JT Eaton JAWZ 409 Mouse Snap Traps

These traps are the ones to use. Bait with peanut butter and they work very very good! The teeth on these traps will catch and hold a mouse even if they are just walking by and trip it. The caught mouse cannot pull itself out of the trap due to the teeth on the jaws of the trap. Smooth bar traps they can pull them selves free sometimes. Tip: There's two small holes in the base plate on these traps to add a small piece of wire to secure trap to a small nail. If mouse is caught by one leg it cannot take trap with it, and you will not loose the mouse. Believe me, these traps are the best if you are serious about catching mice. Easy to bait, easy to clean, easy to set and they work!

This trap is AMAZING. Within one hour of setting this thing out, our little critter was caught! In the middle of the day, with 3 kids, a cat and a dog (worthless hunters!) running around making tons of noise, even. It was unbelievably easy to set up...just smear peanut butter in the hole and push the lever down until you hear a click. That's it....no messing with trying to get a pin situated just right, always fearing the trap will snap on you. Our poor little house guest never even made it to the peanut butter and was killed instantly - no slow, painful, inhumane death like some of the other easy set traps we have tried. We live in an old farm house and have always sworn by the old-fashioned wood, Victor brand traps because they have always worked - but NEVER within an hour - we usually would get the critter in a day or two, and often having to re-bait the darn things. Make sure the bait side is touching the wall (perpendicular/forming a "T") so the critter has to run across the trap (mice like to run along the wall). We caught this mouse by placing the bait side of the trap against an unused plumbing hole in our kitchen sink cabinet - the mouse HAD to cross the trap to enter the cabinet. The best part of it all is that you don't have to touch the mouse to dispose of it...just squeeze over the garbage and the mouse falls out. I didn't even have to rebait it!Update: 12 hours later, 6 mice caught and I still have not had to refill the peanut butter...all still instant kills...Update 2: One year later and we are still catching 4-5 mice a week in our cellar. They almost never make it up into the house now since these traps are working so well in the cellar. We bait them at the start of the "mouse season" in October and never have to re-bait them because they snap so fast. We are still using the ones from our initial order - not one has malfunctioned or broke on us. Use peanutbutter and be sure to put the mouth of the trap touching the wall to form a "T". Mice hug the wall while they run and most of the time get caught that way, not even trying to steal the bait. Happy Hunting.

If you need to kill a mouse (I hate it!), make sure it doesn't suffer. Don't even think about glue traps! These traps work very well, They are easy to set and it's easy to dispose of the mouse. Mine have started to "stick" and not snap reliably after over three years but, hey, that's still a bargain. Be sure to place the bait precisely in the little dish and, for solid bait, press it down so it's not too easy to remove. Otherwise, the mouse may not be positioned for a clean kill. You don't want it alive and caught by its leg!

I ordered two types of trap, this and one that had a covered bait area. Put them both out, and this one caught the critter the first night. It was easy to set, and when I tried activating it with a small stick it responded in a way that left no doubt it "meant business." The other one looks better than the old style traps but this one has a much better "claw" mechanism all around the bait area, so there is little to no way to escape once you are caught. I can't say it has a perfect quick-kill result. The second night I left the trap out and it also caught a mouse, but it did not hit the spine in a way that would kill instantly, instead caught him by the feet and I had to take the wriggling mouse to the garbage can for disposal - yuck, but it had to be done. As to the effectiveness of attracting the mouse in the first place, this one definitely wins. I got no action at all around the ones that had the covered bait area - the other one is activated by the mouse raising the lid on the bait area, this one is activated by the mouse stepping on a lever that surrounds the bait area so that any slight touch will set it off. I had one of each sitting within a foot of each other and this one got the catch both times.

With any different design there are pros and cons to this trapPROS:1. Easy to load with a good sized bait compartment2. Easy and safe to set3. Easy to open and dump the mouse without touching anything associated with the mouse.CONS"1. Not sure if this looks intimidating to mice my bale traps set in same area attract more mice. But not significantly.2. The trap release lever is just a wee bit large and some mice ( a few) set off the trap before they are fully in thus catching them by the leg.Overall a pretty efficient trap, easy, safe to set and use and I really like the bait well.UPDATE- after using these for a year several things emerge. 1, it is very important to get the bait only in the well and not on the platform around the well. If bait is spread on the platform mice will be drawn to that and set it off before they are fully in the trap. This results in leg captures and escapes. 2. If placed in out structure larger rodents like rats and squirrels will set these off and escape. 3. The trap is plastic and in very cold weather sometimes may trip and yes rodents not killed can chew the trap but I have never had any ruin the trap. But regular snap traps have faults as well so these are no less that standard snap traps. Most important for me is getting the bait only in the well part of the trap.