The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Live trap update

update on the progress of using a live trap

Have we ever caught anything with the live trap from last year?

Anna has been trying to catch a squirrel lately, but the last flood washed away the almonds we were using for bait.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Live trap update
We have to have a summer relocation program at our place. We will catch as many as 30-35 a year and relocate them to the swamp about 8 miles away. We have two traps that are larger than the one you show and use a pile of sunflower seed for bait. We never trap while the young are in the nest.
Comment by Bobby — Mon Dec 30 17:36:06 2013
ground squirrels
On our place (SW Oregon coast) we are overrun with California Ground Squirrels; known locally as digger squirrels. We got over 100 last year in our live traps (all relocated.) I was around in September when a relatively young one (probably from that spring) ended up in the trap. It was good eating! All of the locals though said that grey squirrel is better, but they also admitted not eating either type of squirrel in decades. With a young one just pan fry like fried chicken. Older ones you should stew low, like older chicken. So much for the traps being called 'Hav a Heart' - I call them 'What's for dinner?'
Comment by Charity — Mon Dec 30 19:08:01 2013
bait
Granted California Ground Squirrels are different than Grey Squirrels; but we use pieces of bread in our live traps or small piles of spare grain (chicken scratch.)
Comment by Charity — Tue Dec 31 10:58:05 2013
squirrel bait
We used peanut butter as bait. I relocated a couple dozen, but it didn't seem to make a difference. There were more to fill the void. (We had oak trees AND a neighbor fed them 50 pounds of walnuts a week!) At our new house, we seem to have a lower concentration - probably because there's some predatory wildlife in the neighborhood (and no ''nutty' neighbor).
Comment by Rhonda from Baddeck — Tue Dec 31 11:00:13 2013
peanut butter
Peanut butter on grahm cracker or wheat thins. Put one on the stike plate one under strike plate one on top under handle. Make sure latch catch works smooth. You will be gauranteed to catch one. Put it up away at night or youll have a young possum or skunk trapped overnight. Dispatch is another issue.
Comment by jim — Fri Jan 3 22:51:26 2014
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