Bog Myrtle & Peat

After a great year trapping stoats and weasels in 2011, I’m keen to try some new tactics. I’ve found that these little devils seem to be pretty territorial, so if one rumbles your trap site, not only will he avoid it but the fact that he is holding the area against incomers means that nothing will be trapped whatsoever. This was gradually revealed during last spring, when I would catch in the same traps day after day, then have a dry spell where I caught nothing. I found that if I moved the trap a short distance away, I usually caught almost straight away. If I then moved the trap straight back to its original position, I would carry on catching for the next few days.

Using this logic, I managed to make quite a dent in the local stoat and weasel population on the Chayne. I never used bait on any of my traps, and only ever worked with Mk. 4 springers in straight-through tunnels. Thinking that it is now time to ring the changes, I was delighted to receive some helpful information from a reader of this blog, who suggested that I knock together some seesaw traps to provide another weapon to the armoury. Initially bewildered by online instructions, I set to work on one of these supposedly simple boxes with some trepidation.

The seesaw trap basically allows an animal to enter a wooden box, preventing it from leaving using the action of a simple balanced door. These traps have been in use for many years, and there is nothing new about the design. What interests me is that the stoats and weasels on the Chayne have probably not seen one of these traps for many, many years, and they could give me an important new weapon in my ongoing war against long, thin mammalian predators. Throw in a little rabbit liver, camouflage the box with peat and moss and I could well be onto a winner.

I was quite pleased with how well the first two seesaws turned out, particularly since they are made of old pallets and quail mesh and were thrown together by the most impatient carpenter in Britain. They are two feet long by six inches at their high end and four and a half at their low. I’ll make some more and then give them a good trial run in the Spring…