You’ll increase your chances of success if you use bait in your traps
and snares. Begin by scattering some of it around your trap. This will
encourage the animal to develop a taste for the bait. When the outer sup
ply is exhausted, the animal likely will venture into the trap, its desire for
more of the bait overcoming its natural sense of caution. Keep in mind
that most types of traps and snares do not always kill the animal, and
a trapped animal that’s still alive (and probably injured), no matter how
small, can be a formidable opponent, clawing, biting, and scratching. In
these cases, you must hit the animal on the head with a club or some other
heavy object to kill it. It won’t be pretty. Survival never is.
If you are lucky enough to snare or trap an animal, remember that
you’re not looking for a few choice pieces, the way you might when you
shop at the butcher. In a survival situation, you eat everything on the ani
mal, with the exception of the bowels and excrement, and (of course) any
known poisonous bits.
Snares
A basic snare is a simple device: a looped cord or rope that tightens around
an animal as it walks through. Getting a snare to work exactly as designed
often requires a bit of finetuning, though. The loop must be big enough
for the animal’s head, not so big that the animal walks through unscathed,
and at the right height off the ground for the animal’s head.
A variation on the simple snare is the drag noose. Place forked sticks
on either side of the animal trail and lay a crosspiece from one to the other
across the trail (well above the height of the animal’s head). Dangle the
noose from the crosspiece. If the animal becomes ensnared in the noose,
the crosspiece becomes dislodged and caught in surrounding vegetation.
The animal tires quickly as it struggles to get free.
Where to Set Snares and Traps
Never set traps and snares too far from your shelter. You don’t want to have
to travel a great distance to reach them, for two reasons. First, you waste
energy going back and forth to check the traps. More important, if the
distance is prohibitive, you may not travel to the location every day. And if
you are lucky enough to trap something but wait too long to retrieve it, you
may find that some other animal has come along and eaten your catch.
(^194) | Survive!