Rabbit trap?

Good news I just saw a rabbit FREE MEAT Bad news I just saw a rabbit oh my poor veggies .
In my experiance rabbits dont just come in ones ..... there are usually whole families of the blighters .
In the Uk I hunted them with dogs, snares , Hawks and ferrets but here in france I have no acess to the hawks or ferrets and snares are a bit indescriminate ( I was younger and more stupid then ) The dog ( and casper the cat ) just did his own thing and kept them away .. So anyone know of any plans of traps I could make ? Otherwise its either buy a dog or a gun or both . In the meantime I will fill in any hole I see as this stresses them and I know will make them go else where but its hard work and brer rabbit will be in the brier patch I know

David

Leader Drop Traps are what you want.

http://www.rabbittrap.co.uk/

You dig them in permanently to a fence line and they have a tunnel through the fence. Over time the rabbits get used to using the tunnel so then you remove the lock from the trap. When they walk through the tunnel the floor drops away beneath them and they end up trapped in a subteranean box, while the trap is counterweighted to reset itself.

In the morning you come around and dispatch the rabbits and lock the trap. No chance of accidentally killing anything you don't want and they remain effective for years. They also remain effective with low rabbit populations, where most other methods become progressively more expensive and difficult (it is easy to get someone to come and shoot 50 rabbits when you have a plague, a lot harder when you have just two rabbits eating your lettuces!).

I've thought for a while that there would be a good side business in installing and servicing these for nearby farms. Get paid an installation fee and an ongoing contract fee to set and empty them every few weeks, plus you get to keep and/or sell lots of rabbit meat.


First few minutes is installation, the rest is using them.

They look very good but firstly they are out of my price range and secondly I dont have a rabbit poof fence
In fact I dont have a rabbit proof anything.
I am probably going to go down the dog route after convincing my partner which will take some time and lots of veg eaten

David

£80 for a trap is pretty economical compared to caring for a dog!

Also, I think the fence doesn't necessarily need to be rabbit proof. You just need to make sure that the tunnel is their preferred path. You could manually go around blocking off other paths and gaps with sticks to encourage them to use the tunnel.

I accept that but a dog can cover more ground and I want a dog anyway
On principle I would like to make my own trap

David

Last winter the rabbit population did a number on the younger trees in my orchard. The trees guards worked until the snows came and the rabbits were able to stand on the snow and girdle the parts of the tree above the guards. While the guards are very effective for about 10 months out of the year, mid-January to mid-March can be brutal. I would recommend going with the best deal you can find on box style traps. Around my parts you can buy a two-pack of traps for about US$30.

I am pretty sure you can find plans on the internet for box style traps, but at just $15 for a complete trap there might not be much savings in building your own traps.

My neighbors, when they tired of raising rabbits, just turned all of theirs loose. The neighborhood was quickly overun with the offspring, initially I used the live traps and was catching 2-4 juveniles at a time. My wifes terrier was finally allowed to help and I did resort to snares and finally reduced the bunnies after a season. I did feel guilty about using the snares but the problem was so bad I did have to go that route. the snared rabbits did not go to waste. Fortunately I didn't have any unintended captures of anything other than rabbits but the trails were defined and placement probaly had a good deal to do with it. I can appreciate your dilemma.

Search for rabbit gum ( box trap)...



http://bushcraftusa.com/forum/showthread.php/39277-The-Simple-quot-Rabbit-Gum-quot-Live-Trap


http://mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/resources/2010/05/4525_2245.pdf



http://www.offthegridnews.com/survival-hunting/how-to-build-a-box-rabbit-trap/


Among many others....

You could downscale the trap in this video

Hi

Can somebody with more design abilities improve on this sketchup model I drew based on ideas found here?

Ignacio