This mole trap really works! As long as you find a commonly used tunnel, and as long as your mole trap doesn't pick up any human odors, you will catch a mole rather quickly! I have had a few problems with the device, though. I've had mine for many months prior to writing this review. I wanted to rack up some experience, first. I purchased two of these. My yard and garden beds were covered with mole tunnels! I followed the instructions closely and put out my traps. Within about 4 hours, I caught my first mole. It was in a very obvious tunnel in my backyard. I put the trap there because, to me, that tunnel appears to be sort of a main tunnel for the moles. The other trap, which I put in a garden bed on a clearly defined, visible tunnel, never did trip. It was in the evening when I caught my mole, but I didn't know how to get him out of the very tight jaws of the trap! On the instruction sheet, there's a little picture and one sentence about how to release the dead mole from the trap, but that just didn't help me. I could not get that mole out of the trap! So, I set the trap with dead mole down on some newspapers outside and waited until morning to try again. Still no luck. So, I called the contact number on the Mole Eliminator website. The woman explained to me what to do -- wrap your arms around a tree so that the tree is between your chest and the trap, which is in your hands. Hold the flat panel part of the trap with one hand on each side so that the flat portion is facing you, with jaws and dead mole on the other side. Then pull your hands (and the trap) towards you and press the flat panel portion of the trap against the tree that's between you and trap. You'll be pulling that flat panel piece up against the tree, and that way, you'll have enough strength to get the jaws to momentarily open and release the mole! "But," I told the lady, "then I'll have to somehow pick up or shovel up the dead mole. Yuk." But she said, no, you put an old grocery bag or something down on the ground below the trap, and as you release the animal, it will fall onto the bag. Then, just scoop up the bag and toss it. Perfect! It works like a charm! The instructions say you have to move the trap every 12 to 24 hours, I think it is, whether you've caught a mole or not -- that's a lot of trap moving! I would find myself setting my alarm a little earlier for work so I could go skulking about in my back yard, in the pitch black, with a screwdriver (to pop the traps to move them), unsetting and resetting mole traps for the next day's work! Ha! After catching my first mole, I excitedly moved both traps to new locations and looked forward to catching the next couple critters. But I didn't catch another mole for weeks! They were clearly all over my yard! But I couldn't get them to go by my traps. I finally came back to amazon to re-read the reviews, and that's when I read some people's comments that you can't touch the traps with your bare hands or get any oily sort of smells on them. The moles will smell the non-earth odors and avoid the traps. And that DOES seem to be the case! Every time I catch a mole, I have to let my traps sit out in the sun for quite some time before they're effective again. Which is a pain in the butt. I have been using my garden gloves ever since I discovered that you shouldn't handle the traps with your bare hands (to avoid leaving human odors), but I think my garden gloves may have Neem Oil odors, which is also no good. I guess I'll have to purchase a pair of mole trap gloves! Others have had luck boiling the traps. I may try that soon. I just didn't want to boil the instructions off the levers, so I haven't tried it yet. The other problem I've had catching moles, that didn't occur to me until I tried using these traps, is that it's not as easy to clearly identify the boundaries of a mole tunnel as one might think. I'm constantly walking on mole tunnels in my yard. They're everywhere. I can't miss them. But, when I go to set the traps, it quickly dawns on me that, though I can feel them under my feet, if they're covered by grass, it's actually quite hard to find the borders and edges effectively. And you have to know where the borders and edges are so that you can place the trap perpendicular to them. Otherwise, the trap won't work! So, if your mole tunnels are mainly in the grass, it will be much harder to effectively set these traps. I've had the best luck on the tunnels that are covered by exposed dirt, not grass. Otherwise, if you can avoid getting odors on these traps, and if you can clearly locate the tunnels, they should be very effective for you. I still think they're probably the best solution out there for getting rid of moles. I tried several other options prior to the nasty business of trapping. Nothing else seemed to work.
