I only had 16 traps ready when I first placed them around the boundary so when I paired them up, the traps went a bit like this:
1/4: back deck
2/3: front of house by drive
5/17: shade house/garage
6/18: totara (there's also a GoodNature possum trap on the tree)
7/19: rubbish heap
8/20: mud puddle
9/21: boundary peg
10/22: clearing, back boundary
11/23: back boundary
12/24: back boundary
13/25: north boundary peg
14/26: small hillock
15/27: bendy bit
16/28: northern boundary bush end
29/30: water tank
Not the easiest and no doubt I'll change them soon to make it easier to pinpoint rat incursions.
I had a play with Excel's pivot tables this morning and here's the results from traps that have caught at least one rat from 15 August 2012 to 21 April 2013.
The 'unknown' column come either from bodies that are too eaten/decayed to be able to sex them, or when there's definitely been a catch but the body was removed (probably by a weka). Traps 4 (back deck) and 6 (totara) have caught almost half the entire tally - trap 4 used to be the winner with 11 rats caught up till 20 January 2013 but it's only caught 1 rat since whilst trap 6 has caught 14 in the same time period.
Interestingly, trap 18 that is paired with trap 6 has never caught a rat despite me swapping positions from time to time. All traps are now baited with dark chocolate drops (Pams variety) and it still catches rats even when it's gone mouldy. The FeraFeed didn't seem to work as well and the cost was way more expensive - plus it went mouldy much faster. I'm not tempted to nibble the chocolate drops as I go round as I've swished my rat gloves around in the container!!
I need to get some tracking tunnels set up which will confirm whether there are rats present but which don't like going into the traps. Almost half of my traps haven't caught any rats: 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30 - if the tracking tunnels don't show any rat footprints in that area then maybe I could redeploy the traps where there are higher numbers.
No possums caught yet with my GoodNature self-resetting trap - but I haven't seen any possum poo or heard possum noises so maybe there's none around. I did my second bird listening survey last Friday night; it was much quieter than the first one with one male kiwi call plus a couple of ruru 'cree' calls as it flew around.
