Question for experenced mole trappers

My mole trapper has several places where mounds are poping up. I think they are mating dens made by male moles. He could not find any runs anywhere near the mounds. We have delt with these in the past and found runs 10 or so feet from the dens and as they got close they would go down.
My trapper is not having any luck in catching the moles, so he raked the dirt mound back and used some of the Trapline Products (moleinater) traps into the holes in the den. In two different yards in 4 days he has caught what I think ( he sent me a picture) is a vole. He said they we small.
They are not moles. Both places after he caught the voles, the mole hills quit. All activity just quit.

My questions is, have anyone else experenced this. I am thinking the voles were using the moles runs and dens because of the colder weather.
Thank for any info
VS

Sure it's not a shrew? I've caught several shrews in mole tunnels, never a vole though.

It could be, I still have not seen it, just a picture. Were the Shrews small compaired to a mole?

Shrews are related to moles. They could use mole tunnels. Voles will use mole tunnels. Voles will tunnel on their own.

If you have moles (many people confuse the tunnel types) and they are sending up mounds, the only thing that means is they are burrowing too deep to push the soil out like they do on the surface. They excavate it, and rather than just fill the tunnel in behind them, they push the waste soil to the surface. Since this is only a trash chute they often don’t have surface tunnels by them. You have to dig down to find the tunnels.

Thank you for the information

This explanation " HOW TO " is a bit long, but I don't know how to post a video to shorten the explanation. This a more advanced method of capturing moles under these conditions. It may seem complicated, but it is just another technique. This is only for the benefit of those who have interest. Otherwise skip over the details below.


From my interpretation these clean out mounds are generally dug for development of nest chambers or establishing a more suitable climate area necessary for their needs. Obviously, they can't displace the volume of excavated dirt in those deeper areas by just compacting the soil with their heads and paddle feet. This method is how most shallow foraging tunnel runs are made. Every now and then you will see small mounds of surface dirt along a shallow mole feeding tunnel run. Same principal, just a different reason of dirt mounding. Get the dirt up and out of the way.

Those larger mounds usually develop at two times of the year around our regional mole job areas. When the heat of the summer is approaching some must go deeper to avoid heat stroke and follow the retreating food source also. Some take up harborage into mulch beds or the shade of trees and shrubbery. They have very high metabolisms due to their constant foraging and digging. Usually in the fall/winter they will want to get deep to develop nest chambers to prepare for the coming breeding season and the pup rearing periods.

I have seen those large dirt mounds develop up through several inches of snow locally here in the winter months. They appear like small volcanos rising above the snow. One fact I have learned when trapping moles while they are excavating in this manner, is that this mounding process does not last or take long. A few hours to a day or so at best in my experience. The depth determines the length of time needed to complete the work.

How to determine if mound is still under construction, is if the surface dirt on top of the mound is still dark in color. That shows that the soil is freshly excavated and still holds high moisture content. If the dirt appears lighter or tan in color the cleanout is most likely finished or near completion. At this time the mole will back plug the hole to the surface.

If this happens, and too much time has not passed since the completed excavation, you can still catch it.

This is how I deal with this situation.

You must remove all the mounded dirt down to the surface of the grass or sod. Clean it off well enough so you can find the plugged surface opening more easily. These tunnels to the surface are always made at a steep angle from all the ones I have dug into. Not completely straight down, but they are in my experience at a sharp angle.

I suppose this grade angle is to allow the mole easier pushing of the excavated dirt up and out of the tunnel at ground level. They are in fact pushing dirt up thru an already existing dirt mound. It is amazing the strength of these small mammals to be able to push all that dirt up and thru that mounded dirt to make room for more dirt.

Knowing this information:

I use a dandelion probing tool for all of my mole work. It is used to probe areas to establish tunnel runs, bed my traps, tell me the direction of the mole run and to clean out runs for setting traps.

In this case, once the mounded dirt is removed, I probe down into the ground surface carefully with my tool, only under the area of the mound. The plugged surface hole will be near the center of the mound. A long screwdriver can also be used for this purpose. You can feel your probe plunge into a soft spot. That will be your surface tunnel opening. It will have a few inches of dirt plugging that area. Carefully, clean out the dirt. I use a very small metal hoe looking tool that I made to remove this plugged tunnel dirt.

I then probe the tunnel to establish the angle of the tunnel and its direction. This is vitally important. We use the Trapline traps exclusively for mole work. They are a very effective trap once you learn how to use them in different ways of setting them. Once I establish the direction and angle of the tunnel, I use my MTP tool to develop the proper trap bed chamber for placing the trap. Make sure your trap is lined up perfectly into the sloped descending tunnel run.

You only set 1 trap in this surface breach tunnel.

I leave the area open and do not cover the hole. You should be able to look right into the surface tunnel and see your trap and when or if you make a catch. When the mole detects that air flow and light that is coming into his plugged tunnel guess what he is going to do? He is going to once again bring up dirt to do the job again. In making these trips to the surface, if you have done your part of setting up well, you can catch it.

The moles' reaction to plug this opening will likely only happen if the tunnel is still being traveled and maintained. That is why it is important that you can read the sign of the mounds age and the stage of construction it is in.

I get a few of these circumstances every year, so I learned how to read the sign and set these areas up and if the mounds are still being worked on I will catch that mole.

Like stated I get quite a few shrews in my traps. Not many voles but several shrews every year.

