How do you catch a marten?

How do you catch a marten?

A marten in the attic, the garage or on the car poses a mystery to many: How do I catch the nuisance?

We have many years of experience in catching wild animals and would like to help you to successfully hunt your marten.

Martens that come close to humans are exclusively stone martens, these are so-called culture followers and use the proximity to humans to their advantage. The rare pine marten, on the other hand, avoids humans wherever possible. The classic house and garden marten is (almost) always a stone marten.

Martens are extremely clever and cautious animals and do not like to be caught, so you need to outsmart them.

Which trap?
Since catching with deadly traps is forbidden in Switzerland, only live traps can be used for catching. We recommend so-called rocker board traps, in which the trap is triggered as soon as a rocker board inside the trap is touched or your bait is removed from it. Under no circumstances should the bottom of the trap be made of wire or sheet metal, the marten is very reluctant to walk on this material. It is not for nothing that wire mesh fences are placed under cars to keep martens away.
Since martens are very shy, they are very reluctant to enter small, narrow traps. The trap should therefore be at least 110cm long and at least 15cm wide at the opening. The Artemis 110 trap we offer is our most suitable marten trap along with the significantly larger Artemis 150 . Both are extremely fine, are weatherproof and lock very reliably thanks to double locking. In addition, the grating protects you from scratching and biting through. Basically, the bigger the trap, the better. The safer the marten feels when entering the trap, the more likely it is to go in to get the bait.

Where is the trap set?
Depending on the environment, so-called forced changes prove to be the most effective, i.e. places where the marten MUST go through, for example to get to the chicken coop or to its burrow. Many professional trappers create such forced changes as a precaution. For example through an opening in the chicken coop that leads to the chickens. The trap is then placed in this opening. Or if the marten enters a roof via a gutter, the trap is attached exactly to the opening so that the marten has to go through the trap to get into the attic. It becomes more difficult if such a forced change is not present, then the trap MUST be baited.

If the marten lives in the attic, the trap should not be placed directly there. As with humans, eating is rarely done in the bedroom. The trap should therefore be set up outside. For example in the garden or anywhere near the house. The marten smells a good bait hundreds of meters away.

Which bait?
Beech martens are basically omnivores, but they prefer to eat meat. Baiting traps with fruit or fruit-based baits is therefore rarely successful in a warm season. Firstly because there are certainly plenty of fresh fruits to be found in the area and secondly because he prefers meat. We offer a special bait https://swisshunt.ch/collections/lockmittel/products/swisshunt-marder-lockmittel that smells almost irresistibly good for martens.

How should be baited?
Martens smell incredibly good. A bait pellet can be smelled several hundred meters away. It is therefore not necessary to fill the whole trap with food. The marten should also not be fed, but caught.
We therefore recommend positioning one or at most two bait pellets in the vicinity of the trap and positioning one pellet in the trap on the seesaw board. The pellets outside the trap are usually accepted (eaten) first and take away the marten's fear of falling into the trap. The bait pellet in the trap then leads to the desired success.

We wish you every success.