So I have a goodnature A24 and it had not had activity for a while. I checked the trap and a used silver lure casing fell near the trap from my pocket but i didn’t change the lure. 24 hours later trap counter was up by 5 and 2 days later 2 more.
As i walked to the trap the silver of the lure casing glistened in the moon and could be seen from some distance. So my questions…
Does creating a flasher type rig at ground level work to attract rats to an A24 1.5m up a stump?
Has anyone tried to have a glistening or flashing attractant?
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Interesting! I’d always heard that blazing with flour/icing sugar was a visual attractant but have mostly used this for possum traps.
Were all 7 of the strikes rats, or were some kills of other species? I’ve always heard rats are neophobic, one would expect them to be put off by a new shiny metal thing - unless they were able to get a nice pre-feed off the lure casing and then were emboldened to go into the trap?
I only saw one which was dead rat and he was blocking the trap after first visit so i dropped him to the ground. We have a lot of weka so blazes just seem to eaten by them or other birds so a permanent flasher rig would be better for us if it works. Honestly i dont know if the strike count was genuine or some other explanation that is why I am asking if others have found if a flasher works
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I’ve found some mentions of shiny attractants for magpies and possums, but also know that people use reflective tape to scare off birds from their gardens. I don’t know which way weka would go, although it sounds like you’ve got the trap out of their reach.
Do you know anyone with a trail cam (or a doorbell/security cam, if your trap is near enough to wifi)? Depending on what other responses you get here, if no one has tried reflective lures you could put some different types of ‘shiny’ on a neighbouring (trap-less) tree and see what comes to visit. That way your target animals won’t be scared off the actual trap (if they don’t like reflectors) and if any non-targets (especially native birds) are attracted to the visual lure you’ll hopefully find out about it before they stick their beaks into the A24.
Both white corflute and reflective tape are pretty cheap from hardware stores, and any surplus can be quickly turned into nice track markers, driveway parking guides, etc.
I agree that an effective non-food attractant would be really useful for trapping! Looking forward to future posts on this topic 
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Great discussion, lets get some citizen science behind it 
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