Hi all, is anyone using AT230s - the version with cat microchip scanner? Interested to hear how other groups have been finding them. We have plenty of AT220s & AT520s which we love and catch many rodents and possums. Back in June we installed our first 2 x AT230s and have seen footage of possums and rats walking past the trap but not paying it any attention which is disappointing. Keen to hear from others using this trap please 
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Are you saying they ignore the AT230s but not the other ones?
Thought it was a bit useless but after changing the pouch for the first time I started paying attention. Fiddling about changing the pouch and putting the battery back I noticed there was two possum Frisbees almost dissolved away in the leaf litter. Whoops! Turned out that I had to check much more regularly and close not a glance from 8 meters away. I think kills were disappearing cats? or hawks? Now I check every second day and it is doing the business equal to our 4 bucket traps and much better on rats. I do open it up every 4 weeks or so and blip some extra lure down the tree.
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My experience with the AT220s (have never used a 230) is that hawks and cats learn where the AutoTraps are real quick. I’ve scared up several kahu that were feeding on possum carcasses under the traps and I have trail cam footage of cats making a circuit to several traps in a row to check for freshly dead rats. Once these scavengers become familiar with your trap layout, the bodies under the traps become a less reliable indicator of kills.
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Good place to put a cat trap!
@davo36 ZIP used this model to poison stoats in their predator removal project. Using an autolure and priming the stoat by leaving carcasses in an area and then a toxic rat carcass to kill the stoat. But you could do the same with a cage trap if you were able to monitor it every day the trap was set.
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I had the same thought so I set Timms traps close to my AT220s, on paths that trailcam showed cats frequent. I baited the Timms with mustelid & cat lure ‘bricks’ and dripping smeared on a patch of carpet. Caught lots of hedgehogs and a few possums in the Timms but no cats. The AT220s have caught 4 cats so far with standard lure.
I check these traps every 1-2 weeks and record identified kills and also strikes recorded by the trap but no body seen. The graphs below show the cumulative catch (seen and unseen) for 3 of my traps that have been running for 15 months.
For all 3 traps the identified kills and unseen strikes accumulate at about the same rate overall but the unseen strikes are more erratic, Only 1 trap shows a lag in unseen strikes at the start of trapping, for the other 2 unseen strikes start straight away. For 2 of the traps there seems to be a pause in unseen strikes when a cat is taken out by the trap. But I know from the trailcam that the cats I see regularly visiting (and raiding) the traps are not the ones I’m catching. I’m obviously not removing all the cats at a trap so the changes in unseen strikes when a cat is caught might just be a coincidence. I need more data. Has anyone else looked at catches seen and unseen with AT220s. Do you see similar strike rates?
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I’ve got a sequence of probably 50 photos from a trail camera of a hawk working a rat out the side of an AT220 (set low). Perseverance won the day for this bird. It managed to bend the wire cage a bit too in the process.
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