortable eating. Perhaps the darkness tends to suppress the looks of the trap...who knows.

For what it's worth..........

Holy Sheep Schitt Man! The first one looks like a hybrid capybara!!! I hope you have a loaded shotgun at bedside and a 1911 .45acp or large caliber revolver within arms reach also! Might want to invest in a large leather neck collar for yourself in case one attacks. At least they won't get a jugular before you get them!

Good Luck, God Bless, & Stay Safe!

I've had a heck of a time trapping the bastids around my place. A neighbor feeds birds and they camp out under my deck & shed, feeding at his place.

Although I caught a few last winter, more times than not I'd get nothing. Hell they don't even eat poison!

I put the trail cam out and caught video of them wiggling out of a sprung trap and JUMPING over a loaded trap!

I've had a running battle with rats for 20 years. First experienced them living in an old farm house rental when we were first married. They were runnin thru the duct work and sounded like a herd of deer. Chased those down and shot em in the basement. Also had em in the garage at that house. Never paid em no mind till I took the cover off my 1000R Ninja in the spring and they had eaten all the rubber off the foot pegs and handle bars. Meant war I tell you. Found out that 3 #2 coilsprings fit very well in the bottom of a galvanized watering pan. Spread some grain around the bottom and killed em off within a week.

Now I got em at my house. One winter they decided that all the vacuum lines on my wife's mini van made a good snack. They also think that the flexible insulated ducts that run thru my crawl space are for chewin on. SOB's, kill em all!.

OH HELL NO!! Never gonna be able to eat chiken again...

I had one that took me weeks to catch...course I didn't know about the magic bait then ( lasagna, lol)

Wired a scotch pad to a trap and smeared a plethora of substances on it...

Wow! That one's a Boone & Crockett Rat! Couple more that size and you'll have a coat for your lady!

Ed

Clarkm, I believe those trophies would make for some superb full body mounts.

L.W.

Will rats fall (no pun intended) for a morsel of food suspended over a bucket of water. I find that very effective for mice around our elk camps.

this guy made the mistake of pissing my wife off



my oldest son caught these guys at the barn several years back.he trapped about 30 the summer before he left for boot camp.still not sure how we ended up with so dang many so fast that year.havent had a problem since we got barn kitty

I've trapped and killed more stuff than I care to admit. Including rats. They still give me the creeps...I hate 'em.

There is a free, quick and easy way to modify those Victor M201 rat traps that will help you catch more rats.

A couple of years ago, we had a horrible rat infestation in an old barn. We took over 100 rats out of there in about 30 days.

We used those Victor M201 like the OP has in his second photo. Problem was, we had a lot of snapped traps with no rats.
I realized I needed to make getting the bait more difficult.

Take a plastic bottle cap, cut a small slit in the top about 1/3 of the way from one side.
Pry up the small raised metal V on the trap trigger (the OP second photo rat's nose is touching this V )
Push the raised metal V through the slit in the plastic cap.
Press the V down to secure the cap on the trigger.
Now you have a little "cup" to hold your bait on the trigger.
I used a dab of peanut butter on a piece of dog food kibble to bait the trap.
Press the dog food into the cap using the peanut butter as "glue".

We had a lot less empty traps using this simple modification.

There are Norway rat runs in an area ~50 yards behind my house. I'll know the runs are full when I see them in daylight. I plink at them with a Weihrauch HW95/.22 and refer to them as targets. Very smart animals and a bigger challenge than steel spinners.

I just ordered 10 more rat traps, and they arrived with the yellow plastic trip plate.

I found a 3 minute video that explains the difference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO3urIG-EnY


Here is something that came with the 10 traps.

I'd say time to get serious. That would include poison 'bait houses' on the outside edge of your house, towards cover. Poison in a 'bait station' bought from a farm supply store keeps it pet proof, but lets rats & mice in.

This is rat #5.
It is not in my house where I sleep, but the wall between my gunsmithing shop and the house. The rodents are not just scratching around in that wall, they are fighting.

when i first bought my house, it had sat dormant for 6 months. as i was in the process of moving in, a good sized rat ran across my kitchen floor. it came from the basement through a missing steam pipe hole and was headed out the door. I slammed the door and grabbed a 357 that was in a drawer by the door. after I fired, the front half screamed for about 10 seconds then died. i've been hunting them ever since. find them under my dog coup's and shoot them with a 410 contender, wipes out whole families at at time, dog food thieving vermin. I caught one in a trap once and the next morning when I found it it was only half there. i caught the cannibal a few nights later. I hate them, hate them. HATE THEM. jim

Might want to upgrade to some 330 coni's

Anyone try a weasel box on these vermin?

I used to put out a variety of different bird feeders, but had to stop as the over-spill started to attract rats.

I used the same Victor traps, but found they worked best when covered..the best set up I found was two set back to back covered by a light plywood wood "tunnel" about 3' foot long..

The baits of choice were either peanut butter or chocolate..

Life stops and I go after these guys with a passion when they show up in camp or at home. I have skipped a full day at work when I found one in my garage.




Pack or bushy tailed woodrats. They can do more damage to camp or a parked rig than one can imagine. This one (of 4 taken) went after my Leatherman sheath and some leather gloves in camp last week. Mess with the bull and one gets the horn.

For scale the trap plank is 7 inches long. The next rat taken had about an 8 inch long body and larger girth, but I did not snap a photo.

These guys will put up a fight when cornered, and I've not known many cats that will take one on.

When I was an early teen (late 70s), we raised chickens and my job was to keep the rat population down. dad gave me six steel jaw traps, a couple of those victors, a 22LR bolt action single shot and a box of ammo. I beamed with pride that he had given me the job and made a genuine effort to wipe them out.

I used to setup the steel jaws in such a way that they were the "step" up to the bait, which was raised and blocked in such a way as to make the step the best route. I would mix peanut butter with feed corn and plaster it on the trigger pad, then a blob up high...

I averaged 6-8 per night, as I would sit on the coop roof from dusk till bedtime, shooting them...then my trap sets would get checked in the morning to fill out the tally. eventually, I graduated to gasoline vapor tunnel evolutions...but that's another story <BG>

We had elevated roosts for the chickens, but when one got sick and could not make the roost, the rats would bite holes in their sides...slowly killing them over a night or two... I still have a profound hatred for the things..

I got another one, 3 feet from the basement.