Mr. Jameson I was hoping you would share some of your knowledge. I have Out of Sight traps and MPT traps. I bought two of your tools several years ago and they work great. My buddy trapping the moles will be glad to know how to attack these things with the volcano mounds.
By the way the critters were voles not shrews.
Thank you
VS

Breeding activity never occurred to me. I figured they were following the food. In summer they’ll go down when it’s dry. Worms like it wet. In the winter worms resist becoming worm-sicles and moles follow them down.

next time if you have a mole problem again buy plastic peddle mouse traps and dig a spot in there underground run and place two facing opposite ways in there runs and put a piece of wood over top and check it every day and that's how i catch them

Here is shrews, voles, and a mole

Western Wildlife Services

I catch voles in gopher and mole tunnels pretty regularly. If the intent is to catch voles, I use a surface setup with mouse traps under plastic covers, because that's a fast and effective set.

But when we set our Trapline tunnel traps for moles or gophers, we will catch voles if they happen to come through the tunnel.

Here in California, voles really don't make mounds, not sure if they do in other places, but I doubt it.

WWS, that Townsends mole is huge! What did you use to catch it?

Our gopher traps are a little too big for Townsends, and our mole traps are too small. Working on a gopher trap with a reduced jaw spread that might be really good for Townsends, but don't have it ready yet.

I use the old victors, Out of sight trap. that's just a normal mole for our area. I have caught a few with your traps, but have not gotten to the point of being proficient with your traps.

wws

We switched exclusively to Steves traps many years ago. We hammer the eastern and hairy tail moles with them. Like any device you need to become proficient with them.

But once you do, they get the job done. I can use the OOS and spear traps and do on a rare occasion. But they are just too big and bulky to carry hundreds around as we do in our trucks.

I agree with Bob that learning to use a particular trap proficiently is a big part of what determines success. But in the case of those huge Townsends moles, I think the problem with our traps is that those moles just won't fit into the traps.

WWS, have you tried setting our traps "upside down" for the townsends? I mean with the tines pointing down rather than up. With that set, they will lift the trap as they go under it(and they want to go under it), and their big flipper feet will slide under the tines, and the trap will catch them on their back. Actually that's a good technique anytime moles are digging under or around traps, but especially useful in sandy or very soft soils.

I never got good at using the spear style traps, but I used OOS traps for years before making my own traps.

Steve I have not tried that but will. With the OOS traps being so poorly made now I need to order a bunch of yours. I have a couple big jobs coming up soon. That should give me time to really get better at using your traps. I was taught by a Mennonite farmer 30 years ago with OOS traps, old habits are hard to get rid of.





Our Camas gophers are big too! so I will need a mix of traps, I have been using the Cinch Trap.

wws

That's rabbit sized! Lol

That sure is a beefy one there. That is about the size of the pack rats I would catch in Kansas or larger.

You guys just let me know if you want some shipped to you for mounting. These are trophy’s , but I get plenty of them.

wws

Got one now kicking my tail.

Different from my usual surface run job. This one is running deep and kicking up mounds. I say usual but I had given up mole work until this one came along.

On a front yard slope in soft wet slick clay soil overlying gravel. The runs that I've been able to access between and below the mounds are 8"-10" deep.

There are the classic surface, but deep, runs along the curbing, sidewalk and driveway but those aren't being used as evidenced by the OSS set there going undisturbed.

The hot activity is the center of the slope with a new mound being pushed up every few days.

Question, are these mounds on feeding runs, not likely to be reused, or travel runs?

This is only the third or fourth job in twenty years where they are mounding as that is a rare thing down here. And those others had surface runs as well. This one does not other than the hard edge runs.

Any insight appreciated.

How straight are the mounded runs? Are you setting in the tunnel or the waste chutes?

Attempting to follow down the waste or connecting the dots to get to the lateral run but the ground conditions are horrible with the amount of rain we've gotten. More like digging in putty.

Hard to tell any sort of direction other than most seem to run side to rather than up or down slope. With new mounds popping up every few days I'm suspecting they aren't regularly reusing the tunnels.

Normally if the moles up here put the effort into excavating a deep tunnel they’re going to use it again, but as with any animal they’re gonna do what they want. If they’re moving around that much, maybe the food isn’t there to keep them in an area.

That's the deal here. While we do have earthworms we don't have the big nightcrawler/dew worms of the Midwest. Ours are red wigglers.

So most mole work is those highly amended lawns adjacent to woodlands/leaf litter. Plain clay doesn't support lots of biomass. Typically one or two and done as our soils can't support huge numbers.

Almost all jobs here are a large area of meandering feeding runs just under the sod. The key is identifying the straight runs back to cover, usually the wood line or brushy landscaping. I catch them on the straight runs and hard edge runs.

I kind of figure deep runs are more than likely part of the core network vs feeding.

Up here, deep angle runs surfacing to large clean out mounds generally indicate nest chamber construction or developing deep tunnel feeding runs.

These types of activity runs are usually created when the food source has been pushed deeper due to surface temps, conditions or a food source level has been located requiring excavation of material to continue feeding in that zone until it has been depleted.

Some deeper soil conditions can be seen in the color of the excavated material. This can give you indicators as to their depth of operation.

Would be happy to sell you as many traps as you can use. Also, we do make a "magnum" size gophinator which works well on the Camas pocket gophers, not sure if you've used that or not. I did some trapping up there many years ago and know how big those guys are. And I do happen to have a bunch of OOS traps that are new and still in box, but were bought around 7 or 8 years ago, prior to the changes in how they're made. If you are interested in some of those, happy to sell them for like $12 each. I think I have around 100 of them.