They'll be fighting and scarring the pelts a lot more once they start mating which will be very soon around here IMO. Once you start catching scarred rats it's time to stop trapping them. How long that you have to trap them in the Spring depends on how fast it thaws I guess. This Spring if I was ready, I probably could have been taking advantage of Spring rat trapping for the past 2 weeks and I might have another week to go.....maybe?
My experience in my first Spring of trapping rats:
I had planned to use colony traps in drainage ditches but that plan didn't work because of the flooding and the fast water. I then moved to a slew where I found rats swimming everywhere in the open water around the edge and I shot some. I put some colony traps in with a stake over top to get them to dive and, although I did catch some that way, it wasn't very effective because there were no banks on the lake for dens and no real runs to target.
I realized that a better way to trap the slew in the Spring was with floater sets where they could climb up to bask in the sun. I scrambled a bit to get those made and yesterday I got 4 rats on 6 sets and I missed 3 more (gotta adjust thinks a bit). It's nice today so I'm going to do 2 checks and see what I can shoot as well.
My thinking based on my experience this Spring:
Floating sets and/or sets like what Nube is using works best in the Spring where I'm trapping, and in the Fall when you can clearly see the runs and bank dens, colony traps and funnel traps should be much more effective. That's my theory but I'll have to wait until Fall to see how it goes.
I guess the biggest thing that I learned this Spring was to have a plan B and don't put all of your eggs in one basket. If one type of set is not working try something else that might work better so it's best to have the ability to make different sets with different types of traps.
