Kness 101-0-002 Ketch-All Mousetrap,Silver

I had caught about a dozen mice with a variety of plastic traps and they worked - until the beasts learned to chew through them. So I decided I had to go steel and picked this one. Caught four the first day, then two the next! The seventh took another couple days but I haven't seen the vermin since. BTW, I never post reviews because I'm too lazy, but I had to here. Read on for a few pointers: 1. Use bait, but you only need a pea-sized dab of peanut butter on the removable, washable panel. Spread it a bit so the smell gets out easily. Their claim of "no bait needed" is technically true, but the smart money is on saving up rather than winning the lottery. 2. I had to move it to different locations to get that last booger because my basement has a lot of hiding places. 3. You'll have to keep using it if you don't plug up the holes in your foundation or siding where they come in. Around the time I used this, I plugged up a hidden hole that we watched them go into. I'm sure this helped immensely. 4. We were just tossing them across the road so there were two ditches for them to traverse. We started driving them 3/4 miles away so they had even more of adventure once they departed Shangri-La (I swear one of them was smiling as we ejected it from the Cheerios). I'm pretty sure this helped a lot. 5. Check early, check often. This product was great for a family or two of mice. Gathered them nicely, humanely, no nastiness except cleaning the shiny steel product, which was easy with water and toilet paper. The bait wasn't the problem when it came to cleaning up. *Update: One night we had a bunch of people over so I didn't check it. The next day, I found 2 black mice (I was always catching grey mice before). Let's just say that it was more like 1.75 mice. Or maybe a 1.25-mouse creature and a 0.75-mouse creature? Anyway, it was a pretty nasty cleanup. Maybe it was the breed of mouse that was different. However, this applies to any of the "live" traps - gotta keep checking them or they die. I've been religious about it since and haven't found a mouse in a week or two. Still 5 stars.

We ordered two and one came without a wind-up handle and has to be returned, but I immediately set the good trap with some birdseed as bait that night and by morning had three voles in the trap! Works like a charm! Re-set the trap and by the afternoon had two more! I have put a white post office envelope over the top of the trap to reflect the sunlight so that critters in the trap don't bake in the heat of the day until I can check it and release them. The voles are decimating our garden so this seems to be the first thing that has worked when all the other baits and traps have not. Wish I had two traps, but just one is making a dent in the overpopulation of these voles.

This metal live trap worked once, catching 2 mice. After that, nothing. We've kept using it, but there have been no mice caught since the first week. It has been over 6 weeks without working. DO NOT BUY THIS!!

This trap has been very useful in getting rid of several mice at once. It is so easy to set and no need for bait. However, many times I come to check the trap and there is one live mouse and several other mice cannibalized and stuck to the bottom of the trap. Very gross to have to clean out. Now I am finding mice with their head stuck in the door mechanism. Like it’s not working as well anymore. If you just want to get rid of several mice fast and don’t mind coming across a massacre every now and then you’ll be fine. But if you want a humane trap this might not be for you.

This trap has worked far better than any other trap I've ever used – including basic spring traps, sticky paper, homemade youtube contraptions, and even electronic zappers. All of these worked once or twice but then no more. After setting up this trap and winding the spring the proper amount (no more than four revolutions) we secured 20 mice in the first two weeks. Three Victor electronic traps set up nearby were completely ignored. While the trap appears to have been refined over many decades, it is not fool proof. If you allow the spring to fully unwind, mice can enter and exit at will. Smearing about a tablespoon of peanut butter inside the door proved to be enticing to even the most suspicious; but the exceptionally quick mouse may get halfway out of the tube while being paddled, jamming the mechanism as well as itself. (A neighbor reports mice being cloven in two but only be if the spring was wound too tight. I have not experienced this.) Similarly, mice can be caught by the tail within the tube. Finally, you will most likely learn as I did that mouse will eat their own. Please check the trap daily. After a golden period of two fat mice caught on seven consecutive days we experienced a significant security breach. Tuesday November 25, I checked the track and it was empty. The streak had ended. Our daughter would be arriving on the 26th and knowing she would be as obsessed as I, I rinsed, scrubbed and buffed the trap back to its original pristine state. In an effort to clean underneath the paddle I rotated it by hand when to my horror a large wet mouse sprang out of the central tube. Fortunately I was able to direct it into the compost bin before it was able to orient itself. I surmised that the mouse was able to grab the paddle while being spanked so that instead of being ejected into the containment area, it rotated into the inner mechanism. After releasing the mouse outdoors and sterilizing the sink area, I reassembled the trap and was winding the spring when to astonishingly a second mouse appeared as if from nowhere and made a bold bid for freedom. Fortunately it's tail was jammed (see paragraph 3) and I was able to take the trap outside yet once again and release this intrepid rodent. In summary, I highly recommend this trap but use caution. Do not over- or underwind; nor underestimate the resourcefulness of the house mouse.

