Squirrel Traps Outdoor - Squirrel Traps - Ouell Traps - Trap for Squirrels (Small)

The media could not be loaded. We feed the birds everyday, which in turn attracted Squirrels. We didn't mind feeding everyone, until the squirrels decided bird seed wasn't enough and started chewing electrical wires. Almost $4000 later, we made the decision to buy a non lethal trap for catch and release and a lethal trap as we weren't sure which trap, if any, would work best. We set up both traps and sure enough, both work amazingly well!This lethal trap dispatches squirrels extremely fast. Once the trap hits, the nervous system of the squirrel reacts for literally less than a minute, which happens to everything on this planet with a nervous system after it passes away.I've read other reviews about this trap that said the squirrel was not "killed" right away. This trap has literally caught 5 squirrels and everyone of them was done quickly. We have a camera out back because it also shows our car as we live in the City. Even if the squirrel entered the trap at different angles, the squirrel did not suffer much, if any, based on how strong this trap is. I captured some video from our out back parking area so you can see how the squirrel died quickly. I take no joy in killing anything, so if it wasn't a fast kill, I would have sent the trap back. Watch the video and make the decision for yourself if this is the right trap for you and your family.Below are some tips on how to use this trap as the first two weeks were a bust until we modified some things:1. Make sure you use the safety hook when setting this trap. This trap will require some strength to set. Once you get the first trap bar pulled back, the second bar goes pretty easy. Make sure you use both trap bars or the animal might suffer. (Maybe that's what happened in other reviews where people said the animal did not die right away? Not sure...) ALWAYS Use the safety latch when setting and baiting this trap.2. Instead of mounting the trap onto something with the mounting hole at the back of the trap, I weighed the trap down with some pavers to anchor it as other reviewers said to make sure it was weighed down or mounted to avoid the trap flying in the air. Any weight on the back will hold this trap down.3. I tried putting the bait in the back of the trap like the demo video and had no success, so I started putting a handful of peanuts in the front of the trap just beyond the tripping mechanism inside the trap. I did not leave any food outside of the trap as recommended. I found that putting about 20 shelled peanuts inside worked better than even peanut butter which would wash away in the rain, attract ants, and just overall make a mess on the patio parking area. Sometimes Bluejays would take the peanuts directly at the entrance but would not set off the trap. I learned quickly to use 20+ shelled peanuts (handful) as the first 5 peanuts would be taken by the Bluejays and the trap was bait less after that. Bluejays are very smart and will rob your trap without setting it off. The Bluejays rob this trap often, which is why I recommend using a handful of peanuts spread out from just beyond the tripping mechanism inside the trap. Make sure the peanuts go all the way back to the nail inside the trap. Make sure to set the safety latch, BEFORE BAITING, if the trap is set while you bait it!!! Using this method of baiting, I have caught 5 squirrels in the last two weeks. 0 in the first two weeks trying the video recommendation baiting method.4. Use gloves when setting this trap to hide your scent. I do not use gloves on the peanuts, just when setting the trap or handling the trap. I also leave the trap outside so the rain washes away any scent including any urine from the dispatched animals, etc... Once it rains and the peanuts get soft/soggy, I empty the trap and use fresh peanuts as bait. Fresh peanuts make a world of difference compared to soggy watered down peanuts (squirrels would not even look in the trap with soggy peanuts). Fresh peanuts the night before usually ends up with a catch the next morning.That's about all I can think of at the moment. I posted a pic of how I bait this trap also. This is a great lethal trap for squirrels and other possible rodents. It works quickly and seems quite durable so far. Highly Recommend this trap if you need a lethal squirrel trap!!!

Our yard is overrun with squirrels that ravage our fruit trees. After the trap arrived this morning I baited it with peanut butter and staked it at the base of the pecan tree the squirrels nest in. No joke, I had caught a big one within an hour. It looked like a swift, clean kill. This is a sturdy, well-designed, effective trap that is already working to protect our yard.Minor cons: takes some strength and care to set and then open after a successful catch, feels a tad overpriced but is a quality trapEdit: three squirrels in the first week! I just saw one get caught. The trap is very effective but the kill is less swift than I thought.

Within four weeks, eliminated over 20 pests from my yard. Suggest mounting the trap to a piece of lumber (I used a 2 X 4) as the springs will easily make this trap jump when tripped, which may lead to an escapee. Usually, though, it will result in a clean break to the neck. Not the easiest to load, but only because you are definitely NOT dealing with a weak spring! Adding the safety hook is genius, since this would definitely break fingers if mishandled.make sure you have a means to dispose of a lot of carcasses, you will need it!

