Mole Control Zanesville Ohio

For my business, mole removal is an enjoyable part of my business. I’m mostly self-taught when it comes to trapping moles. However, 35 plus years of trapping made me believe I could succeed.

I believe all animals can be caught if you exploit their habits and let them tell you what to do.

For my mole trapping I prefer the MolePro mole trap. I prefer these traps because the handles when set, protrude above the ground. To me this provides a couple of advantages.

First, they provide high visibility and require no type of flagging to relocate as underground traps do. Second and most importantly, it’s easy to see when they are fired. Oftentimes homeowners enjoy seeing a fired trap. Many pull the trap up far enough to see the mole and immediately call me to inform me that “we” have caught a mole. Funny how I do all the work, but “we” catch the mole. He He! I find this behavior in people no matter what animal I’m after. I truly find this amusing.

As anyone who traps moles knows, the key to success is setting up on their travel runways. Setting up on their feeding tunnels is an exercise in futility and wasted effort. At most times of the year there is only one mole in each area of mole damage. Although often, there are several moles working the homeowners property in totally different areas.

This is a fact that is hard to explain to the homeowner. They assume that it takes large numbers of moles to do the amount of damage they are seeing. Moles feed several times in a 24 hour period and so new activity can show up quickly. I often see moles working while I’m on site.

I often arrive to find an excited homeowner telling me they just saw a mole pushing up dirt, and they wish I could’ve arrived minutes sooner. They believe I can set a trap right next to the moles activity and catch the mole right then and there. I explain to them that any disturbance would send the mole fleeing through his tunnel before I could barely begin. However, one particular homeowner was standing in the driveway as I arrived, frantically waving me to a spot along her driveway. She was emphatic that a mole was right, there and that I should immediately set a trap there so that “we” could catch the mole, pronto!

I went through my explanation as usual in these situations, but she was having none of that. I studied the area as I always do and in an effort to appease her, I devised a plan for my “Superfast Mole Removal”.
Now, I’ll take luck anytime it comes my way. But, I also believe you make your own luck. What I came up with for this lady worked beyond what I had hoped for, and I figured it was just my lucky day. However I’ve repeated this so many times since, that this is now my first plan of action.
The activity the lady observed was located towards one end of the mole’s travel tunnel. I usually set the travel tunnels up heavily, with as many as 30 traps or more depending on the size of the area. Almost invariably you’ll find feeding tunnels branching off of the travel tunnels. I try to set traps on each side of these feeding tunnels, so I can catch the mole regardless of which way it turns when it’s leaving whichever one of these feeding areas it may be in.

This may seem like overkill, because if you set a few traps in the travel tunnel you will catch the mole. However, homeowners want quick results and the faster it is, the better it is for them. Normally I start on one end and set traps till I reach the other end of the tunnel. In this case, I began setting traps on the end farthest away from the mole’s activity. When I reached a point about 8 feet from where the mole had been working, I stopped. I then began setting traps from the other end of the tunnel. I figured that just maybe, I would “herd” the mole towards the traps I’d already set.

As I neared the last trap I’d set before starting on the other end of the tunnel, I heard a “SNAP”. I looked to the left and saw that the last trap I’d set earlier was fired. I quickly pulled the trap from the ground and sure enough, there was the mole dangling from the trap!

The homeowner had been observing me through the whole process and began celebrating the demise of her tormentor immediately. I of course left the traps in for 3 days as I usually do, even though I was sure this was the only mole.

There was no more activity, as this was the only mole. I’ve since repeated this many, many times. It’s the greatest feeling to hear the trap fire and know the problem is solved before you leave the job. The homeowners are invariably ecstatic. From time to time there are more moles in the same area. I’ve caught as high as 8 in one area. For this reason, I always leave the traps for 3 days. More often than not, I still don’t catch the mole while on site. But what a feeling of satisfaction it is when I do!

Having mole problems in your yard? We can help. Visit my webpage for more details at A All Animal Control.

Beaver Control Southeast Ohio

Beaver Double-Take

I own a nuisance wildlife removal business in Ohio, and one of my commercial customers is a small village. The village reservoir is next to a fairly large creek that travels through bottomland before reaching the village.

This bottomland contains a rather high population of beaver. The beaver are fond of traveling up this creek, crawling over the bank, and setting up shop in the village reservoir. The beaver then promptly begin plugging the water plants intake pipes. This is usually when I get the call, and the village rightly expects me to solve the problem immediately.

Usually I get the call during spring, summer, or early fall. However, one particular call came in early December, during our deer gun season, and technically I was on a much needed vacation. This call also just happened to coincide with the day I was fortunate enough to take my biggest buck to date with a handgun.

