Mice!

Dave,
I had a supper mouse. He avoided my single traps like a Houdini.

Ashley and I came up with a plan and it worked great. Tunnel of Love. 3 Long blocks (2x4x 18") Two walls and a roof. 4 traps, two facing each other at each end in tunnel. Peanut butter covered cracker in the middle. This set has accounted for many a dead rodent and is a load of fun to hear go off in the middle of the night. Many double and triple sets.......

Have fun. I love having a trapper for a daughter.

I love the bucket idea, but my dog would wind up eating the peanut better and drinking the dead mouse water...... grosssssss.
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I've learned that the trap placement is as important (if not more) than the bait. I've sure all trappers know this, but it sure is important.
 
There is an easy fix for the incidental kill issue using the bucket trap.

Build your bucket trap like the one in the following link and put a lid on it. Only things that are mouse size will get into it.

http://www.frugal-living-freedom.com/mouse-traps.html

That is a great idea of building a tunnel Bob. The little critters love to run in confined spaces like that. I build similar rigs and wiped out the vole population in my garden. It didn't take long either.
 
Dave,

I have a small granary that I converted to a storage shed. There are various tools, a snow blower, garden tiller, and so forth stored in the shed. A year ago the mice infestation and voles became difficult to control and the shed stunk like crazy. We used both traps and poison baits and it became a battle of pounds of poison every couple of week plus emptying the traps.

My brother suggested using mothball as a deterrent as we only are in the shed only on occasion. I tried it as I had nothing to loose but a mouse problem..a couple lbs of mothballs placed in the nook and crannies and the mice and the voles went bye-bye. It is only occasionally that we have a mouse in that outbuilding now and the damage is non-existent. I understand that mothballs probably should not be used in some situation but I was desperate for a solution that actually worked. The shed did/does smell strongly of the mothballs, but the shed is 200 ft from the house.

In my vehicles and boats I use this product and it seems to lessen the mouse problems - http://www.earth-kind.com/

That stuff works very well and is pleasant smelling. It should be noted that it is only effective for 60-90 days and needs to be replenished.

We still use baits and traps but find that a little preventive deterrent works wonders and lessens the "trapline".


Matt
 
Our house had been empty for a year when Dee Dee and I moved in, and the former owner was an elderly woman who had let a lot of things go in the last few years before she passed. We moved in to a lot of mice, and for the first few months were emptying traps on a daily basis.

We had one spot with lots of activity--sprung and all the peanut butter licked off of them night after night. So I went over to the sticky traps with the same result, except that one night we set 4 sticky traps and came down in the morning to 3.

We never figured out what it was that was large enough to walk away with one of our sticky traps attached, but after the mice were all gone we were still seeing some activity in our pantry. I eventually set some larger traps and we got a single rat. That scared the crap out of me, because I have never heard of a solo rodent in a house, but we kept traps out for a month afterwards and never got another one, and almost 2 years later haven't seen a sign of a rodent in the house since.

Now, if I could just get rid of the juvenile porcupine whose taken to hanging out in the corner of the boat shed . . . . It comes scampering out of the shed every time I back the trailer in, and I'm afraid I'm going to get a flat if I run it over.
 
Lost all our cats at our hunting shack last year, and the problems started. I got 17 with traditional traps. One thing though, try and find the Victor's, a lot of places are selling cheaper traps, and then you have to modify the triggers or they don't work. I am going to make one of those buckets this fall, that is the ticket for what I have going on. We have lots of dogs around so I won't use poison. One thing you might try is the glue traps, they would work well in your boat. I am going to use some of them in addition to the bucket and the regular traps.
 
All this talk of mice reminds me years ago we used have an old tin shed with a concrete floor that we used during hunting season. We would camp out in tents and use the shed for electric hookup and just to hang out in. we had a buddy who came down for a week of bow hunting. He had left the morning that me and another buddy arrived for the weekend. We opened the door to the shed and found a note on the backside: Charlie 23 mice 0, he didnt have any luck with the deer but "big game" hunting was doing well in the shed. :)
 
I grew up on a hog farm in Illinois so we had plenty of grain and places for mice. We had a problem where something was getting to our chickens at night so I took some of my Victor leg traps and set them out around the outside of the chicken pen thinking I would catch a fox or racoon that was killing the chickens. Nope! Rats....and lots of them. Big rats! Be happy it's just mice!

dc
 
I spoke too soon--we got a mouse some time last week.

I'd forgotten about a pair of mousetraps set in a kitchen cupboard we use to store things that don't get used much. I opened it up last night to get out a casserole, and smell of dead mouse was overpowering. The CSI guys analyzed the corpse and declared it died at least 3 days ago. Glad it wasn't back in the wall . . . . .

Clean up was not fun--I may need to burn a wooden salad bowl that was nearby. It's soaking in bleach and water on the porch right now. No way to treat wood, but, trust me, it's necessary.

I bet that trap had been sitting there for 8 months or more. Will be setting some more tonight--where there is one mouse, there are others.
 
I had some mice in my storage room off the garage. I forgot about a honey bun I had in my blind bag - it was sealed and in a zipped net campartment. Little suckers chewed a hole through the netting and ate about half of the honey bun. Used sticky traps along baseboards and removed bird seed from the shed and got rid of them pretty quick.
 
Between the repellent sprinkled on the ground around the boat, and the 4 baited traps on and in the boat... activity has ceased. Body count only 3 confirmed. No new activity since last killed in trap, 2 weeks ago. This exercise did motivate me to mount a board full of hooks in the boat tent... all the boat cushions, lines, life jackets now have a place to dry between hunts, high off the ground and out of the boat to not encourage nesting! Need to add a shelf for the battery tender, and move the son's motorcycle to the garage once he heads off to school this week and the boat will be ready to roll at a moments notice!
 
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