Welcome. I created this guide because many people are searching for proper instructions on how to use the Putange trap.

Allow me to introduce myself: I am a 27-year-old professional mole trapper and the founder of QuickTaupe. Trapping moles is both my profession and my passion.

On this page, and in the sections that follow, I will teach you everything you need to know. You won’t have to look for information elsewhere; I am sharing my complete experience to ensure you can use the Putange trap correctly and effectively. So, please take the time to read my explanations, and in a few days, your garden will be mole-free.

If you have any questions, I am happy to answer them in the comments. Your feedback will also help me improve this guide for everyone.

This guide may seem long, but a few minutes of reading now will save you time and money in the long run. I’m confident you’ll be thanking me when your garden is free of moles in just a few days.

A Crucial First Step: Verify Your Equipment

Before learning how to set a Putange trap, I strongly urge you to verify that you have authentic, traditional traps and not the low-quality, mass-produced imitations frequently sold in large garden centers or on Amazon. Using inferior traps is one of the most common reasons for failure.

Authentic traps typically feature:

• Robust, heavy-gauge steel that feels substantial.

• A powerful spring mechanism that is difficult to set by hand.

• A crisp and reliable trigger mechanism.

Low-quality copies often have flimsy springs and poorly finished components, leading to misfires and escaped moles.

Without authentic, traditional Putange traps, you will fail to catch moles, regardless of your technique…

When setting a Putange trap, one must understand a simple but critical point: if a mole can smell an earthworm through 7 centimeters of clay, it can certainly smell your trap right in the middle of its tunnel.

Therefore, you must always age Putange traps before using them. If you are unsure how to rust a Putange mole trap, be aware that at QuickTaupe, our traps are supplied already soil-aged, so you can use them immediately.

Alternatively, please refer to this guide, which will teach you how to properly age and rust your Putange traps.

Another critical aspect is that if your trap isn’t seasoned, its trigger (also known as the treadle or pan) will slip on the new metal, leading to premature deployment even without a mole touching it. Therefore, before considering how to use a Putange mole trap, you must ensure your traps are seasoned – this makes an incredible difference in trapping efficacy.

Large retailers will never tell you this because they sell you brand-new, slippery traps, fresh from the factory in China, and far too sensitive to reliably capture a mole. But this is the key: by using seasoned traps, the trigger no longer slips, and the mole won’t detect your trap, ensuring you catch it quickly. Seasoning typically involves burying the traps in damp soil for several weeks to neutralize factory scents and dull any shine.

These two keys:

• Knowing where to purchase genuine Putange traps,

• And having Putange traps seasoned in the ground,

will now allow you to catch moles much, much more easily.

The mole can detect scents very easily; in fact, it uses its sense of smell to locate food. This is why you must use a pair of gloves for all handling procedures.

Before you begin, take your gloves, put them on, and rub them in the soil to impregnate them with the smell of the earth. Subsequently, you must wear your gloves every time you handle Putange traps, especially during their installation in tunnels. This is also critically important to prevent the mole from detecting your scent.

Everything I’m telling you is advice that makes a real difference when you want to set a Putange trap. Elsewhere, you’ll be told not to, that you don’t need to do this or that… However, every detail I provide maximizes your chances of catching moles, and any detail you disregard will result in lost trapping time.

As they say in the trade, a missed mole is an educated mole. So, be sure to follow all my advice precisely to capture moles in your Putange traps rather than educating them.

Now, we’ll examine how to arm the Putange trap in the best possible way. We’ll review the operating instructions for setting a Putange mole trap to maximize your chances of catching the mole destroying your garden with all its molehills.

There’s also a simple method to apply for easily trapping moles. And once again, as with the Putange traps themselves, Chinese manufacturers produce copies of the pliers, selling very similar ones that can’t open the traps sufficiently to insert the trigger, or others that simply bend.

To check if you have the correct Putange pliers, refer to this comparative page; you’ll see it directly in images:

First, let’s learn how to install the treadle (also known as the trigger) in a Putange trap. The treadle is a small copper rectangle that you place between the trap’s two arms. When a mole passes through, it pushes the treadle, and the trap springs shut.

Many sources, especially online forums, might try to tell you how to arm a Putange trap, but the only truly effective method is the one I’m presenting here:

Using your Putange pliers, spread the trap’s two arms.

Now, we’ll examine how to arm the Putange trap most effectively. We’ll review the operating instructions for setting a Putange mole trap to maximize your chances of catching the mole destroying your garden with all its molehills.

