Havahart® Large 1-Door Collapsible Easy Set® Trap

As stated before, failure to lock. Easy to Set, but the collapsible feature which I liked causes a problem. When collapsed, the door is held open, which stretches the spring that closes the locking bail. After sitting for a long time collapsed, I got it out and trapped an armadillo. It failed to lock and animal escaped. Moving the spring to a different rung to tighten fixed, but have to store uncollapsed or remove spring to insure it will work again. Kinda defeats the collapsing intent!

My indoor cat darted out the door late one night. Bought this trap, set it up and tried it out several times to be sure that I had it set up correctly. I had a security camera set out to watch the trap and was excited when I saw my cat walk into the trap. However, I was angry when the trap door closed, obviously either not fast enough or not securely enough, and the cat darted back out the trap. This trap was returned to Lowes the next day. Thankfully I just trapped my cat 4 weeks later with a drop trap made from a different company when he should have been caught 3 weeks prior. Definitely go with a better made brand.

The trap is great to TNR (Trap Neuter Release) cats. However, the handle that opens the trap door should be color coded/painted in red since many vet techs confuse the handle that lifts the cage and the handle that opens the trap door, thereby accidentally releasing a feral cat. This situation happened again yesterday, but unfortunately this time the cat bit the vet tech and had to be euthanized due to potential rabbis. Please paint the door lift handle a red color and write on this handle something to differentiate the two handles that are close together on top of the cage to avoid this type of confusion.

When I pulled the trap out of the box the trigger rod was stuck through the top and the back panel and was difficult to remove. Couldn't the trigger rod be fastened to the side of the trap for easy removal? And it would be helpful to note in the instructions that when the trigger rod is threaded into the loops on the underside of the trigger pan it should be below the first horizontal wire of the trap and above the bottom wire of the trap. The instructions do not state the height at which to thread it and the pictures in both picture 4, where the trigger rod is behind the hands and can not be seen and picture 6 of the instructions do not clearly show the height at which to thread the trigger rod. Threading it above the first wire will essentially make the trap inoperable as it will take too much pressure to set the trap. The door also is kind of touchy and will not set and/or close on it's own if the surface the trap is set on is not level.