Moles

Moles need to eat their own body weight in worms a day. They catch the worms by digging a series of tunnels which become worm traps. The mounds of soil that often spoil lawns etc is the soil from these excavations. Where worms are plentiful there will usually be fewer hills. Mole runs are rarely more than 10" deep, but in good soil a mole can dig 10m of tunnel a day.

In the winter when there is a lot of water in the ground the worms are close to the surface and there will be a lot of mole activity on open ground, but in the summer when the ground is drier the worms go deeper for the moisture and the moles tend to drop back into ditches or hedgerows and woodland.

I used to believe that moles were very territorial and apart from when they were mating or there were young not old enough to leave the mother, there would only ever be one mole in one set of workings. These days however, I have often had multiple catches from workings that should only house one mole.

Moles have two types of runs. The established mole ( usually female ) tends to tunnel between 2 and 10 inches deep. They also have surface runs where they are just pushing up the grass. I notice I mainly catch males in this type of run, and my theory is that the males are moving between females for breeding purposes and dont want to waste time digging, but they still need to feed so they tend to be the ones that make the shallower runs.

Since Strychnine has been withdrawn, we are only left with two methods of control, either gassing or trapping. I have never rated gassing, it is an expensive and not very effective means of controlling Moles. At least with trapping you can see the end product.

My prefered traps are Duffus Tunnel Traps, they are easy to set and are inconspicuous, especially useful when trapping in areas where the general public have access, such as Golf Courses and Parks.

There are other traps on the market such as the Scissor Trap and Talpex Trap. Both these traps are just as effective in the right hands, and it is usually down to the mole catchers preference as to which traps to use.

Moles can be very elusive sometimes, and we base our prices on gambling that we can catch the moles within 3 or 4 visits. If we catch them over night then we have made ourselves a nice little bonus, but if it takes longer then obviously the extra visits start to eat into our profits, and if woe betide we get one like the one that took me a month to the day to catch we actually make a loss. Thankfully that doesnt happen very often.

We allways guarentee to catch all the moles present at the time of the treatment, but can give no guarrentees as to how quickly other moles will move in, especially if you live in a mole infested area