There’s also a simple method for easily trapping moles. However, once again, just like with the Putange traps themselves, Chinese manufacturers produce copies of the pliers, selling very similar ones that can’t open the traps sufficiently to insert the trigger, or others that simply bend.

To check if you have the correct Putange pliers, refer to this comparative page; you’ll see it directly in images.

• Orienting the trigger

• Place it between the trap’s two arms, one finger-width (2 centimeters) from the end of the trap.

• You can now remove the Putange setting tongs; the trap is armed.

  Why do we position the trigger one finger-width (approximately 2 cm or 0.8 in.) from the trap’s end? This allows the mole’s head just enough time to pass between the trap’s arms, and it is specifically its head that activates the trigger. The trap then closes around its neck, resulting in an instant and humane death, analogous to a “rabbit punch.” This precise trigger positioning in the Putange trap is not only the most effective for rapid mole capture but also the most humane.

Okay, the trap’s armed correctly now, and the trigger’s perfectly positioned. Just a heads-up, and we’ll cover this in more detail later in the article, but the Putange trap’s arms should always point upwards, not downwards.

You now know how to arm a Putange mole trap. Next up, we’ll dive into selecting the right molehill for trapping and then the proper way to set the trap within the mole runs to successfully capture the mole.

If you really want to understand a mole’s tunnel system, I encourage you to read this article where I explain everything in detail. Otherwise, what’s on this page will still be quite helpful.

I’m giving you three key methods to find the right molehills for setting your Putange trap. If the first method doesn’t work for you, you can use the second, and if that doesn’t work, the third one will.

No matter which of these three methods you use, you’ll find the right molehill, and installing your Putange mole trap there will get you results.

The first thing to observe in your garden, if it’s covered in molehills, is whether you see a continuous line of molehills. You should know that moles often use existing environmental features to construct their tunnels.

Check if you have a line of several molehills following each other along your patio, pathway, one of your hedges, your house, or your swimming pool. It’s very common to see a long line of four to five molehills trailing alongside these elements.

If you’re unable to identify a main mole run, the best approach is to flatten all existing molehills in your garden. Without a primary tunnel to target, you’ll place your Putange mole traps in the freshest molehills that reappear.

Take a few minutes or even a few hours, depending on how many molehills you have, to remove the soil from each one.

Then, wait three to four days for the mole to create new molehills. This will clearly show you the areas where the mole is still active, guiding you to the best spots for trap placement.

You might even be able to find the mole’s main run based on the molehills it creates. It’s in these newly, freshly rebuilt molehills that you’ll need to set a Putange trap. Don’t hesitate to place markers on the new molehills so you don’t lose track of them and to ensure you’re trapping the right ones.

With this method, you know you’re trapping exactly where the mole is active, and this will allow you to capture it quickly, even if you haven’t found the main run.

The last strategy for catching moles with a Putange trap—though it’s highly unlikely you’ll need it if you’ve tried the first two methods, as the mole will probably be caught already—is to maximize your chances by trapping in strategic locations: crossover areas.

You’ll notice some molehills that seem to divide into two distinct zones. What I mean is that sometimes you’ll find a single molehill marking the separation between two different areas of molehills, as if it’s a junction between two tunnels or two pathways.

In this scenario, setting your Putange mole trap is straightforward: place it in the molehills located at these crossover points. This maximizes your chances of catching the mole with the Putange trap because it can approach from either direction, eventually encountering your trap.

Now that you have these three key methods for knowing where to set your Putange trap, we’ll focus on one final, crucial step that will make all the difference in mole trapping: installing the Putange mole trap. We’ll cover how to correctly place your Putange mole traps in the molehills we’ve identified together.

You’re almost there! All that’s left is to learn how to properly set a Putange mole trap to catch the mole that’s covering your garden in molehills daily. Using the Putange mole trap will hold no more secrets for you.

If you’ve made it this far, you already know which molehill to trap. Go grab a shovel and start digging a square around that molehill. The goal is to remove the soil and open it up so you can see where the mole is coming from and where it’s going.

With your shovel, open the molehill and now follow these simple steps:

Pay close attention to these final instructions on the Putange trap, as they’ll help you get rid of moles quickly while avoiding common beginner mistakes.

Still following the advice from the beginning of this page (with your dirt-covered gloves on), clear out the hole you’ve made. Your goal is to have a clean opening that lets you quickly see where the tunnel entrance is and where the exit is.

Since a molehill is the evacuation point moles use to push dirt out of their tunnels, you’ll always observe an entrance and an exit when you open them up. These might be side-by-side or opposite each other, depending on the molehill.

You’ll often hear, and people on forums will tell you the same, that a molehill has just one entrance and one exit.But that’s not always true; sometimes there are multiple entrances and exits.

