I have a small pond on my place and there was ONE rat in it last year and I left him alone. This year the water is very high so he built a house. I spend a lot of time back there and have never seen more than one. How often do you find a single rat in a pond?

More times then not around here there's a few more than what all the sign tells me. It would be odd to find one rat in the pond but not impossible.

Thanks!

Had a loner here this spring...for about a month. Haven't seen him since.

It’s just odd that the amount of time I spend there I only ever saw one. I am trying to decide if he will help keep the pond from freezing out and help keep my minnows alive or not. If he will help he gets to live.

a lot of times those rats will keep the area around their entrances from freezing and the oxygen around that is enough for the minnows to survive freeze up

I think you should relocate another to that pond so the one rat ain't so lonely!.. You got a 50 50 chance of getting it right!!!

But if I got it wrong it would be like having New York in my back yard. No thanks!

I do believe I will just leave him alone. If there gets to be a batch of them next year then we can thin them out.

160, Haven't targeted rats for years. Do have a pond that is a dammed up valley. The rats have to go they dig thru our dam. Good luck. (if they're not hurting anything I'd let them be, rat pelt prices may increase for your grandchildren .

I have seen this a number of times … I have ended catching it after a couple years, so it didn't die of old age and go to waste. It is always a very large old buck and I truly believe there aren't other rats in these ponds, because these big rogue bucks kill anything else that finds it way to their pond. The last one I caught weighed a little over 5.5 pounds … And was totally scared from end to the other. I think that big by could have whipped a mink. It was one I had to stretch on a possum stretcher. Just my opinion.

Garry-

Muskrats will for the most part, only come out after dark. So you may be seeing just a fraction of what's in your pond.

How can you be sure there's only one rat? In my own pond, if I went just by the amount of rats I actually saw, I would probably never trap it. The amount of rats I actually see and the amount of rats I've caught is usually not even close. Although It's just a small pond, there have been years I've been surprised how many rats I catch once it freezes over and I find den entrances, via air bubble trails under the ice, and set traps.

That might be true in New York, but I see them out all times of the day in Ohio and have all of my life.


Garry-