Between the excitement of taking the deer and showing him off to my friends, I forgot my obligation to remove the beaver from the village reservoir. When it dawned on me that I hadn’t set up on the village’s beaver problem yet, it was a little after 4:15 pm. Now in this neck of the woods it becomes dark about 5:45 pm. The village is approximately 20 minutes from my home, so I had very little time to get sets in before dark. Needless to say I threw my beaver equipment together and took off.

Most of my beaver work takes place when there is open water. I use snares exclusively for open water work. As anyone who has trapped beaver knows, some of the best places to set up on beaver can be hard to reach.

Over the years I’ve developed a set that I use almost exclusively, and it allows me to set up in places that are easier to reach. When the majority of my nuisance calls involves working with clients, it pays to be clean, neat, and professional looking. This can be especially difficult after donning hip boots and struggling around in the mud, without wasting time running back home to shower and change clothes. By setting up in easier to reach areas, I avoid this. I often can set up by only wearing knee boots.

To make this set, I first choose an area that has good visibility from the beaver’s perspective. On a low bank no more than 20 inches high, I use a small shovel to cut a trench up the bank. I make this trench about as wide as what a beaver pullout would be, as this is what I’m trying to imitate. I hang a snare in this trench at the point where the water meets the trench.

Next I cut several 1 to 2 inch diameter sections of wood about a foot long from whatever the beaver are feeding on. I use my hatchet to shave bark from these pieces of wood, allowing the shavings to fall into the trench. I place these wood pieces at the top of the trench with the shaved areas facing the water to visually attract the swimming beaver’s attention. I then liberally rub these wood sections and the trench sides down to about 6 inches above the snare with beaver castor. These castors I collect from beaver I’ve caught at other locations.

I chop these castors into small pieces and place them in pill bottles and freeze. If the water at the set is not flowing I swish the piece of castor around in the water in front of the set. You can watch this oil slick of beaver castor spread out over the water. When finished, this set appears to a swimming beaver as a place where a strange beaver has repeatedly pulled out to feed.

It appeals to their sight (shavings and peeled sticks), and their sense of smell (castor). I’ve heard that beaver in some areas don’t respond well to castor at certain times of the year. It works for me, and I’ve taken the entire population of eleven beaver, with four snare set locations in three nights, in one instance, while using only this set.

By the time I arrived at the reservoir I only had about 45 minutes of light left. I decided to try to get four sets in before dark. As I hurriedly made the last set it was completely dark. Figuring that there were only 2 beaver, I drove home confident I would have them in the morning.

The next morning I arrived at the break of day, so I could remove the beaver before they could be spied by the nearby residents. In this day, it’s often better to do your work discreetly. As I approached the first set, which just happened to be the last set I’d made the evening before, I noticed beaver tracks in the trench. I also noticed the snare was gone. For a second I thought the beaver had dove into the water on my approach, but there was no torn up area indicating a snared beaver. I often attach my snares with cable stakes and a 4 foot section of wire.

This seems to give the beaver room to move about and they seem to fight less. By placing the cable stake far from the water, I keep the beaver out of the water. Because of this, I immediately knew the beaver wasn’t in the water.

I looked across the water at two of my other sets. I could see a beaver sitting in one of them. After taking care of that beaver, I went to check my last set. As I approached the last set I heard a splash, and was rather surprised as I had thought there would only be two beaver. Obviously this was the second beaver, and I still had one around here with a snare and 4 foot of wire attached. As I pulled the beaver out of the water I noticed there was a second snare with 4 foot of wire attached. Yep, you guessed it, this was my missing beaver, snare and all. I’d caught this beaver twice in one night!
Should you need help with a beaver problem in Southeast Ohio, Zanesville or Cambridge or in these counties:Belmont, Coshocton, Guernsey, Harrison, Monroe, Morgan, Muskingum, Noble, Perry & Tuscarawas, OH, visit my webpage at A All Animal Control.

Bat Control Southeast Ohio

Bats in Southeast OH in cities such as Cambridge and Zanesville are numerous.

Signs of bats to look for in your home are rub marks such as in this picture with the brown marking on the louver vent.

Other signs are mouse like droppings outside the home or on the windows or siding. You may also smell a musty odor in the home if bat guano has built up in the attic. Bats can produce a tremendous amount of waste over the years and the odor builds as the waste grows.

Bat guano can be a source of disease if disturbed. Bats are known rabies carriers and should not be handled. Often you will find a bat on the ground and it could have rabies. Do not pick it up! Children are bit when picking up a bat and often contract the rabies virus this way.

If your home or business has been overtaken by bats, call a professional to evaluate the problem and offer a resolution. Your Wildlife Management Professional in Southeast Ohio is A All Animal Control. We cover all of the following counties in Southeast Ohio: Belmont, Coshocton, Guernsey, Harrison, Monroe, Morgan, Muskingum, Noble, Perry & Tuscarawas, OH.