we got lots of them. nearby town called madawaska means land of the porcupine! luckily I’m surrounded with fields so i don’t have them here.
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we have snowshoe hare up here but they prefer tender spruce shoots over my plants. 
voles one the other hand…
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Do I need to worry about rabbit/mouse bark damage on 40 year old apples and pears or is their trunk thick enough to withstand attack? In other words, are hardware cloth trunk cages always necessary?
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Some of my pears get a hard trunk bark a sabor tooth mouse could not get through but some of my apples never develop tough bark.
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Thank you Clark. That’s important to know the difference between pears and apples.
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Voles chewed up my parents 30 yr old apple trunk last winter. Didn’t kill it luckily. I’m putting out rat bait bars and it seems to be helping. Once there is snow on the ground they get less picky what they eat. Something has Benn eating them at least… maybe knock out some rabbits too!
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i do the same. i make bait stations out of 2in. pvc pipe 12in . long and duct tape closed at one end. i have about 20 i put out in the fall. keeps the bait dry till’ they find it. so far no vole issues since. they can’t resist the peanut butter flavored ones.
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Good idea about the station, I bet soda bottles with the top cut off would work fine for that also!
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it should. i don’t like the idea of laying out poison bait that someones pet could get to. usually voles will go underground to die when poisoned so no predators will eat them.
Yeah, I suppose that could be a problem. Im not sure how much bait it takes to kill a small animal and if that animal is eaten, if it would be enough to kill a larger animal. Im sure the amount in a 2-3lb rabbit would be significantly diluted in a 50lb dog… Would be interesting to know how dangerous that actually is for an animal. Dont most of the poison bars work by using blood thinners? I think even larger animals will try to hide when they are dying/sick. I found a rabbit earlier this year, dead under a plastic pallet in my back yard when I moved it. It was just skin and bones but likely died from poison I put out last winter.
i don’t think it would kill a larger animal but could make it pretty sick. most bait companies only put enough poison in there to kill the target species and pose little risk of harming larger animals.
We have great horned owls and other predators that I don’t want harmed.
Apparently, the type of anticoagulant makes a big difference and several are lethal to predators via secondary poisoning:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3781183?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
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Many of the poisons used in the bars start a hemorrage from inside the animals stomach. It takes them about three days to die. Research on Just one Bite poison bars.
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This is the time of year and the weather that rabbits get your trees here. I shot one last weekend before the snow came. I checked the yard for tracks tonight before dark and did not see any. It was only 8 degrees for a high here today and four or five inches of snow on the ground
I just missed one. I need something better than my son’s single load pellet riffle. I think I heard laughing as it ran away…
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HI just mentioned this risk/consequence on another thread talking about voles 
. Only saw your post now.
Does anyone actually trap rabbits in live traps? I for one have never been able to do it.
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My brother built me a wooden rabbit trap. The theory is that you place it in a brushy spot and the rabbit goes in looking for a safe hide out and bumps the trigger stick inside. I never caught a rabbit in it though, mostly house cats and a possum once. But I remove rabbits if I see them so I don’t have many around
Rabbits are very leary of enclosed areas, claustrophobia, I guess, but they are difficult to trap.
I’ve caught a few in live traps . you have to put the trap near cover. don’t cover the trap with anything. i got rabbit and groundhog w/ cantaloupe. skunks like sardines.
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