Where I live the rural municipality (RM) owns all ditches. No private ditches. All ditches can be trapped and the RM prefers it for all the damage rats and beavers do to the roads. Could be different in other provinces but I don’t know. Just info from my experience. We don’t have a lot of trappers in our province, maybe 4-5000 licens sold every year. That being said some people were asking about making funnels. Snapped a few pics and gave some info on why and how I do things. Most of the metal I use is scrap pieces from an eave’s trough business. Always have end rolls they can’t use so the give them to me or I get them for next to nothing. Aluminum, metal whatever I could get for as cheap as possible.


Still have a hundred or more cones waiting to be built into colonies. No muskrats no one buying traps


Wire coat hanger gate. Can be bent in or out for size of hole. Flips up and down like butter. Bad picture cause the hole looks huge , next picture is the same hole
I make the gate clips out of the same material as the cones. Best tip I can give you for this is when you fold it over put a nail where the coat hanger sits. Make sure the nail is bigger than the coat hanger wire. Take a pair of plyers and squish the metal around the nail. It makes the gate flip up and down easy. Built a few traps before I learnt a huge upgrade to the gate.

Two rivets to hold the gate. I always try to put white side out. Gates I always put the attachment to a dark color. Sometimes I forget. The reason is when I put them in a culvert I know the topside of my colony and know the gate is down. You learn a lot of info when you put the colony in with the gate open and check and find no rats

Insides are usually brown, green or black on the metal I get, or I spray paint them a dark color. The rats see the opening in the cone and it looks like a den entrance to them. At least that’s what I believe

Three rivets to close the cone. Vise grip on each end and it’s easy

Wood pattern I clamp my blanks on to drill holes for hog rings to attach to wire cage

Blank pattern I had a buddy who is a tin basher make. Very thick and I trace my pattern with it on to my pieces

Finished cone before I rivet it together

I miss trapping high numbers of rats. Probably have 1000s of pictures on my old phone. Maybe with all the rain we are getting they’ll make a comeback. Got 3 inches yesterday an another 2 today. Forecast says rain for the next week. The been dry here for the last 7-8 years.

So, Mr. Saskbone I have a bunch of 8X8X24" colony traps and I can't use them in WI. So, I thought I could make a funnel and place it in the end of the square trap. The entrance would have to be 6" so what size would the exit have to be? And how long would the finished funnel be? I'm thinking maybe 24" cage length won't be long enough.
Or I could just make the entrances smaller by using some wire to get down to the 6" size. But I would like to try out the funnel type trap and see If it has any advantage over the square trap.

Beav my guess is you would have trouble attaching it to the square colony. Plus with the funnel wider than your trap your trap will sit funny on the bottom. You could cut the funnel square at the bottom but it would be more of a C then a round cone. The gate might have to be modified too. My gates go an inch lower than the hole so that if a rat tries to swim out the gate hits the bottom of the cone and stops them. Not sure how a gate would work on a square trap, but I guess you could just use the original door on the square trap. Never thought about putting a funnel on a square trap.

Few more pics

You can stuff little colonies. Two side by side colonies in a low water culvert. Water was over the trap 1 inch. 11 rats

Mink will fill a small colony. Never caught more than one in a square. Did catch 3 in a round colony twice before

Another underwater pic. Square had 3 , round one 10 feet away had 9

Traps I make. The 16 wide by 6 high has wings to the door. I think the doors are 6x6. Great in low water ditches or culverts

Just over 800 in a 2 day check

Save your rat glands. Easy to sell

One of the better years when I averaged $12 on over 2000 rats

In 2011 I started using wings on my colony traps. No sense using more then one trap in a culvert. An 8X8 with wings can fill most culverts.


Thanks. I guess I'll stick with the square colony traps.