I'm writing this as I'm buying my 4th one of these. The reason that I'm rebuying and that I'm giving it 3 stars is that it does work. We'll catch dozens of mice in a single night with this thing and they'll all be safe and sound. It is a very ethical and efficient trap when it works. It's really important for us that a trap be able to catch a bunch of mice at once without being reset, and this trap does that well. ...When it doesn't, it's the opposite of ethical. The reason why I keep having to buy new ones is that is after a while, it starts to break. The metal bends. The mechanism gets stuck. Mice start getting caught in parts of the trap where the mice shouldn't be. They get trapped in the door, get cut in half or limbs caught in ways that put them in horrible pain. I just had to throw away our last one because a mouse had died in it in a saw-like fashion, like something out of a horror movie. After this I'm going to start throwing them away at the end of every winter and buying new ones, to hopefully avoid that, until I find something better. Listen, if you *really* don't want to run the risk of a mouse suffering, don't buy this. A kill trap is more ethical than this when it fails. If you buy it anyway, replace it at the first sign that something is wrong or bent.

We’ve spent thousands on various types of traps and systems. Poison is absolutely out of the question and poses a great risk to our family pets and other wildlife if they get away. We’ve tried a multitude of live catch traps. The species we are battling is the native Deer Mouse. These mice weigh almost nothing and don’t set off most traps with a pedal or trigger mechanism. More than a few times I’ve found the bait cleanly removed and traps still set and open. The trick to using the Kness Ketch-All is to only wind the knob 4-5 full turns. It’s tempting to wind it fully as per the instructions but this will not catch a single mouse. Deer mice weight almost nothing and will not trigger the trap. Winding the knob just 4-5 times will yield a large number of caught mice. I’ve found adding a small bit of fresh peanut butter inside the mechanism portion of the trap will emit the irresistible odor without it being consumed. Keeping one mouse in the trap will attract even more mice. I add some peanut butter (JIF red top) into the mouse compartment so they don’t suffer hunger until I check the trap. I check most of them once every 24h and some of them every 12. After seeing just how effective these traps are, I opted for the Drowning Attachment but for a different purpose. I modified the lid to accept wide mouth glass Ball jars in any size but I use the 64oz jar or the 128oz jar using the same thread. The glass jars allow me to see any successfully trapped mice at a distance, and then I can humanely euthanize them via Co2 in accordance with the AVMA guidelines. I was releasing them at first away from my property but due to mass deforestation in our area, the population was too abundant to continue releasing to only cause problems for our outdoor wild mice population. Using the Drowning Attachment allows for zero contact and a clean culling. The only other traps I’ve bought that have actually trapped mice is the X-small Kitzinger pedal traps. The larger size is not sensitive enough to catch deer mice of any age. The Kness is so sensitive when set with the proper amount of turns, I’ve actually caught juvenile-aged mice. I’m sad they must be dispatched but the effect of releasing so many would cause even more issues on our property. I highly recommend purchasing the bulk pack of these (12 traps) with the solid lid; drowning attachment, and glass jars. If you can only afford one or only need one for your square footage, I recommend opting for the solid metal lid as it seats securely and cannot be chewed for the mice to break free. The drowning attachment securely locks into place when installed with the Kness lids. The Kness Ketch-All is Made in the USA and is substantially higher quality over the competitors. Learn from my mistakes and buy this trap first, set it correctly, and watch as every mouse is captured in a humane way. The traps I received off Amazon and off a third party DIY pest control website were both made in April 2024.

I set the trap in the chicken coop. I would catch 7 plus mice a day. It was so effective I bought a second one and placed outside the coop. . I would highly recommend this trap. The only downfall is disposing of the mice.