How is your population looking like there? I see lots of rats up here in farmland Saskatchewan. Most seam very small.

Nonexistent in the northeast corner of the state. I have not seen huts for 20 years now. I had a blast 35 years ago trapping them over Christmas school break. Hardly see any mink here either. We do have some type of larger than normal and very aggressive cattail taking over the waterways. I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not

Quite awhile ago that trapper from New York was going to go out there and trap rats. Think when we had that last price rise in rat pelts. I vaguely remember him saying he went out there scouting and said the rat sign was unbelievable but not sure what part of the state he was looking. Wonder if he ever went out there and trapped.

DRF, if the trapper you're talking about was from PA, not NY, he went out there and if I remember correctly, caught like 1007 in about a week.

Wow that’s a lot of rats! Especially for just a weeks time.

When the stars align the Dakotas are as exceptional as anyplace on earth. The explosiveness there is mind blowing. Opportunities endless.

As far as muskrats are concerned, if god made any spot better, he kept it for himself.

And to think, DRF, that same guy caught over a thousand fox that same season. Was a good year to trap. I only caught 138 muskrats that year but was very happy with my 10.90 average.

If you are speaking of phragmites, yes it sux!!

My partner and I caught 2,500 In about a month In the eastern part of ND. And 90% of those rats were living In bank dens.





I was setting up a NAFA collection point In Sharon ND and he dropped off those rats. It was more then a week but still a lot of rats In a short time. I even put up those rats for him after they got back to WI.

The other guy your talking about was from Ny he went out scouting and said all he was going to use were 160s. Then he made some excuse that someone stole all his 160 out of his shed.

My rat population is not good. I am 25 miles out of Minot to the west, 100 miles south of Canada. Seeing two or five rats on one slough here, does not make a great number. A lot of sloughs that hold rats at times have none. When you walk a slough and there is two bank holes, there is not many rats. The water is low and dropping here. There is a island showing in a slough where I ever saw one. From what I have seen rats do much better on rising water levels then dropping. The last rain I had was Sept 16th 35/100s.

With no measurable rain in the SE and central N.D in the last 4 months. all the sloughs are way down or dry. It's a terrible year for rats.

Mother Nature tends to roll with extremes. It’s feast or famine. Probably more famine. That’s way we gorge in times of feast.

Good to hear from you mjm
I set five traps side by side touching and got ten rats first check. All of them smaller than an XL. Not one big rat. What does that mean ? Our water levels are dropping too but we were wet spring and summer.

Those rats would have gained a size over winter.
They were the first litter rats this spring, second litter they are kit size

lots of mink good to here from you too. Our rats run small in size compared to some areas. I get a few XLs, but not that many XXl's. The population seems to go up and down a lot. It seems like it has been more down for the last 30 years. It is not just the water levels, to me that affects the population. We had record water levels in 2011 and still did not have near the number of rats I have seen before. Back when I ran my dog a lot around the area he would often find dead rats on the water edge or just out of the water a few yards from the water. I know every dies, but I saw more dead rats teen everything else combined. I would looked the rats over and could see no cause of death. It would be in the fall before freeze up.

At one point I took samples because the rat population has a separate hanti virus in their system. It is slightly different from the deer mouse hanti. It does build up in the fall vs tuleremia which is mostly spring/summer

I’ve found dead rats back east and out west here. Seams like a lot of bigger ones go overland in fall and spring. At times farmers dogs can catch half a dozen right in the farmers yard up on dry land. I’ve never found any along the edge of water but in the huts I’ve reached in and pulled out many dead rats.

Back east I’ve found them dead along streams and ditches we always attributed that to rabbit fever tulerriamia.

Planing a trip thru N. Dakota next year, what's a good route that I'll see some rat territory going from east to west?

Highway 200 or Highway 2 (east to west) will both bring you through the prairie potholes.

Any advice on fall trapping rats in ND, I have heard that floats don’t work in fall? Is that true? Looking to take ten days at the start of the season to chase them, coming from Iowa, wife said go you aren’t getting younger, i am a river trapper here so I have a boat but thinking road trapping would be more efficient. Any advice is appreciated

It takes a lot of rain to trigger a dispersal cycle when the potholes have enough habitat that holds their numbers once that starts to dry up predation and starvation set in they are seen traveling cross country looking for livable conditions. It’s a rather quick cycle as nature goes time wise the cycle in my area doesn’t happen often or last but several year when we get the rain and rats.

