For those that don’t shoot, and don’t want to (or are not permitted) use poison, soft jaw foot traps are the most effective and legal method for controlling feral predators in my state of NSW. Once trapped, simply humanely dispatch the animal yourself, or find a shooter friend or neighbour to do the deed.

My preferred method is a circle of 3-5 foot traps set around bait of one of our surplus roosters (dead), roadkill rabbit or hare, shop-bought chicken wings, or a whole shop-bought chicken. Be sure to firmly peg either of these options down on multiple sides, otherwise a very lucky fox may just dash off with it!

This lucky fox got to take home a chicken wing, before I learnt to securely peg them to the ground.

Now, before you touch any newly purchased traps, please remember that foxes and feral cats have a very sensitive sense of smell, and will avoid things that smell of humans. I don’t touch my traps without wearing gardening gloves, well used ones! When setting the traps, I squat on my feed, and don’t sit or kneel on the ground. This will scent the round around the traps with human smells, and reduce your chances of catching a fox. If you can’t squat, bring a folded tarp or something that doesn’t smell like human, to kneel on.

My fox trapping kit, plus a piece of mesh to cover the traps by day. From the right: a trap setter, Victor 1 3/4 double or quad spring foot traps for foxes, a sieve, a trowel, a wire brush to clean rust off the traps, sandwhich bags, a spanner to adjust the foot pad, and oil to lube them with, a pot with wax – melted to dip your new traps in, a metal stake (use a longer one than this, we are on solid rock), a mallet and tent pegs, plus gloves for handling all things that the fox will smell.

Getting started: Your traps will arrive shiny, clean and silver. I strongly recommend that you purchase them together with wax specifically designed (human smell free) to melt and dip them in, to provide a protective wax coating against rusting when out in all weather.

Next, I prefer to add a length of chain to each, so as to provide more flexibility when setting them in groups around larger bait. I use several loops of fairly thick wire to attach a 40-100 cm length of 5mm thick chain (my preference). I then add a several strand wire loop to the end, as the attachment point to a tree anchor or earth anchor.

The attachment wire loops and chain need to be strong enough to easily hold a large feisty dog, just to be safe. You don’t want some poor animal breaking any part of this set up and dashing off with a trap firmly attached to its foot!

Next, I attach my chain anchor around a tree, or hammer an earth anchor into the ground. Your choice of anchor for the traps to be attached to, need to be very sturdy, in all directions (vertical and horizontal), so that a trapped animal can’t pull free and escape with your trap still attached.

I wire a D lock (a good quality strong one that won’t rust in all weather) to installed Earth Anchors, for easy attachment of a circle of traps set around my choice of bait.

Next, I dig the first hole for the trap. I use a special sieve designed for installing traps, which I put the soil dug from the trap hole straight into, to sprinkle over the trap to set it. You can use your (well-gloved) hands, or make your own version with metal fly screen or the like. Remember, you don’t want to scent the soil with human-smells! The soil over each trap needs to be completely free of rocks, pebbles, pieces of bark or sticks etc that could impede the ability of the trap to close around the foot of a target animal.

Next, before covering the trap, you will need to lay a cover over the foot pad to prevent the underneath area from being filled in with soil. I use those very thin plastic sandwich bags, pulled apart as a single sheet. See the below image, starting with the complete sandwich bag at the top, cut/ripped apart at the side seams in the middle, and then cut/torn into two pieces just the right size for two trap sets at the bottom.

Now, place one of those half-sandwich bag pieces over your trap, ensuring that they are tucked inside the snappy part. You don’t want any plastic rustling to be heard by a fox cautiously stepping on your set trap.

Now, cover your trap in. The plastic foot pad cover should look like this.

Sprinkle the soil removed from your trap hole over the foot trap, making a mound to be firmed around the trap – later. I leave the firming around the trap part, to the end when all traps have been installed. This way it’s easier to see exactly where they are, to avoid stepping on them.

Next, install your second trap. Then, your third and fourth etc, depending on how many you are setting around the bait. I set the traps first with the size and placement of the bait in my imagination, then place the bait later. But you may prefer to place the bait first, and set the traps around the bait.

Now that all the traps are installed (but not firmed and soil flattened yet), it is time to attach all the trap chains to the anchor point. Count them all, make sure the number of traps corresponds to the number of wire loops/chain ends in your anchor attachment mechanism. You don’t want any traps unattached!

See below, I use a good quality galvanised D-shackle to attach the trap chains to the tree anchor chain. Then I bury (dig in) all the respective trap chains, just on the inside of where each trap is buried.

Next, I press the soil down around the outside edges of each trap – ensuring that the side levers are bedded on firm soil, and the entire traps don’t rock if there is any pressure on them. I completely avoid the pressure pad, other than to scrape flat with the side of the trowel, the soil above so there is around 5mm of soil covering the pressure pad.

Once setting the traps is complete, your set should look like this (below). That is, where the traps lie beneath is indistinguishable from the ground beside them.

My trapping kit:

Sieve, trap setter, several sets of 3-5 Victor 1 3/4 double or quad spring foot traps, earth stakes, mallet, heavy duty tent pegs to peg bait down, several lengths of chain to attach traps to anchor trees, 1 x 0.5 m pieces of wire mesh to cover my set traps by day, trowel, gardening gloves (well-used), thin sandwhich bags, and a snare for handling the fox or accidentally trapped possum, also thick clothes and thick leather gloves for handling trapped animals.