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Post by triggertherapy on Dec 7, 2019 22:57:57 GMT -5
This is probably a very unusual question on a trapping forum, but I have a friend (yes it's really a friend, I live 2 counties away) who lives on the edge of a major east coast city.
She has a rat problem, and without going into great detail about what she has been through for 2 years with the city and the neighbors I'll just say there are 3 rental properties on the block owned by a scumbag and leave it at that.
The neighborhood is the urban type that has trees, yards, and driveways, looks sorta like surburbia.
They have raccoons, opossum, and foxes that have adapted to urban living, and of course rats.
She has tried traps and other rodent control products from Home Depot and Lowe's, and even commercial pest control, who told her until the 3 rentals are cleaned up the problem won't go away, no matter what he did. He tried anyway and guess what? Still rats in the hood. Fox urine from Home Depot seems to keep them away for a couple days, but not much longer.
So I did some brain storming, and my best idea is to see if the fox population can help control the rat population, which led me to to Google "how to attract red fox", which turned up fox urine, fox lure, fox bait, which led me to the world of trapping, which I find fascinating, you trappers seem to have much better knowledge of your animals than us firearms hunters.
Now finally to my actual question.
In an urban setting does anyone have a method to attract urban fox that you would recommend to get the foxes close to the rats, so that hopefully the foxes can eat the rats.
Thanks ... and if you think my idea is insane let me know, I won't take it personally and will try something else
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Ohio
Administrator
Posts: 2,397
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Post by Ohio on Dec 9, 2019 10:24:51 GMT -5
Triggertherapy, where are you from? When i used to raise hogs i had a rat problem. I would shoot them, poison them, and trap them but they where always there. When i got rid of the hogs they went away. I think you need to find what their feeding on.
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Post by TDHP on Dec 9, 2019 18:42:29 GMT -5
You would be better off just getting a terrier to kill them instead of attracting fox which could potentially become a problem in itself. I deal with landlords on a daily basis and I certainly hear ya on the "bad" ones. If you really wanted to evaluate what is working and what is not working you would need to put out cams to see what the rats are actually doing or if they are even in that area to see if a method really kept them away from any one particular area. Same goes for bait
I've worked with pest guys who use bait stations and I'm not a fan of them. Snap traps imo are by far the best method to kill rats unless you are running dogs on them and kicking them up. Preventative maintenance will be an on going process until the source is addressed. I would drop a minimum 2 to 3 dozen traps with a good attractant on them. Big jobs I run double that. Not sure if that is what you're looking for but that is what I would do.
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Post by Law Dog on Dec 10, 2019 0:22:29 GMT -5
Lived on a pig farm years back and I located the holes the rats had made and stuffed them with sacks of poison pellets to keep them underground and away from anything else. Worked like a charm and never got anything but the rats I was worried about the turkeys I relocated to the place but never was a issue.
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