The 10 Best Pest Control Traps

Editor's Notes

August 30, 2019:

Catching critters isn't exactly rocket science. They need to eat to live, and most of them are dumb enough to fall for the traps we put out. But certain of those traps still manage to perform remarkably better than others, and in testing, it becomes obvious very quickly which are the best options. That said, a gofer trap isn't going to do much for you if you've got a fly problem.

So, the guiding hand in putting together a ranking that opens up such a wide variety of traps led us to include at least one for most of the major nuisances out there, with flying pests among the most obnoxious, bed bugs among the most feared, and rodents among the most divisive. To that last point, there's something about mice and even rats that makes people squeamish about killing them. I even tried to co-habitate with some mice in college who kept to themselves for the most part — that is until they struck at something very personal to me and had to be destroyed. The Kat Sense traps you see at number four were the type that I used, and they worked like gangbusters. There was just one instance where a small mouse got only a leg caught in the trap, but it was the dead of winter in northern Pennsylvania, and we buried him in the snow and let him drift off to sleep.

More humane choices include the other Kat Sense product on our list, as well as the bucket ramps at number nine. In both cases, it's important to remember that if you set those mice free within several miles of your home, they'll find their way back without fail. And this is why humane traps fell down some on our list: they require a very tedious extra step if you want to liberate your captives. Ultimately, your choice of trap will depend on the pest in question and your level of comfort confronting their corpse(s).