I bought this trap as a last resort after more than four years of fighting squirrels in my yard. The short version of my review is: this thing works almost surprisingly well, with a few negatives that don't really dampen my appreciation for the product overall. With eight catches in eleven days, I definitely recommend it to anyone who needs to get rid of some pesky tree rats in their neighborhood. And now for the longer version of my review...I have neighbors who feed the resident squirrels all sorts of junk (not just corn or peanuts like most people) and as a result their population has exploded. I don't even know how many there are, but the population is dense. Also, the food the neighbors leave out, including pieces of bread and buns, pieces of various fruits, and I don't even remember what all else, often ends up discarded in my yard when the tree rats are done with it, so I am forever cleaning up moldy fruit, dried out pieces of stale bread, and so on. The squirrels dig holes all over my yard, in the flowerbeds, and even in some of the larger flower pots to bury food. They have done a lot of damage to my plants this way, and I was beginning to get worried that the attic of my house was going to be next, just based on the sheer numbers of them that have to find new homes every year because they breed so fast.I have tried for years to use repellents to keep them out of the yard and flowerbeds. This works to an extent, but because the repellents that are actually effective are SO expensive, I can only afford to protect so much. Also, most of the repellents have to be reapplied every two or three weeks, especially after rains or in very hot weather. And a few of the squirrels don't seem to care about the repellents, even when freshly applied. So I started looking for other ways to get rid of them. I considered live traps, but then what? I think it's illegal to release trapped animals elsewhere, and even if it's not, how many would survive just being dumped in some random location? Besides, that would just make them someone else's problem if they did survive.So I started thinking about lethal measures. I tried to find a method of poisoning them, but almost everything I read said that very rarely works with squirrels, because while they are rodents, the various commercially available rodent poisons don't really work on them. And even if it did work, you'd run the risk of a squirrel dying in some unreachable location and decomposing there where it couldn't be disposed of. Yuck. Then of course, there's the risk of something or someone else getting ahold of the poison. So that was out.So I started looking at lethal traps. I looked at a number of different ones, mainly here on Amazon, and read lots of reviews from other customers. This trap from Quell, which has a slightly higher overall customer rating than others I viewed, was a little less expensive than most, so I decided to try it before spending more money. And I am glad I did.I received the trap on the evening of Thursday the 23rd of May, and as I write this on the morning of Sunday, June 2nd, I have just removed my eighth tree rat from the trap. That's eight squirrels in less than eleven full days, and for two days I caught nothing because I forgot to remove the safety catch when I reset the trap after the second kill. So basically, if you don't include those two days, I've caught nearly one squirrel per day since I received the trap.The first catch was by far the largest of them, and I suspect it was a dominant male, because since I caught that one, I haven't had any new holes torn in the yard or flowers. If squirrels are territorial, then my yard may have been "his" territory, and he may have been doing the majority of the damage.Overall, I am very satisfied with my purchase. I did not expect to get so many so quickly; indeed, the seventh was caught less than two hours after I reset the trap from catching number six. The trap itself seems well built overall, with maybe one exception I'll go into in a bit. One thing I like about it is that if you aren't the one who bought it, it may not be immediately obvious what it is if you happen to see it. I don't really want my neighbors who feed the tree rats to know I'm eliminating them, obviously. I have it located in the most out of the way place I can while still being an effective spot to get the squirrels. I plan to keep re-setting it until it goes at least a week with no new catches, and then I'll only put it back out if I start seeing signs of damage again.Many other reviewers have commented about how hard the trap is to set, and to an extent that is true; it does take some fairly significant hand strength to pull back the kill bar. But it HAS to if you want to kill the squirrels rather than just catch them and leave them in agony until you deal with them. And that leads me to my only significant complaint about this trap, and it is the reason I gave this four stars instead of five.It is NOT always an instant kill. Out of the eight squirrels I've caught so far, two of them were still alive when I got to them. One was the first catch, the big one that I suspect was a large dominant male. I came home from work on the day I caught him, and he was in the trap, squealing weakly every few seconds. My heart sank, because while I don't feel particularly bad about killing the squirrels, especially after my years of fighting with them, I also don't want them to suffer. Another one a few days later somehow got farther into the trap before triggering it, and the bar came down on its back, kind of in the shoulder area, instead of its neck. That one I happened to be home on my lunch hour when I caught it, and I heard it squealing from inside the house. I