This is a very interesting question and one that most California professionals seem to disagree on, after reading various comments on different brands of traps I would suggest that most professionals have a personal choice which they have come to over many years of experience and the choices they have said are the best trap are probably every single trap on the market. I doubt very much if there is such a thing as the best brand of cage trap as most of them are made from exactly the same materials in exactly the same way and they also function exactly the same way.



The most common factor most Santa Cruz trappers say is that you must use the correct trap for the animal you are after, there is no point in trying to trap raccoons using a squirrel trap because very simply put once the raccoon realizes it's in a trap it would just tear it to pieces and escape, you are left with no trap and no animal. Also professional trappers all say that you should use a much more heavy-duty trap when trapping lactating female animals, especially raccoons, as once they are trapped they can become extremely violent for extended periods and your trap needs to be able to stand up to the kind of punishment that is about to be delivered to it.

I have read stories of people taking a California raccoon trap out and setting it hoping to catch a bobcat, only to find the bobcat could not even fit inside the trap so the cat spent most of its time trying to reach in and steal the bait, unsuccessfully I might add. There are also stories around about traps that were not pegged down properly and the trapper found what was left of the cage up to a half a mile away from where he left it, and it was a good brand of trap but being thrown about by the animal on its journey was something no cage trap is designed to withstand.

The only type of trap that nearly every Santa Cruz professional pretty much says not to use are the so-called collapsible types, they all say the same thing about them which is that they are convenient but they just do not have the strength of a proper cage trap. Also a lot of professional trappers state that they will go around the traps with a welding torch and weld some more joins into them to increase the strength of the trap.

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