That looks like a good idea to run a fan like that, with rats sitting on colony traps, Bison.

Helps a little, depends how wet they were to start with! Today's catch

I am struggling with my spring rat line. Same locations i had good success catching rats in the winter. I can see sign but think i just need to mix things up a bit. Heavy coon population might be effecting it as well. I might take a picture of my rat setup and see what you all think. Just something i slung together this winter trying to save money and not buy brackets and poles and bait clips. had a bunch of scrap wood around so i experimented. I am going to change from super trusty carrots to some apples and use some lure as well. I have lure but just haven't noticed much of a difference before. might make all the world difference now.

Good luck Dude, carrots have been working for me but I have heard not for others. Apple's are a good choice. Keep at them if you have fresh sign they have to be there somewhere!

319 muskrats and still going! Want to thank Potter Fur for helping me clean out the freezer!

Where did trap when you lived in Ohio?

I haven't seen rats in those numbers around here in many years! You all are lucky to have them. Nice job guys!

Speaking of ‘rats and even beaver at times....can anyone explain/determine why some rats will be quicker to dry on a 24 hr check than others. I’ve seen most rats and beaver on a 24 hr check be basically 80% dry after a few shakes/snaps. While the other animals seem to dry very slowly like almost double the time.
Always wondered if these slower to dry animals had health issues, weaker, poor oil supply to water proof their fur, etc
Would love to hear your take.

My take is they sit in the water longer.On a 24 hour check if you catch them after a remake in the first couple hours they will be much more saturated than a rat caught a couple hours before you check the next day.When I trap heavy rat populations in the fall-first couple of days I check 24 hour checks,then go to 48 after that.The 48hr check rats always take way longer to dry out-guessing because of saturation-JMO

Just no pattern here for that scenario....always thought it might be what I described.

I think the quicker they die the quicker they dry. It seems to me my under water body grip caught rats dried real fast. A rat with any damage to It's body will take longer to dry.

Probably do to stress.

I switched up to apples on some sets and then added lenons to some carrot sets and some apple sets to mix things up. 10 sets in total and had 2 rats after first night. Both were males on apples only. Did miss an animal on a carrot set with lenons on it. Might have been a coon. Really only trying for rats right now so i am avoiding the blind sets on toilets and walkthrough i normally would set as well. Just wanting to add some rat furs to the tanning pile and trying to only target one specific animal. too often i just end up trying to catch anything and don't seem to learn as much about each species alone.

Damaged rats are the soggy ones. Especially in spring.

Shedders get soggy a lot faster than a prime rat with dense underfur.The dense underfur holds air.

I agree with nimzy, if there is any damage it seems like they are waterlogged.

I noticed that too. They really dry at different rates. No pic today, but caught 9 rats and a bonus bounty coon! Going for 400 now. To reach that will need a few more good spots to trap. Cheap gas is also helping, filled for $1.39 today. Waiting on a few permissions yet so we will keep you posted. 73 degrees yesterday and about 13 degrees tonight so that will probably reduce my catch tomorrow. I grew up in New Knoxville OH which is about 45 miles North of Dayton. We had lots of rats as a kid and used to check traps on our bikes. From what I hear now, very few rats left in the same creeks that we trapped as kids. Have caught a few rats in the creeks around here, but mainly in the sloughs and roadside ditches. Should have them next year as well, but they will vanish the next time we have a drought, which will come sooner or later. Enjoy em while you got em!

http://thebeav.us/stools.htm

The platform with the conduit hanger Is pretty easy to build. And while I like and use the Hagz brackets these platforms will out produce them.
But be fore warned they only seem to work In the spring. I killed 2500 rats In ND one spring using these platforms. Well some of that 2500 were caught In colony traps.

Beav: thanks for the link, looks like a great summer project for me. You must have had a nice spring in ND that year. My inlaws tell me there is still lots of ice up there this year. Wife's cousin still has around 500 acres of corn they are trying to get out of the Mud. 2500 rats is impressive, I bet that was a lot of fun and a lot of traps!

It was a blast and I averaged $7.00 on all those rats.

That's a nice payday! Whereabouts in ND? My inlaws live west of Jamestown but I was in Bottineau for 2 years and graduated from NDSU in Fargo. Devils Lake was just beginning to profusely expand when I left.