Positive Trapping Tip

If you wanted to catch a raccoon, squirrel, or groundhog/woodchuck that was using a specific hole where would you set the trap?

If you said, “Right at the entrance to the hole”, give yourself a pat on the back. You are on the path to trapping success.

Putting a trap on the travel path of a nuisance animal just makes sense. And, when you actually incorporate the trap into the travel path, you’ve just made a positive set.

Defining and demonstrating what a “positive set” is in nuisance animal trapping is the goal today. Understanding and executing the concept makes nuisance animal removal more efficient.

Works for Squirrels, Raccoons & Woodchucks

First take a look at this series of pictures concerning a recent raccoon job.

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These pictures show the spot where the raccoon was going in and out of the attic, how Ryan set the trap up, and the successful capture.

This is a “positive” set because it works without tempting or luring the animal into a trap. This animal used it’s normal way out after that path of travel was converted into a trap. It is extremely efficient.

What it Takes to Make A Positive Set

In order to make a positive set, you should be aware of the following necessities:

A clearly defined path of travel. Exits and entrance holes are great. Finding them around foundations isn’t too bad. Locating them on the roof presents certain challenges. In the pictures above, an inspection showed that ridge vent was the spot. Any movement in or out and the raccoon would go through that hole.
A trap that can be incorporated into the travel path. For this, we recommend double door traps for the bigger animals and repeater traps for squirrels. Most of our double door traps have spring loaded doors that fire when an animal brushes by wire in the middle of the trap. A very thorough trap description is in this blog post about positive sets for groundhogs. The double doors catch the animals coming or going.
Blocking Material. In order to get the animal to go through the trap, it can’t have any other options. This blocking of other possible travel paths calls for creativity. The material can be anything. We use a lot of wire and purchase blocking aids that are sold by trap manufacturers. In the middle picture of the slide show, you can see the wire that blocks everything except the path through the trap.

When you put all these things together, you are certain to capture an animal that moves through that spot.

Works for Multiple Species

Since you’ve seen how this set-up works for raccoons going through a ridge vent, you might be asking yourself if it works for other species. The answer to that is a definitive yes.

In fact, anywhere there is a defined path of travel the technique can be used.

We use it for multiple species that are going in and out of structures at specific points: squirrels, groundhogs, skunks, raccoons, etc.

Here are examples of recent squirrel and woodchuck jobs where this technique was employed.

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The trap is placed over the exit/entrance the squirrels are using. When they come out, as long as all of the other ways are blocked off, the squirrels have to go into the trap. The only other choice is to stay inside, but that can only go on for so long. There is no luring or tempting them to come a certain way.

Since the babies are old enough to come out on their own now, they are captured too.

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This shed was being used by woodchucks. The same idea of a positive set works for them too.

There is no bait in the trap and the trap isn’t in a random spot in the yard. The traps are right in front of the travel paths. Once it is all set up, there is no way around the traps because of blocking.