What I do, and what you should do to find all the entrances and exits in a molehill, is use an unarmed Putange trap as a scraper. Start from the bottom of the hole you’ve cleared and scrape the sides, working your way up. Do this on every single side of the hole you’ve made in the molehill.

You’ll feel your trap suddenly sink if it passes over a tunnel. This way, you’re sure not to miss any entrances or exits. This is a specific technique with the Putange trap that ensures you don’t miss any openings. If your trap sinks, there’s a tunnel, and you’ll need to place a trap there too.

Sometimes you’ll only see one entrance and can’t find an exit. That’s normal and happens often. It’s because the mole doesn’t always push dirt out directly above its tunnel. What I mean is, a mole can dig a tunnel and push the dirt out through a hole it makes to the left or right of that tunnel.

Now that you’ve found all the entrances and exits of the molehill you want to trap, it’s time to set your traps. In this step, I’ll tell you exactly how to place the Putange trap in the tunnels.

Always keep your gloves on; this is crucial to avoid leaving your scent on the traps. To trap the molehill with the Putange trap, as we mentioned at the beginning of this guide, you need to set the trigger horizontally, two centimeters (about 0.8 inches) from the end of the trap.

Next, you must push one Putange trap into each exit and entrance of the molehill, with the ends of the trap’s arms pointing upwards. The less the trigger extends below the trap, the more sensitive it will be to the mole’s passage, increasing your chances of a quick capture.

So, place one trap per entrance and exit in the tunnel, with the arms pointing upwards. If you encounter resistance when pushing the trap in, use an unarmed trap as a scraper to widen the tunnel. This will allow you to easily insert an armed trap afterward. Ideally, when you place a trap in a tunnel, only the ring of the Putange trap should remain visible.

There are several approaches to closing molehills after setting a trap, but if you follow my advice, you’ll save time and be sure to catch your mole.

Once the traps are in the tunnels, you need to cover the hole you made so the mole suspects nothing and trips the trigger.

You can simply fill the hole you made with dirt, but that’s not ideal.

The best method is to cover the hole you made with a slate tile, then fill any gaps around the slate with dirt.

Make sure no air or light can get into the tunnels.

The benefit of covering the open molehill with a slate tile is that you can check your mole traps quickly; simply lift the slate to see if a mole is in your traps or not. If it’s not, you just put the slate back down.

If, while setting your Putange trap, you feel it hit something at the back of the tunnel, it’s because the mole tunnel either bifurcates or divides further in. In this situation, you need to open the tunnel more to see what’s obstructing it. You’ll then be able to tell if it’s simply turning in another direction or splitting into two.

The instructions are straightforward: if the tunnel divides into two, you’ll need to set a Putange trap in both branches of the tunnel. If the tunnel just pivots in one direction, then place your trap in that correct direction.

Now, a common question arises: How often should you check your Putange traps?

Since you’re mastering this technique, I’ll give you another valuable piece of advice—one that truly makes a difference. Mole tunnels vary from one garden or plot of land to another. The larger the tunnel network, the less frequently a mole will pass through any single section.

Therefore, the more molehills and extensive tunnel systems you have, the more time you need to allow for the mole to encounter the Putange traps you’ve set. This means you shouldn’t check them too quickly.

If you have a large network of tunnels, wait five days before checking your Putange traps. However, if you’ve set your Putange traps in a garden with only a few molehills, check them 48 hours later to see if you’ve caught the mole.

Sometimes you’ll notice that your Putange trap has been avoided, or that the mole has covered your trap with dirt. This is often referred to as the Putange trap being “stuffed” or the mole “stuffing” your trap.

This situation is very common, so don’t worry. There’s always the same specific reason. If, during the installation or setting of your Putange trap, you failed to detect a hidden entrance or exit, that’s where the mole came from.

Since it passed through an untrapped exit, it approached your Putange traps from the wrong direction, detected them as a threat, and then covered them with dirt to avoid returning.

Carefully check that the tunnels where you’ve placed the traps don’t split into two further on (because in that case, you needed to place a trap in each bifurcation). Also, verify that you didn’t miss any entrances or exits in the hole you dug.

By correcting this detail, you won’t miss the mole again, and it will eventually enter your Putange traps.

That’s it, I’m done! I hope this complete guide to mole trapping with the Putange trap helps you reclaim the garden of your dreams. If you have any questions at all, I’m obviously available and would be extremely happy to answer you.

Don’t hesitate to join our Facebook group, or contact me by phone or email if you need help!

Sincerely,

Alexis from QuickTaupe