dealt with both of the live ones as humanely as I could, but I can only hope that the other six died quickly, since I wasn't present when they got caught.I'm not sure what the answer to this issue would be, because if Quell made the spring much stronger and therefore more lethal, it would be nearly impossible for most people to set this trap. As many reviews including mine have already attested, it takes some force as it is, and I'm sure some people don't have the hand strength to do it.I do have one other small complaint, but it's not one that reduces my rating at all. The part of the trigger mechanism that you hook the restraining latch under (which sets the trap) seems as though it should be made of a slightly higher gauge wire. With each catch, it has gotten a little harder to get the trap reset, as that trigger mechanism has gotten ever so slightly bent each time. I solved this after the most recent catch by using a pair of pliers to bend it back a fraction of an inch, but that's something else that perhaps not everyone will be able to do. For me, it was an easy fix, so not significant to my rating, but I did think I should mention it.Aside from the strength needed to set it, I found this trap very easy to use. I like the safety catch that prevents the trap from triggering until you remove it; I'm someone who was always jumpy when setting a traditional mouse or rat trap with their hair triggers. This thing is MUCH more powerful, but I'm not nervous at all when setting it because of that safety catch. You can actually SET the trap in a convenient place like a counter or table and then carry it and adjust its positioning with no fear of it triggering until you remove the catch, and your fingers don't have to get in a dangerous position to release it.For bait I'm using peanut butter. There's a nail inside the trap to stick bait on, and what I did was cut a square of waxed paper and impale that on the nail, and then smeared some peanut butter on the waxed paper. This has kept the inside of the trap clean even after eight catches, and it also has made it easy to replace the peanut butter every few days. I just slide the waxed paper off the nail, taking the bait with it, and put a new square in and bait that. Cheap and effective.Using the pre-drilled hole on the back end of the trap, I have it anchored to the ground with a metal rod I saved from something I discarded years ago; I don't remember what, but something as basic as a metal clothes hanger cut apart with a pliers would work just as well. I did this mainly to ensure that some animal doesn't decide to make a meal of a caught squirrel and run off with my trap in the process.I don't anticipate needing to replace this trap anytime soon, but if or when I do, Quell will be getting some repeat business from me. I still have trouble believing how many squirrels I've gotten rid of in so short a time.Pros:- Easy to set if you have the necessary hand strength- Safety catch is a great feature- Seems to be well built overall- Basic materials (wood and metal) are easy to clean if needed- Design appears to limit the odds of injuring an unintentional target, especially with careful placement- Design seems to prevent escapes, if a squirrel triggers the trap, it's not getting away with your baitCons:- Not quite powerful enough to guarantee an instant kill; my ratio is 6 of 8 so far (about 75%)- Part of trigger mechanism should probably be slightly sturdier- I can see that the wooden portion (the base of the trap) will be the first part to wear out; perhaps a future design update could use a stronger material for thatOverall, this is an effective, well built trap that is well on its way to solving my local tree rat problem. Thanks Quell!UPDATE - 8/19/24I am nearing three months of owning my Quell squirrel trap, and I thought I'd give a quick update on it, even though my review was already very long. I have now eliminated 27 tree rats in just under three months, an average of one every three days or so. Sometimes I go a week with no catches, and sometime I still get several in a short time. Number 27 was caught this morning, and it was the fourth in three days, but it had been over a week prior to that.I had no idea I had QUITE that many in my area, and while I am definitely seeing fewer of them, they are still around. My rating remains unchanged, for the same reasons I stated previously. I'm not always around when I catch a squirrel, but I can tell from the way the trap moves when I get one that about a third of them are not dying instantly.I am definitely glad I have the trap anchored, as several times now neighborhood stray cats have tried to make off with a dead squirrel from the trap, and if it wasn't anchored I think it would have disappeared by now. Related to that, I am pleased to report that I have not caught any unwanted animals in the trap; I had been a little worried about birds or cats getting hurt by it, but every time it has been triggered it has been by a now-deceased squirrel.I will repeat what I said before: if I ever wear this thing out, Quell will get another order from me. VERY effective.

This trap is incredible, but be very careful setting it! I’m not sure why people struggle with this trap, but here is how I use it. I crafted a small box that I set the trap inside along with black oil sunflower seed as bait. The top of the box has an opening large enough for squirrels to enter but not pets. I sprinkle a few seeds on the top and the squirrels come running. I own a small orchard and I have dozens of squirrels eating my peaches and nectarines, so it’s a target rich environment. This trap would easily break your finger so don’t mess with it you are not comfortable handle dangerous devices.