I've been using the Goodnature squirrel (A18), rat and mouse traps (A24) for the past 4 years or so.
I have a bunch of the A24's and some Chinese (from e-bay) knock-offs around the yard. And I have one of the A18's up a tree.
By and large they work well. They're useful both for when you have an infestation and you need to kill many quickly (where "many" is 8-10 a day per trap) and also for when your rodent population is mostly under control but you might only see a rat or squirrel in your yard once every week or two.
You bait the trap with a bait that can last a few months in mild climates (to half a year in colder climates) and the trap kills the animal with a CO2-powered captive bolt system. If you set the trap up properly, the target will fall out of the trap and gets eaten by other animals in your yard, be it crows, your chickens or other pest animals. The trap automatically resets and clobbers the next animal that comes along. The A18 designation means that the trap will reset 18 times before the CO2 cartridge is empty, A24 means 24 times.
I learned about these from the Shaun Woods channel, here are his videos.
For the most part they're great and keep my rodent population well under control. Due to the nature of the trap, you can leave them unattended for long periods of time.
One of the downsides of the trap is sometimes corpses can get stuck in the trap, and will need to be manually cleared before the trap is functional again. In my 4 years that's only happened once, with a trap placed on the ground. A particularly fat rat that barely fit into the trap got "glued into" the entrance with the blood that came out of his head, when the trap smooshed it. I suspect this has happened many times before, but other animals would have taken the corpse out of the trap. But not this time.
The chinese knock-offs are pretty good, but you do get better quality with the originals. The main difference is the knock-offs use buna-n o-rings to seal the CO2 cartridge, where the originals use teflon seals. After 6 months, the units with o-rings are always out of gas, while the teflon ones can still have a few charges remaining, provided they havent caught a lot of animals. Other than that, the units are essentially identical.
You can set the units up to use your own bait preparations, or you can buy pre-prepared bait packs fro Goodnature. The items from Goodnature are pretty pricey, so I'd advise to figure out good bait for whatever it is you're trying to dispose of, on your own.
I have a bunch of the A24's and some Chinese (from e-bay) knock-offs around the yard. And I have one of the A18's up a tree.
By and large they work well. They're useful both for when you have an infestation and you need to kill many quickly (where "many" is 8-10 a day per trap) and also for when your rodent population is mostly under control but you might only see a rat or squirrel in your yard once every week or two.
You bait the trap with a bait that can last a few months in mild climates (to half a year in colder climates) and the trap kills the animal with a CO2-powered captive bolt system. If you set the trap up properly, the target will fall out of the trap and gets eaten by other animals in your yard, be it crows, your chickens or other pest animals. The trap automatically resets and clobbers the next animal that comes along. The A18 designation means that the trap will reset 18 times before the CO2 cartridge is empty, A24 means 24 times.
I learned about these from the Shaun Woods channel, here are his videos.
For the most part they're great and keep my rodent population well under control. Due to the nature of the trap, you can leave them unattended for long periods of time.
One of the downsides of the trap is sometimes corpses can get stuck in the trap, and will need to be manually cleared before the trap is functional again. In my 4 years that's only happened once, with a trap placed on the ground. A particularly fat rat that barely fit into the trap got "glued into" the entrance with the blood that came out of his head, when the trap smooshed it. I suspect this has happened many times before, but other animals would have taken the corpse out of the trap. But not this time.
The chinese knock-offs are pretty good, but you do get better quality with the originals. The main difference is the knock-offs use buna-n o-rings to seal the CO2 cartridge, where the originals use teflon seals. After 6 months, the units with o-rings are always out of gas, while the teflon ones can still have a few charges remaining, provided they havent caught a lot of animals. Other than that, the units are essentially identical.
You can set the units up to use your own bait preparations, or you can buy pre-prepared bait packs fro Goodnature. The items from Goodnature are pretty pricey, so I'd advise to figure out good bait for whatever it is you're trying to dispose of, on your own.