Country Life: Trap inventor marks nearly 50 years of pest control

Steve Allan, trap maker and trapper, at his small factory in Northland's Takahue Valley Photo: RNZ/Sally Round

Country Life: Trap inventor marks nearly 50 years of pest control. Steve Allan's traps are so easy to use, even older people protecting their roses can become gun possum trappers, he says. He has nearly half a century under his belt as a trapper and inventor of traps. The traps kill on impact and their simplicity is echoed in their name - SA2, 3 and 4 after his initials. From a small home factory in Northland's Takahue Valley, Allan and his small team turn out thousands of them a year. He estimated he had eradicated up to 100,000 pests over the years, thousands with his own traps. "We're a little bit of an old man's club here, so... when we're working, we're working and we're pumping the stuff out," he told Country Life. "I started off in the mid-'70s as a schoolboy catching fur. It was an exciting way to make money and trapping was somet...