North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[sherwin <sherwindu@att.net>]

On 8/6/2013 1:02 PM, david.maxwell@dal.ca wrote:
> I bought two Kania traps last year and tried a whole range of baits, as did a 
> neighbour to
> whom I lent one of them.  Neither one of us caught a single squirrel.  I 
> contacted Kania, who
> suggested that our Eastern Red squirrels are too small to trigger the traps, 
> which work much
> better with the larger Gray squirrels.  Our squirrels may be smaller, but 
> they sure are efficient
> at stealing fruit.  Kania suggests that we wrap the trigger wire with grass, 
> to make it bulkier,
> so that the smaller squirrels can't simply step through it.  In addition they 
> want me to file the
> latch wire to make "a hair trigger" - this I am more reluctant to do, as I am 
> unsure whether I
> will get it right, and don't want to over-do it.  Anybody got any experience 
> with smaller
> squirrels and Kania traps??
     I put peanut butter spread on a piece of bread inside my 
Have-A-Heart traps
     and find this attracts the squirrels much sooner than any fruit on 
the tree or
     the ground.  Using two traps, I have removed as many as 30 
squirrels the first
     year, but now I am down to less than 5 or 6 per year.

                       Sherwin Dubren
                       Morton Grove, IL