I had a double double the other day on field rats, I had two box traps with two rats in each.

Here is a video of a fun night at a friend's barn that had a rat problem, thermal scope and suppressed .22, lots of fun.

Actually, rats can be pretty smart. They learn real fast.
In my high school days some of us would go to the dump at night which was located outside the city limits and shoot rats with 410s. After dark the place would be alive with rats.

We have a lot of farm cats. I have issues with rats in mostly just one, of the 5 barns barn, that the cats can't get in. I have 3 barns that have pigeons and poultry in them, that are cat tight, but not rat tight. I think there only rats in the one barn. I frequently get the population low enough that I don't see any rats or signs of them, but there are likely some smart old rats that don't take the poison, that reproduce.

I should hunt them more often.

Keith

my first thought was: that's a terrible way to die.
my second thuoght was: I expect most of the poison products are a rough way to go, so what difference does it make?

I might try that. With pack rats, a problem is they will steal bait block poison and carry them back to their nest. Then after the pack rat is dead, the poinson is out somewhere unknown where other non-target animals will eventually find it. This might be harder for them to steal. They can eat as much as they want, but its hard to carry away. All they could carry away is the oatmeal anyway, they'll lose the plaster. So nothing of concern is reloacted for my dog to find.

The cats on our farm eat the poisoned rats with no apparent adverse reaction. I think most times there is not enough poison in a dead rat to harm anything that eats it.

Keith

For those who have money to burn.....I saw on YouTube a repeating live catch rat trap....think 300.00+....seems to work well......if I had rats I'd buy one and sell them frozen to snake owners....or make bait for coyote and sell.........think name is ulick....the guy originally made a larger version for ferral cats and critters....think he was an older guy from out west

I have found that rotating the poison helps and use bait stations. They can't steal some of the bait with stations. I often wondered what was smarter rats or coyotes.

In Europe......in the1300's fleas on rats caused the death of almost 1/3 to 1/2 of its population at the time.......it spread fast from rats on ships going port to port......the main way to move things back then.