Categories of baits and lures for capturing vertebrate pests. Understanding visual, taste, odor, audible, territorial, sexual, food and curiosity attractants.
PestGeek fans Stephen Vantassel wildlife control consultant
bringing you another podcast here on some items related to wildlife control.
Today I wanted to talk a little bit about understanding baits you know the food
that you often throw in the back of a cage trap or a box trap. To lure that
animal into it so you can capture it. So baits are kind of an interesting thing
within Wildlife Control. Kind of has that sort of alchemy. Secretive hocus
pocus element. People are always wondering what is that magic bait and sort of
like a quest for the Holy Grail or something from Alchemy where you’re trying
to transition the mundane metals into gold and that’s kind of taken on a
mysterious element to it. Well you know the old trapper inside of his lab. You
know concocting some magical bait or lure to draw that and we’ll just sort of
magically works. Well I’m here to tell you flat out that while there are better
baits than others to be sure the reality of the reality of the situation is is
that baits are often used as an excuse for poor trapping but that’s for another
topic.
But we’re going to be discussing today an overview of
baiting theory and concepts that you can understand how to categorize baits so
that when you’re working in the field you are knowing when you can transition
from one bait to another because you should be keeping a record something more
than just simply your own had something on paper to determine what works in
your area and you have to have a way of understanding how to categorize baits.
To do that. So let’s get into some of the details because I’m really big on
definitions because professionals use professional language and that means
professionals need terms and concepts that are precise so that we’re all
communicating the same way. I mean if your doctor talk to you and said Yeah I
know you have a bump. On that thingamabob over there on that part of your limb
you’d look at him and you’d say hoo hoo by hiring here. Is that what kind of a
quack is by dealing with. So I think sometimes wildlife control operators I
can’t speak as much for PCOS but WCCO sometimes have an attitude to that if
we’re using Highfalutin language we’re sort of above it all and I’m saying no
professionals use technical language so that we’re all speaking the same way.
And so that’s one of my pet one of my pet peeves one of my
pet desires is for people when we talk about things in our industry that we
begin to talk with precision that doesn’t mean you overwhelm your client with
this information but that you need to know this information so that when we
communicate with one another we’re talking with the same with the same meaning
rather than just saying you know gopher I don’t know what a gopher is I don’t
go for could be a woodchuck it could be a ground squirrel. It could be a
prairie dog hole could be a pocket gopher could be a host of things. I don’t
know what a gopher is so but if you tell me I’m dealing with a northern pocket
gopher. Well then I know what you’re talking about it’s technical language so
that we make sure we’re talking the same thing.
But this also works for Baits as well and so I wanted to go
over some bait concepts with you so that we are using language in the same way.
