10 Homemade Mouse & Rat Traps
A mouse or a rat in your food stores can really ruin your day. These rodents carry disease, can gnaw through almost anything, and can fit through extremely small openings. The cool, dark, dry storage areas that we keep our food in happen to be the holy grail for a mouse or rat. If unnoticed, a rat or mouse could wreak havoc on your food storage in a short time.
Catching them is pretty easy using mouse and rat traps. The spring-loaded ones work great, and they have all sorts of “humane” traps and glue traps available at most hardware stores. But we all know that life doesn’t always work out where you have everything you need.
You’ll notice that 5-gallon buckets are used with many of them since the steep walls make them a great starting point for a wide variety of traps. If you find yourself with a rat problem and need to get rid of them fast, try one of the ten traps below.
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Paper Rat Trap
This is one of the most common homemade rat traps. You can also use paper towel tubes instead of paper. To pull this one off, you need some paper, a raised surface, a trash can, and some tape.
It’s extremely simple, uses components that almost everyone has on hand, and is easy to set up, bait, and reload. The one minor downside is that you will have to reload it if the paper gets bent or falls into the trash can with the mouse or rat.
Cup Rat Trap
If you happen to have one of these cups around, this makes for a pretty effective trap. It makes for a great trap because it is a mobile carrier as well. You can catch and release if you really want to, with the rat trapped in the cup. Even if you don’t, having the rodent in a container makes it much easier to deal with once it is caught.
I found this trap to be the most difficult to make and use, but if you have the components available, you can still give it a shot.
Bowl Rat Trap
Similar to a deadfall trap, the bowl trap is pretty common and easy to set up. It is easy for bait to be stolen if the bowl is not big enough, so be sure to pick one that is big enough to trap your target rodent.
It can be tricky to get right, and if it falls on a mouse or rat, they can usually wiggle back to escape. It’s good practice for wilderness survival traps, where setting a deadfall
Cable Tie Rat Trap
This one required a little ingenuity to come up with, and it requires a lot more materials. It appears to work pretty effectively in the video. It is not very humane, but it is also not messy. It is a neat concept if you happen to have the tools to pull it off.
Zip ties are insanely useful for survival and prepping, and using them as a rat trap is just another example of how you can improvise with them. The cable stables in the example below can be swapped with regular staples in a pinch. Other than that, a string and a heavy object to pull the zip tie closed are common around most houses.
Spinner Mouse Trap
This clever spinner trap is easy to make using a bottle, a bucket, some wire, and peanut butter. Mice are like little fiends when it comes to peanut butter, and they can’t resist getting themselves into a bad situation.
Bottles and wire are easily scrounged up from trash and recycling. This is yet another use for a wire coat hanger, if you need a thick gauge wire for the bottle to spin on.
Peanut butter sticks to the bottle well and doesn’t attract as many insects and flies as other sugary spreads. Another good option is bacon grease, since mice are proven to like the high-protein, high-fat foods best.
Walk-the-Plank Mouse Trap
This one is similar to the first trap, but it is a better build because it reloads itself. If you have some wood and screws, it is not that complicated to build, and it can continuously put in some work with a 5-gallon bucket.
This build, with an enclosure on the rest of the lid, is further down the list and is Mousetrap Monday’s self-proclaimed best mousetrap.
Cannon Mouse Trap
Okay, this guy gets really into catching mice. Technically, this cannon is homemade, but it would be a project to create it on your own. This made this list because of the entertainment value.
While you can make this one as a DIY project, there are plenty of more practical options to pick from.
Bucket Lid Mouse Trap
This trap highlights how mouse traps don’t have to be complicated. Mice and rats may be able to navigate a maze now and then, but they also go headfirst through a flap with no way out.
Only using cardboard, wire, staples, a bottle cap, and a 5-gallon bucket- all of these supplies can be easily found or are at least inexpensive at the store.
Balloon Mouse Trap
You might have mixed success with this one, depending on what type of balloon and how inflated it is. Mice and rat claws are pretty pointy, and can pop the balloon as soon as they set their little paw on it, sending them running from the trap.
The downside is that the trap needs to be manually reloaded and can use up a lot of balloons if you are catching a lot of rodents. Some balloons pop easier than others, making the trap less consistent.
The upside is that the trap is only two components: a 5-gallon bucket and an air-filled balloon. Because it’s only two pieces with very little setup, it is one of the simplest contraptions you can catch mice with.
Flip & Slide Mouse Trap
You can emulate the method with a bucket and some things around the house, but if you want to skip the hassle, you can pick up a Flip & Slide mouse/rat trap for pretty cheap on Amazon. The mouse goes past the fulcrum and slides in, like the walk-the-plank trap, except the entire lid is sealed in case there are multiple mice or rats inside.
You can make your own approximation of the trap with a wooden ramp and cardboard, similar to the bucket lid trap above.
The Final Word
A simple homemade rat trap could keep your supplies safe and disease-free. They are easy to make, and there are several methods to pick from. While a store-bought trap, such as the classic spring-loaded rat trap, works just fine, it doesn’t hurt to know how to get things done with the stuff you already have around your house.
Here are some other reads our subscribers have found helpful:
- The Best Snare Wire Traps for Survival Trapping
- The Best Conibear Traps, Sets, and Sizes for Survival Trapping
- Survival Food List | Pantry Stockpile Plan and Checklist
Keep exploring, stay prepared, and be safe.
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