Mouse tips and tricks

With it cooling down and mice wanting to find a cozy winter home what are everybody's tips and tricks for either keeping them out, chasing them away, or catching them. Are there any things you have tried that haven't worked that you hear people swearing by?

 

Traps with cheese. It only works about half the time.

But! Wrapping a little piece of bacon around the trigger seemed to work better. It's stringy and the little bugger has to work harder to get it...
And bam!

Also. Get rid of the bird feeders and stock piles of bird seed!

 

I bought a bucket of poison that causes internal bleeding until dead. Works awesome on anything finding its way in to where I don’t want it to. Just be cautious if you have pets unless you want them gone as well. I’m not cat friendly and neither are the dead mice.

 

Bird seed attracts birds and they splash the seed on the ground. Birds attract cats. Bird seed attracts rodents. Rodents and birds attract snakes.

Birds have lice. Rodents and cats have fleas and ticks.

Putting lime on your yard helps get rid of moles. Moles attract shunks and raccoons.

 

5 gallon bucket with a spoon full of peanut butter. They can get in but not out.

 

Mouse poison (according to my vet) will not kill a dog. I found this out first hand. (Long story short, i caught Diesel eating mouse poison in dads garage. Poison was up on a work bench but had apparently been knocked off the bench....)

 

There are lots of "better mouse trap" vids on YouTube using this 5 gal bucket method.


I like the magnetic diving board. Lol

 

Here's a tipping trap/5 gal bucket.
And they can't jump out with the full size lid.

 

I will share a positive experience I had with my small bass fishing boat. I store my boat around back in the woods double covered with 2x heavy duty tarps, some bungees and tie downs. Spring 2020 when I uncovered it there were without a doubt some critters living in it all winter long, made a dam fine mess. Now it could have been chipmunks or mice or both I really couldn't tell you. So before storing this past winter I bought a cheap box of scented dryer sheets. I balled up and put those suckers in all the nooks and cranny's I could. When I uncovered the boat this spring absolutely nothing, zero signs of any critters AND my boat smelled amazing!!

Now this could be a coincidence and perhaps I secured the boat better this past winter than the prior winter. Only time will tell but I'll be doing it again this winter for sure!

 

My wife would put dryer sheets and mothballs in our campers when we had them. Usually no problems with mice, occasionally there would be some signs of them in the spring but very little and never any damage.

 

Yup I don’t think it will have much effect on a bigger dog. Taco Bell might have to look for a new mascot maybe, don’t know how much it would need to ingest to be toxic. Cats, they say, eat the dead mouse and it’s not too good for them. Might use up a few if not all the lives left.

 

7.62 x 39 cal

 

Good to hear! I heard from a few it worked pretty good for campers, boats, etc... type applications.

 

That works fine until they make back into the walls and die there. Then they stink to high heaven while they rot. We use the bucket traps with household anti freeze in the bottom. Drown multi inhabitants and they are also embalmed and don't stink.

 

I've been experimenting with peppermint oil this summer. Mixed results. Once they are in, they don't seem to mind it. But I wasn't using full strength.
Saw one in the camper and a mouse trap took care of it. Saw another a week later, and I switched to full strength and haven't seen any activity since than.
I leave a roll of toilet paper in my camper as an "indicator" they love that stuff. Trap is still set but nothing in it since start of summer.
As for using it in a camper, if you plan on going away in it, don't use it at least a week in advance. Even than it will probably be too strong to stay in it for long.
I can smell it as I walk past the camper outside for probably 2 weeks at least.
I probably went overboard using it also.
I'm not a fan of using poison, and if I had a lot that I knew about I would go with the bucket trap as shown above ^

 

It takes a lot for a dog to ingest before it is an issue. My old Brittany I had ate a little of the mose killing pellets ( tomcat brand) and I called the hotline on the package. They basically said that a 40 lb dog would need to eat a lot of it, and to just give her plenty of water. She was totally fine.

 

That's a big mouse round

 

I've posted this here before...if you want to use a trap and tire of "getting robbed" try using a Tootsie roll as bait...you can pinch off a little bit, roll it around in your fingers until warm and soft, then work it into the trap bait holder...when it cools its hard enough that they can't steal it without setting the trap off...and unless you leave the dead ones too long (where their buddies come along and get a free meal) you will seldom have to put new bait on...

 

Drier sheets do work pretty well on cars, boats, campers...

 

So thats what you call your beer?
Lol