Summertime Rabbit Baits

Normally I don't get many calls for rabbits but I had two in one week recently. But with the temperatures in the high 90's and low 100's, I'm having issues with my baits. All my favorite baits that work so well in the fall and winter are USELESS in this heat. It dries out or turns to mush almost instantly.

Finally, I gave up and pulled my traps. Even though I had been switching my spent baits out with fresh each day, I had a nasty, stinking mess to be hosed out of my traps. It's no wonder I caught nothing! This stuff STANK!

What are some of y'alls hot weather baits for rabbits?

We just talked about this a couple of weeks ago. A mixture of hay, rabbit pellets, and bird seed. Guaranteed to catch everything in

the area and if you're lucky, maybe even a rabbit or two if you get them funneled. We usually won't do summer rabbit jobs unless they

pay for the non-targets too.

One caller had rabbits eating her ornamental plants around her house. This was a two critter job, actually. She's had lots of snakes visiting her back yard and rabbits eating up her plants. We concluded that the whole problem was, too many rabbits in the neighborhood and the snakes were there feeding on the baby rabbits.

The other caller was losing his plants in the vegetable garden. Rabbits were destroying the tender young bean sprouts and corn nubbins.

I caught no rabbits in ether case, but did manage to spook them away from the vegetable garden until the plants were up sturdy enough not to be so tempting. We are currently adding deterrents to keep them scared away.

Thanks for the bait ideas. I'll take notes and keep this in mind.

Heres a thing; I much prefer to trap rabbits with a spring trap, a kill trap, rather than a live cage trap. I have found that rabbits are a bit like cats. Put a box there and they'll waddle straight in, bait or no bait. I trap gardens and use a simple cubby made out of three pieces of ply with a trap n the middle bedded into the soil and set on a perimeter fence/wall/hedge. They just go straight in to their death. There isn't any point in complicating things, just three pieces of plywood and away ya go.

roe, you actually mentioned the reason that I would love to do that, but can't. Cats and a host of others would waddle to their deaths.

Well, around here, rabbits are the one of the critters I love to relocate. I'm trying to get the population built back up around my house.

Besides... I don't really want to kill anything edible in this heat. Wouldn't want it to spoil before I could get back to it.