Snares & traps: what can you tell me

mrmike08075

Snares and traps for taking game - hunting - pest control - furs / skins...

What can you tell me about them?

Who uses - has used them?

What do you snare / trap and why?

Educate us - give us a snapshot peek at this skill set

I don't think we have hashed out this subject here / recently


Steel cable lock loop snares - small and on vintage manufacture is what my grandfather used...

When I was a boy (after progressing to weblos in the BSA) grandfather allowed me to check his small snare line and taught me a little about harvesting rabbits...

He grew up in the in a depression - if the men / boys did not bring in rabbits and other edible critters the family did not always eat...

He kept at it almost until he passed away - really more out of habit and as part of his lifestyle than for survival purposes...

Tell us some anecdotes or relate your personal experience with snares and traps - I am not certain how this thread will be relieved or if I will garnish many replies.

Mike

toad67

Never used snares. Used to use quite a few leg hold traps when I was younger. Mostly went after water dwelling animals, such as muskrats, beaver and nutria using drowning or drag sets. Haven't done it in quite a few years though.

p3skyking

SERE school taught me how to trap anything that swam or walked using wire, rope, and wood. Fish traps and nets are easy, choking snares and suspension traps are easy too.
Parachute cord is great, but not the whole piece, we use the 7 or 9 lines INSIDE the para cord.

You can also get a Special Air Services handbook and it will tell you a lot.

toad67

quote:Originally posted by p3skyking
SERE school taught me how to trap anything that swam or walked using wire, rope, and wood. Fish traps and nets are easy, choking snares and suspension traps are easy too.
Parachute cord is great, but not the whole piece, we use the 7 or 9 lines INSIDE the para cord.

You can also get a Special Air Services handbook and it will tell you a lot.


Once in a while I'll watch one of those survivor shows and almost everyone makes a fish trap, and they never catch anything. They make it look like wiping your butt with a hoop...going thru the motions with nothing to show for it. What's up with that??

p3skyking

quote:Originally posted by toad67
quote:Originally posted by p3skyking
SERE school taught me how to trap anything that swam or walked using wire, rope, and wood. Fish traps and nets are easy, choking snares and suspension traps are easy too.
Parachute cord is great, but not the whole piece, we use the 7 or 9 lines INSIDE the para cord.

You can also get a Special Air Services handbook and it will tell you a lot.


Once in a while I'll watch one of those survivor shows and almost everyone makes a fish trap, and they never catch anything. They make it look like wiping your butt with a hoop...going thru the motions with nothing to show for it. What's up with that??


Don't know. We used tidal ponds, made corridors with stakes to channel the fish, and then push them into the nets we made from paracord. Being sailors, we primarily would be in salt water and that's the tactics we learned. I also carried tackle in my LPA, big eye hooks and split shot.

Mobuck

I trapped with Dad when I was young and used traps as needed off and on through life. In 2009, I was retired, bored, and short on cash so got back into trapping. Made a little money at it and Grandson got interested so continued to trap *. Got certified to use "cable restraints" (snares that don't kill) for coyotes but the fur market went belly up and didn't set any snares.
Between 09 and 15, I/we caught well over 100 * per season using "dog proof" leg traps. Last year we only set a few traps to appease one of the landowners on whom we trap. He has a summer free range chicken operation and the */possums/skunks were literally consuming his profit potential.
In 2014, 15, and 16, I did some water trapping on a depredation level to help a neighbor with a muskrat/beaver problem in a wetland. Again, the fur market isn't at a level to support this activity, but the critters were a nuisance. Muskrats are dumb. Beaver and otter are smart. #1 1/2 leg holds and 110 body grips will pinch your fingers but a 330 body grip will hold you until help arrives-they scare me a little. A big otter caught by the tail on the end of 2' of chain in knee deep water is a formidable opponent if your only weapon is a wading stick.
Starting out, I'd recommend the dog proofs for *. The traps are more expensive but you really can't go wrong if you can "read sign" at all. Bait is cat food, fish oil, and marshmallows. I won't say you'll never catch a * cat using the first two but you certainly won't catch a cat using marshmallows. I set these around occupied houses as requested and don't have any problems with pets.

SCOUT5

For snares the most important thing to learn is a couple of simple trigger systems. Once you understand the triggers you can adapt them to what's needed.

Saplings make good springs for small game snares, or big game if incorporated correctly. Learn to use what ever string is available, shoe strings, boot laces, woven grass etc. Wire snares with keepers are handy if they are available, but in a survival situation they aren't likely to be.

The simple 4 trigger is great for deadfalls and such.

Lots of pictures and videos available on the internet now. Have them study the different triggers and then how to adapt them to what's needed. Once you understand this you can make a snare out of anything.

SCOUT5

Here is one tip that is valuable. When bending a sapling over and setting a tension snare, bend the sapling so that you are holding it over with the sapling under you arm. The sapling base should be behind you with the top sticking out from under your arm. In this way you can hold it over and use both hand to set the snare. Now for the safety reason, it can't fly up and hit you in the head while setting the snare or if it does come loose as you are easing up on it after setting.

kimi

Always an interesting subject, Mike. Thanks!

mrmike08075

I know that by the time I was born my grandfather was using commercially purchased small wire snares...

But when he was a child they had no money and fashioned their own snares out of scrap picked up at a junk yard / auto salvage yard.

He was quite skilled in field stripping / skinning / prepping a rabbit for cooking and used much of the leavings for his dogs.

I cannot recall what he did with the fur / skin later in life but when he was a boy they saved them up and bartered them at a general store in exchange for credit on dry goods and groceries.

I cannot imagine what those times were like - he did manage to pass on a few lessons to me before he passed - I was to young to really appreciate or understand much of it.

Learning to "see" game trails and placing snares near running water and not disturbing nature / leaving no footprint or trash or evidence that you were there...

Mike

Don McManus

Have a friend in Hawaii who traps mongooses (mongeese?) in live traps before shooting them.

He gets them in the trap using a hot dog as bait.

The traps also will capture small dogs who also happen to like hot dogs, but as they are only cages, there is no harm done.

Big Sky Redneck

My Brother From Another Mother traps religiously every year. Been out with him checking traps, helped with skinning, stretching and fleshing, made up my mind that all the work, time and money put into this just isn't worth the return. He did tell me that you have to love trapping to do it, I would rather sit in a tree freezing my * off waiting on a deer to come into bow range.

mrmike08075

It seems to me - from my perspective / experience to be another one of those skills / lifestyles that is becoming a lost art in the US

It intrigues me as a hobby to explore if I had the right property and time

I have always taken my rabbits with a .22 rimfire rifle

But this seems like one of those skills a "man" should know

Mike

diver-rig

I was taught to run "long line" traps. I use snares, leg hold, dog proof, conibear.


Water sets, dirt sets.

I skin, flesh out, and stretch and dry.

I even run trot lines.

Farmer neighbors call with problem *, possum, skunk, coyote, and beaver problems, and I help to alleviate those problems.


Some of my earliest memories are running a trap line with my father. I would scour old issues of fur fish and game, outdoor life, etc. For tips and new ideas.

I learned beaver can taste better than beef if prepared right.

* and possum ain't anything to turn up your nose at if your hungry.


I've tried to pass what I've learned on to my daughters.

Oldest says I was born in the wrong century.

Middle daughter can't get enough, and begs to do more.

Youngest daughter is three, and appears to be taking after the oldest, but there's still hope.