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!
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