What squirrel bait works best for you in attracting them to live-traps?
Sunflowers seeds and peanut butter.
1 Like
Thanks. Do you mix the seeds into the peanut butter?
Hambone,
Either is fine. Sunflower stay on better if you put them on peanut butter.
I use Havaheart traps. If you use a small one for squirrels, I would to share with you my experience. A small trap is light. A trapped squirrel can flip it over. Once the trap is upside down. A squirrel is free to go. I secure a trap with at least two bamboo poles in each side, sometimes I need four poles.
Squirrels can dig under a trap and somehow take the seeds or eat peanut butter from underneath. I put a card board or a flat piece of wood under a trap to ensure they cannot reach the bait from underneath.
I smear peanut butter on a cardboard small enough to fit inside a trap. I sprinkle a few sunflower seeds as a trail to lead squirrels to a trap.
I caught 20 + squirrels the year before. This year, we have two foxes roaming our neighborhood. I did not have any squirrel issue. I LOVE those foxes. Hope they will return.
2 Likes
Very clever, will try your trail of seeds. I’m moving squirrels across the river which works until they figure out how to build a raft.
They will eat field corn on a cob also. That worked better than the peanut butter/sunflower for me.
I also made a trail with kernels.
1 Like
I’ll have to try this next year, I lost about 30 corn from those evil squirrels.
I will try the corn, but I do get results with peanut butter (needs to be fresh daily) with peanuts. I use a Little Giant trap and I put a tray of pb with two-three peanuts in it at the end of the trap, behind the lever that trips the trap, with a god of pb holding two peanuts on the trip. Then I put two peanuts with just a touch of pb on each in the trap, one a few inches in and one close to the trip. The squirrel takes a chance on the first one and succeeds, and may succeed on the second. Each success emboldens him and on the third try he’s caught.
Little Giant traps can’t be opened by flipping over as the trap door is latched shut once the trap is tripped.
I use sunflower seeds and nothing else. Peanut butter never has
worked for me.
Peanut butter has not worked well for me either. It seems to get old here in the summer, and the squirrels don’t go after it as much as acorns, which is the bait I use.
No question that peanut butter is highly attractive to squirrels, but I have a heck of a time with black ants eating my peanut butter bait. Except in the coldest weather they can remove a sizeable glob if it in a few hours. And when I use sunflower seeds, I catch birds. I have no quarrel with birds, and when one is closed in the trap, it can’t catch a squirrel. I collect acorns when available, otherwise hazelnuts. Ants can even get through the shells of peanuts and almonds.
I quit nut butters; the squirrel ends up smearing it all over the cage. Most common nuts work equally well: peanuts, almonds, walnuts (out of shell). Placed on small piece of wood near back of trap to prevent grabbing from under/outside of trap. $30 trap caught 30 squirrels so far, a dollar a squirrel. Often caught within an hour of setting the trap–but that is merely an indication of too many squirrels.
Now I need to go after possums; the squirrel trap is too small, although it has caught one small possum and 3 scrub jays.