Has anyone had success with catching feral cats in a high weka area? We are seeing a lot of feral cats with our trail cameras. Cage traps on the ground just catch weka. We have had a little success with SA2 traps, but seem to catch the dumb ones. There are no domestic cats, so they are not a worry. Any proven ideas?
We use periscope or chimney boxes for cats. Keeps the pesky kiwi out and cats seem to enjoy exploring the boxes. Here’s one example.
Have you used this with weka present? We expect weka would climb in.
Ah. Have not, sorry. I assumed they’d be like kiwi and not climb up the box, but that was an assumption.
Sentinel traps are pretty good. Attach a meat based bait in place of the bite block, cable ties of the right size work well for this. We have made up bait clips with No.8 wire that we need to trial more, they look to be good for changing between different baits such as fruit for possums.
Make sure the tree is too steep for Weka to climb(surprising what they can climb when they want to). With the larger opening Sentinels seem to be more effective than flipping timmys etc for cats, having said that again you still wont catch everything that is there.
I’ve had some success of late catching feral cats in a weka area, using both SA cat trap and double-open ended cage trap. Both mounted with ramps so that they are above weka height.
Check out https://photos.app.goo.gl/DPXjEd5XbmRCbWYn8
Traps were prefed for 2 months, trail cam pics of cats walking past them. And then they got hungry (stomachs and gut were empty) and I caught 5 in 2 weeks.
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