Comstock scores again. 1.5 hours after setup

I received a call about a groundhog under the house. As you can see in the picture, I used a couple fence slats stapled to stakes to funnel this fellow into my Comstocks. The cage on the left has a flushmount and the one on the right is standard. No special reason why I used the flushmount besides that is what I had on the shelve at the time. I set them and left. 1.5 hours later the customer called to say I had caught one. I took another cage with me and transferred him into that to leave the "poopie" cage behind. Good product with better and quicker results.

good catch!


I’ve never liked transferring. It always seemed like a great way to watch a woodchuck run away that has been wizened to a trap. With my luck, it’d be right in front of the customer, lol. It’d be awkward to charge them for that catch, lol.

Love it when a plan comes together!

All of our transfer cages or traps have guillotine moving doors up and down in the rear of the traps. Never should loose an animal if they are mated up properly when doing the transfer. With the old style flip up door traps and some power door traps escapes are possible..

Escapes can happen at times if not real familiar with the process, and most likely has happened to everyone at some point.

Bob is absolutely right about having a properly mated trap for transfer. Hit it right on all counts. I always steered away from transfer for fear of losing a chuck. Had a small one beat me out of the gate one day, but managed to chase him down after all. I did lose one this year on a transfer using a powered lock ring trap that I made and had only used a couple of times. I was so used to 12 years of the powered door traps that never open that I totally forgot about the trap at hand. When I rolled the trap over the rings dropped, of course, and he just backed out. Felt kinda foolish. Da. Senior moment, my fault. Is 70 middle age?

I do now transfer a lot using a proper trap with divider tools for making the compartments, which allows for as many compartments as I need and of whatever size I want them to be. Always have to be careful since chucks will often blast out and slam the other end, which can take a transfer cage off the tailgate if you are not holding on to it. Probably safer on the ground. As mentioned above, it is nice to return the smelly trap to the location. I used to shoot the chucks when I got home, then hose the traps down, which was lot more work and counter productive.

Always nice when a client calls in a few minutes after setting for a chuck. Have had times when the phone rings before I'm a mile away. Evening is a great time to check, when they are feeding as you will see chucks and find holes in brush or deep grass that were not initially apparent to set and catch them in minutes.

I use a divider when transferring. Quarter him off in the trap and slide the transfer over him. Remove the divider and chase him into the transfer trap. Put the divider back down and close up the trap. Seemed to work ok. Of course a .22 to the top of the head would have work too, but the customer was hanging around.