Northern Gardening

Last year I tried living with the moles and not trapping them. It didn’t work. See last season’s article for why I quit trapping and also the photos of the debacle, but the bottom line is that I am back trapping and I already have eight moles under my belt this spring. I am truly the “Mole Assassin Extraordinaire”!

How did I get so good at trapping moles? Well, several years ago I hired Mike the Mole Man to come and get rid of the multitude of moles that had taken up residence in my yard and gardens. Mike is legendary and killing moles is his bread and butter. He charges 35 bucks for each dead mole and he is happy to show you each and every one of them before you pony up the dough.

Needless to say, by the end of the summer I had paid Mike almost $500 for dead moles. That was with the discount Mike gave me of only $25 a mole after I hit $245 when Mike was feeling a bit sorry for me. I consider it a great investment though, because I watched the master at work and I learned.

Not that Mike isn’t crafty. He knows that if homeowners learn how to catch the moles themselves he’s out of business, so he steals in at dawn or when he thinks you aren’t there and sets and empties his traps. He even turns his back to the windows of your house so you can’t see what he is doing. I was craftier though. When he didn’t know I was home I was watching from my upper level window to see what he did differently and why he is the best mole killer around.

His biggest secret is that he uses a scissor trap rather than the normal plunger or hoop traps that most of us try and then fail with miserably. I couldn’t find the same traps locally, but eventually found the same ones he uses at . I bought six of the traps and went to work.

A Set Scissor Mole Trap

Even with the same traps, I had no luck until I read on the internet that you should never touch your traps with bare hands. Moles are very sensitive to human scent. I didn’t want to buy new traps so I boiled them all in an old soup pot and started using plastic gloves when I set the traps. Eureka! I started to catch moles. Since then I have perfected my method and here is how I set the traps:

How to Set a Scissor-Type Mole Trap

Punch holes in the mole tunnels with a rake handle and if the hole fills up with soil in a few hours you know you have an active tunnel.

Dig out a 4 inch section of the tunnel and then flatten the bottom of the hole. Set your trap by laying it on the ground with the short jaw up and the trip bar over the top. Use the two setting levers on opposite sides of the spring to close the jaws so you can set the trip bar into the trip plate.

When the trap is set, set the safety clip and place it gently into the hole that you have dug so you can see where the jaws should be placed. Draw a line from one tunnel hole to the other so you set the trap exactly in the middle of the tunnel. After imprinting with the jaws, remove it holding only the top of the trap and use a garden knife or narrow trowel to make holes where the jaws have left impressions.

Put the trap back into the hole so that the trip plate is level with the bottom third of the tunnel hole. Gently push soil under the trip plate and then find a small piece of stick and push that (again gently) under the trip plate. When the mole hits the small stick it instinctively pushes up and trips the trap.  Fill the hole up with soil and then undo the safety clip. Mark your traps with an orange flag so you don’t mow or trip over them.

Go down the tunnel a foot or so on both sides of the trap and stomp down. When the mole gets some resistance before the trap it isn’t worried by the further disturbance where the trap is set.

That’s it. Hopefully, you will have success using the mole trapping tricks of the Mole Assassin Extraordinaire. With a little help, of course, from Mike the Mole Man!

A tripped trap. Dead Mole Number 8!

Find complete instructions for the Victor Scissor Mole Trap aka the Out O’Sight Mole Trap .