Still trapping rats

Got 18 today.

Some In baited BGs some on platform sets and some BG s In dens. All males and they look good but won't know for sure until I skin them to see any bites.
The thing that makes me wonder Is I have yet to see any toilets. I would have thought that during the breeding season I would have found some.
And I got 2 chucks.

Great job Beav. Happy to see you're still out on the line.

Just went out and turned some of those rats. I weighed a few and some of them weighed In at 4 1/2 lbs. That's a big rat . But the average was 3Lbs.

Way to go Beav.Hammer those rats,and watch out for the virus.

Screw the Virus.
If your number Is up It's up.

Nice job

Are you seeing spring glands? Do you keep them?

Good work.
Are your baited BG's a 150 with a carrot?
I would imagine you brought some colony traps along.

You always seem to have success with those stools.

Keep at em, it appears to finally be a good year for rats! First rats here since 2012 so I am enjoying it.

Not using any colony traps at this location.
I have better luck using apples. And I always smear some lennons rat all call or the boss mans rat lure on the stake holding the trap. These baited BGs are set with the bait just out of the water.
The stools aren't working as good as I would hope. We caught 1000s of rat on them In ND but for some reason they just aren't as effective here.

That's alot of muskrat. Great job. Hope u get even more

15 rats today 12 of them came from the stools. They are dropping the water levels out side the ponds so quite a few baited and some stools were 4" out of the water. And we had lots of wind so some of the baited sets were sprung form debris being washed Into the traps. Set up a few culverts on the complex with colony traps.
Won't check till Thursday then It will be time to pull. Rats are still looking good only a few minor bite marks.

Skinned today most were males. A few bite marks but still It's not to bad. About 70% of these rats are about 17" on the boards and a few have measured 19".
We need to get our rat season extended to the end of March. Pulling tomorrow.

No pictures so it didn't happen.

Here is a nice batch from SD. 1 month left in our season. Starting to get some bite Mark's, but am catching some really nice rats!

Ours run to end of March. Wish we had as long as they do in SD. But it has been a very good year for them. I don't know why. But there are alot more of them than I've seen in years. And mink too. I've seen alot more frogs in so many places. It's almost scary how many I see.

Thanks for the report Beav. Are you ice free? How is the fat content holding up?

A day or so ago they were still ice fishing on the bay on Poygan and they’re probably still driving on the lakes up north.

Here too! Rats that is.
Trap them when you got em.
Unfortunately poor weather and distressed markets are leaving too many on the landscape.
Make no mistake I enjoy abundance. It’s the famine that follows that depresses me.

been shocked by the amount of rats here swimmin the last couple weeks while beaverin.

Rats are starting to lose that winter fat. And I'm seeing some shedding on a few rats but It's not real bad.

I'm going out In few minutes to check and pull I'll let you know how It goes.

Only had 6 rats today.
The fluctuating water levels are killing me. The perimeter water Is receding by 4" and leaving all my platforms high and dry. In the interior they are moving water from one section to another so one side Is going down and the other section Is rising what mess.
I don't have any floats and I'm not making any.

Where are you trapping all those myskrats at?

18 more today, seeing rats everywhere. Trapping a few spots where they are digging in on the sides of the county roads.

Man y’all make me jealous, rat trapping is my favorite. We just don’t have them down here.

Today's catch!

Great job!!! Arkansas has a propel asking if muskrat season should close on feb 28th or left alone until March 31s. I put the 31st.

Me too. That is one of the most baseless ideas I’ve seen in a while, predators and Ag chemicals kill more rats than trappers could dream of killing in Arkansas

I think they are in SD.

I was trapping my rats In Dane county WI.

Sounds like you had fun Beav.
Hopefully you don't have issues w/ anti's stumbling upon you in Dane Co

Not so far.

I'm having by far my best season on muskrats. Mainly running poles with my ever trusty hagz bracket and some colony traps in runs. And than some traditional sets as well. I've never had so much fun trapping til recently. They really make it entertaining and rewarding. Cause u can pile up on them so fast.

Muskrat trapping is a hoot.
Glad to hear you're having a good year, plains25.

Well thank you. Hope u r having as much fun as I am.

Saturday' catch minus a few damaged ones. Agree with Plains, this is one of those years where everything has come together in SD. Lots of water, and a very mild Spring. 180 degrees difference for last year at this time!

Great work guys. I want to go to ND but a out of state guy can't even break even with the way the rat market Is.
I just love those ND rat marshes.

Beav: you bet, yesterday it rained all day and I remember trapping the creeks in OH as a kid being flooded out and looking for traps for the next week! Water level in the Marshes stay fairly constant and can always find my poles with the Hagz clips on!

Nice. Our rat season has been closed for a month already. No open water rat season here in the spring.

Today's catch

Thank you both for your support! We truly appreciate it! ... If only we had a spring season here and weren't in lockdown, I could play too lol

Today's catch.

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.

My buddy has a house In Sharon and we trapped In that area.

Bison, how did u do on fur price with potter

I got $375 for 319 carcass rats. Some at $1.00 and some at $1.25. Kim's a great guy and one of the last country buyers we have around here so glad to support him some. Getting some items tanned there as well. Got a little history of M and M furs, that must of been something in its heyday. On to 400!

Congrats.

Today's catch, that makes 348. Switching to some new places and a short freeze up slowed me down. Should be able to make 400, the rest will depend on how many rats are in these new sloughs. 25 days left!

Today's catch! Nothing like seeing a rat in a colony trap in a nice run!

Today's catch

Today's catch. Nice triple on a colony trap!

Today's catch

That sure looks like fun! I enjoy your pic.

Today's catch

Now you are one 'SERIOUS' Rat Man! Congrats and Thanks for sharing your success!

Getting near the end, I am about 10 short of 500 so I think I will make it. Another Bonus Bounty $5.00 coon today. Will need to get a small flat bed boat for next year to reach farther into the sloughs. Have had a ball and hopefully we can keep these rats for awhile in SD! Thanks for following!

Number 500! Good thing, just got socked with about 6-8 inches of snow. A surprise Easter Snowstorm.

I’m so jealous of you, I love rat trapping. You might check out a Jet Sled, I have one I use in the marshes here for rat trapping and I love it. Great job on the rats!

Thanks for the hint, I will check it out! Here in SD they really run in cycles, we are very wet so we have rats, when the next drought hits they will all be gone. Took 8 years to get them back after the last drought and they are still not at the level they were before that. If we stay wet, next year will be even better!

Looks like a lot of fun can't trop in the sprinh MN. Early freezes pushes us onto the ice and early snow. guessing where to set baited BG. Any one have ideas on where set after snow best between hut and feeders/ looking for help on snow covered ice.