Live trap raccoon / animal plans

[TROP]

[B]I am looking to build a few live traps for raccoons and other animals. I was wondering if anyone has any plans, ideas, advice, instructions, pictures, etc.
Please post or email me.
Thanks For Your Help and Time!!
TROP
jstropea@yahoo.com [/B

[rl.robertson]

If you look on craigslist, ive seen a lot of ideas on animal traps posted on there.

[SpyGuy]

Here's a fairly easy one to build .... What you do is build a rectangular box, mesh on the four long sides and one end. One end of the box is going to be open. What you're going to do now is make a one-way gate in the open end of the box, tilted down like 45*. Attach it to the open end, with the angle going down inside the box. What will happen is this: the animal will push its way under the gate to get to whatever bait you put in the trap, and the gate will fall down behind it. The 45* down angle from the outside has now become a 45* angle upwards, which the animal can't lift up.

Kinda like this (hope my ASCII works .... ignore the periods, I had to use them as spacers for everything to line up):

----------------------------
|.gate hinged at top /..|
|............................./....| <-- open end, critter goes in here
|...bait here........../.....|
----------------------------

[Andy]

Here's one I just finished building. I wouldn't recommend building it this way as it will take way too much time to build all the linkage, but it's one of those things where I had an idea and I just *had* to build it.

Here's a top-down view before I put the top on


The linkage is setup so it pulls down on the top bar whenever the platform rocks forward or backwards




<more pics on the next post>

[Andy]

When the platform rocks forwards/backwards the top bar spins and pulls on the long horizontal bar (one with the jamb nut). This moves a pin at the front of the trap


This pin is what holds the gate up.

The gate is hung on two hinge pins at the side. The weight of the gate is behind these pins so the gate naturally wants to keep itself closed.


With the amount of engineering and welding time, this is probably a $500 trap. If you just want one to use, you'd be better off buying one.