Live and learn

[30-6]

I was always told that moles were solitary creatures and apart from mating and breeding stayed alone. Sometimes, I have trapped a mole on a particular run and have seen no more molehills and then say a week or so later more molehills appear, and put this down to another mole moving into the unoccupied run.

 

However, yesterday I went to check the traps and on this one particular run (which I had already had two moles out of on seperate occasions), there were three traps down, two had gone off with a mole in each.

 

So, do moles live communaly or was this offspring that had not yet left (they were big moles as opposed to small ones).

 

I usually set several traps at the same time per run, but have never caught two at the same time.

 

Anybody got any suggestions,

 

P.S. up to 16 now.

[Cranfield]

Moles are breeding now, so you could have caught a couple.

They are normally very solitary and territorial.

 

I have large gardens, mostly lawn(meadow) and if I trap one, I don't normally get any more activity for at least 6 months.

I usually set three traps, but I have never caught more than one at a time.

[mel b3]

i do quite a bit of mole trapping and i regularly take 3 or 4 moles out of(what appears to be) the same run , i don't pretend to understand why this is but after i've taken a mole from a run i still leave a couple of traps in for the next few days just in case , i've only been mole trapping for around 3yrs but i've found that moles soon move into unoccupied runs , this can take between 2 weeks and 6 months but they always seem to come back, i do one or two private mole jobs and one in particular is a private house with a large garden and a lawn that is cut in perfect stripes , i clear this garden around once a month and still they keep moving in , the moles had even lifted the block paving on the drive (pretty amazing for something so small)

[30-6]

I have copied and pasted this from a previous post in case anybody missed it as I think it is proving to be really worthwhile adding a bit of soil under the trigger ring so as the claws don't have to be pushed into the bottom of the tunnel (making them harder to snap shut). Works for me my catch rates are up, try it and see.

 

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The long "claws" that Cranfield was on about in his post I find need to be set too deep into the soil so as to get the ring in the bottom of the run, this then can result in the trap being very sluggish when going off as it has to plough its way through the soil. What I have been doing to overcome this is to add a moulded bit of soil directly under the ring, with the bottom of the claws just resting in the bottom of the run, the mole then has to climb this added soil, sets the ring off and the claws are free to snap shut with no resistance from being buried, the claws still catch well onto the mole.

 

Another thing I've started to try but not yet proven, is to put the dead mole back into the run so as to dissuade any other mole from moving into the empty run, as in the past I have occasionaly caught a mole and then another sets up in the vacated run. It's much easier to trap in a newly formed run, than in a well established set of runs.