Pest Control Trap Line

[coote]

Rats, stoats, weasels and ferrets kill our native wildlife and game birds. These animals were all introduced to our country and are considered by most to be pests. Individuals and groups make quite an effort to trap them. I look after a few traps in our valley. The two main types of trap are standard Victor snap traps, and the DOC traps which come in a couple of sizes. The Victor traps are used when rats are targeted, but the DOC traps are designed to catch everything in the list.

All sorts of baits are used. Peanut butter seems to work well on the rat traps; and eggs, dried meat and factory-made lures are often used in the DOC traps.

The traps are generally set within an enclosure so that our Kiwi and Weka birds can't get caught.

Here is a photo showing a ferret caught in a DOC200 trap. It has been in the trap for a week or more.

And this is a rat I found when walking around my trap line this morning.

 

[Wayne69]

G`day coote.
Great to see you`re doing your bit to keep the feral population under control.
I`ve seen these traps used on several episodes of Hunting Aotearoa.
Keep up the great work in protecting N.Z.`s unique native species.
Cheers from South Australia.
Wayne.

 

[coote]

Good on yer Wayne. Playing with the traps gives me a reason to walk around in the countryside. It also helps develop relationships which might lead to other enjoyable opportunities... like places to go hunting etc.

 

[Roguer]

Sounds as bad as feral hogs in parts of the US.

Here we had some one try drop of wild boars one time, the wolves at them, some one tried to get euro red deer, the wolves ate them and the DNR (aka Fish Cops) killed the one in a city. One critter that raised a lot of concern a lot of years ago was a "Finnish Racoon" my old man, a game warden, told me about. The lost one had a big man hunt, and the one who lost it was convinced to turn over the other one. They can climb trees, and can do a lot of damage to birds and other critters if let loose to breed. And where I live its just like Finland, they would of survived the winters and as they can climb trees, wolves would of not of gotten them to much. But with cougars coming back in the area, guess they would finally have a predator if they got let loose around here.

Water based invasive species are the bigger threat. Like the Lamprey in the Great Lakes.

 

[coote]

Humans sure have mixed things up in the age of travel. All our land mammals in NZ, apart from bats. were introduced. We have sparrows which we could do without no matter how cute they are. And there are plants that cause problems. We've cleared a huge portion of our land for farming and city growth. But it might be helpful to regard it as evolution. I know scientists would correct me as that may not be the way they'd define how things should evolve. Maybe one day we will be really grateful that an introduced species provides a means of sustenance of some sort.