Goodnature Grey Squirrel Trap Kit | Automatic, Self-Resetting & Non-Toxic Lethal Grey Squirrel Trap Kit | STAO approved

Does exactly as it says! Brilliant & easy to set up!

Purchased the A18 Grey Squirrel Trap with Digital Counter and Trap Guard. Very disappointed as the only squirrel it caught, it injured and I had to put it out of it's misery - which is the complete opposite of what the trap is intended for - a quick and humane way to go. The counter only goes off when the guard is replaced after topping up the lure. Absolutely pointless and a waste of my money. The company has not responded to my letter to them either. Such a shame.

Just make sure to add a metal guard as pictured to avoid squirrels chewing through it and replace canisters regularly to avoid them welding to brass inlet.

There appears to be a fundamental design flaw with these traps in that they frequently do not kill instantly and therefore I would say are inhumane. With the first A18 trap, out of around 20 plus squirrels that it killed over a 4 week period, I witnessed too many not killed outright, often left to writhe and die in seeming agony or distress, often taking many minutes to finally pass. These weren’t the judders and jerks that can sometimes occur naturally upon a swift kill but actual attempts by the squirrels to get up and run away or attempts to furiously itch the obvious damage the mechanism did to them.Not pleasant at all. I spoke to Goodnature about this to alert them and they made all the right noises about the traps being highly tested and licensed and engineered to kill swiftly and humanely. They apologised sincerely, said the trap may be faulty and offered to replace it which I agreed to. The replacement trap had a visible fault when I tested it (by activating the pin) in that the bolt clearly already had a large crack in it. I took a picture of it and Goodnature apologised, said it could be a batch issue and again sent out a new one.Unfortunately, this third one is also not killing squirrels instantly. I’ve witnessed two squirrels get caught by the trap, fall to the ground but then get up and try to scuttle away when I approach, obviously in much distress and pain.If I were to guess, I would say the problem lies one with the firing bolt. It is made of plastic, and I suspect this is simply not strong enough or pointed enough. I also suspect that the gas chamber that fires the bolt needs to be bigger, provide more power.Another issue to be aware of is that even though the bait basket is covered and the entire unit can be further housed by the separately available metal box, insects can and will get into the bait basket. Once I opened up the unit to refill the bait basket and there were all manner of creepy crawlies in there, earwigs, slugs even. Not pleasant having to clean this thing out!Goodnature customer service was genuinely excellent and they genuinely do seem to care about the necessity of their product being humane, so I’m confident they will improve it. However, I can’t currently recommend the A18 trap as it just seems to be poorly designed and highly prone to inhumane kills. I hope Goodnature take on this feedback, recall this trap and redesign it to be more powerful and robust.