Going to really need to scout out an area and make sure it has rats. There has been a good about of rain the last 2-3 months that have filled up a lot of potholes, spots that look good may have been dry or very low water this spring and may not have had time for the rats to cycle back up.
Floats have worked fine for me in the fall, just need a good quality food lure to use on them.

I always check the interstate heading to Sioux Falls to get some idea how the rat population is doing, if I see rats splattered across the highway things are looking good then. LOL

Is trapping in ND similar to hunting, in that you can access the private lands if they aren’t marked?

This makes me wonder to what extent the narrow leaf catttail has invaded ND,or Minnesota

No, you need written permission to trap on private land. Most road right away trapping is out due to private land going to the center of the road. There is also electronic posting now for hunting. So no signs mean nothing.
I would consider it a bad time to try to trap rats in ND. The water is down a fair amount in my part of the state and I feel that hurts rats as much as anything. There may be more water over east, but I can not say I know of any good population of rats. If you want to come out and trap 100 rats in 10 days, you might do that. I don't think anyone is going to take 100 rats a day this season. I have caught a few rats on flats in the fall, but I always felt it was a low percentage set in the fall.

caught 2444 in 20 days, never did the rat trapping thing before this trip.

Interesting. We used to have crazy amounts of rats here for alot of years. Since about 2018 till now rats are almost non existent. Always see a few around but you would be lucky to get 100 in a week. We had sloughs all over and every one had rats in it. In the last few years most of the good rat holes are cultivated up and in crop. Culverts that were under water now have crop beside them. Some lakes I’ve never seen dried up in my life are gone. Water makes rats from my experience. There still rats around but when you have crazy amounts of water all over the rats explode.

Was not hard two catch 2000 rats in a couple weeks….. used to be lots of fun! I think the first best check I had one fall was 348 rats. I only use round and square colony traps so you can stack up rats quick. Most culverts I trapped we’re the same size of a round trap so you could fill them up! Most I got in one round trap one was 23 on a first check. Would like to get another season before I get two old……


Had a drying rack that had most rats dried by the time you check all the traps. Bounced around and took most of the water off before you got home. Hit them with the leaf blower and you were ready to skin

With the rains this year up north in the eastern side I’d bet in about 2-4 years might be some around again..

In the north central and north western part of ND the water level is down from last year at this time. A lot of the sloughs have a lot of shallow water before it gets deep enough to keep from freezing out. I feel rats always do better in raising water. Mud flats are not good for rats.

Skogmann, if those weeds are not the phragmites (fox tails is what we call them here) mentioned above, do they look like cat tails but have no center stalk with the punk above? That is what we have replacing cattails in my area. Our cat tails are 75% gone in most places......j.k

Some of the sloughs in my area have no cattails. They can be close to sloughs with cattails and never have any start. There will be rats in both sloughs with and with out cattails. I have no idea what the vegetation is that is in the sloughs with out cattails. There is a half a dozen different types anyway. Some sloughs a covered in cattails from bank to bank. Some sloughs will have very few rat houses, mostly bank rats, others have both.

Back in the 70's I used to trap central Oregon river rats. Some places had no cat tails at all, but lots of rats. All bank dwellers. They would dig in banks with grass, eating the roots.

Potholes, Sloughs, Swamps, Lakes.......Cattails, Phragmites, floods, droughts. You guys should see my area of PA- rocky tree lined creeks with the occasional mud banks are my only option, that never really held a great rat population, even when things were good. My Mink population was booming the last I trapped about 4 years ago.

Trapper 338, make sure you read this twice. ND isn't Iowa or MN. Right of way trapping is minimal

With all the rain this year and low prices you would think the country in this area would be full of them. I am a hour east of the Red River, we have a lot of ponds and lakes but have seen much for action from them yet.

I believe the Rat population will be down this fall in SE N.D. they have had good rains but no run off. The slough are really down right now. And unless we get dumped on for rain they won't be filling up anything soon. But it's to late for this year for rats I think. I use to trap them in the 70's and into the 80' s till all the sloughs dried up. Then when we got all the snow in 96 and 97 the rats really took off. I only trapped the big sloughs that had 50 to 80 huts on them. I would run around on the sloughs after freeze up with a 4 wheeler and run them back in the huts. I would catch 150 to 200 in a day. I would trap every Fri and Saturday and Sunday till there was to much snow to drive around on the sloughs. It was not hard to catch 350 to 400 rats in a weekend. Like I said the big sloughs that were 250 to 300 acres produced lots of rats.