I’ve had good luck with Tomcat snap traps. Zero times the mice have gotten the bait or snapped the trap without being caught and only I had one mouse not killed. They always seemed to be able to get the bait from the old Victor wooden traps.
Invest is a good ozone machine. We have a big one and it will kill the mice, bugs, bad smells, germs, viruses etc in a whole house in a few hrs. It also will kill the house plants and alas gold fish. Boy was I in trouble!
The machine turns 0 into 02 and somehow this screws up the metabolism of things. In 30 minutes it turns back into Oxygen so harmless to people and pets. Don’t breathe the ozone.
Mice and bugs seem to hate the smell. I keep one of those little $30. machines in the treehouse, tornado shelter, and a van we use for storage. No mice or bugs then. They are found in those junk mags for sale. The little ones are advertized as clean air machines and do not produce enough to harm you.
A lot of these uses I found out by accident. My folks used one in their motel to kill smoke odors in a room. I bought one as we have 4 dogs in the house so used it to kill the smell in it. The tornado shelter smelled like mice so put in in there and had dead dried up mice and dead bugs all over.
We found our big one online. They are not cheap but are effective and safe to use compared to poisons.
***They always seemed to be able to get the bait from the old Victor wooden traps.***
The way I fixed the victor traps was to take a needle nose pliers and slightly bend the “set” on the trigger you hook the hold down wire in to make it release with less pressure. Then I would stick a small piece of bacon fat on the trigger under the hook. If I used peanut butter I rub it on the bottom of the trigger.
Works well.