5 Survival Traps and Snares that WORK! - Primitive Traps

Alright guys, on today's video we are going to go over five different snare sets, including the one that I've got right here. Let's get started. We're going to go over trail sets first and then we'll go into baited sets. The first snare that I want to show you is just your basic wire rabbit snare. Now I showed this in a different video, but I'm going to give you some additional tips today. So I've got a rabbit trail that runs right between these two trees. I've got a nice tree here to tie off to. This is the perfect situation for setting up one of these wire rabbit snares. Put the excess back here. Place this loop right in the middle of the trail, about three inches or so off of the ground. I'm going to take a little stick, put right under there so it doesn't duck under the trap. It's a chin lifter. Now one of the things that really helped me to catch rabbits and grouse in British Columbia was to brush off anywhere other than this one little hole right here. So I've got a treetop here. I'm just going to take this and just make it inconvenient for the rabbit to go anywhere but through that snare. And so basically what I've done is I've created a brush fence. And so if a rabbit is coming anywhere other than on our trail, he's going to hit this brush fence, look for the path of least resistance, which is going to bring him right down here to the opening that we left for our snare. Put his little head in there and you got him. And if you've set your snare right, the appropriate loop size and distance off the ground, you'll have him right around the neck and he'll be dead very quickly. So these little wire snares are very quick to set. They're efficient and they're very effective. But if you've got an animal like a fox or a coyote that's coming to check your trap, sometimes they'll get your rabbits and you'll want to get those rabbits up in the air out of the reach of those animals. And so we're going to do a slight variation on this using a spring pole. Now we need a couple of extra components here. I've got a stake with a notch in it. I've got a trigger stick and those two things fit together like a seven or an L. And I've got a sapling over here that we're going to use as our spring pole. So again we're going to use this rabbit trail that we've got. Put this right along the side of it. Tie our trigger and snare to our sapling. All right so our spring pole snare is set. It's going to work exactly the same way as just a basic trail set except for now when this rabbit gets caught up in the air he goes. And he's up in the tree waiting on you to come and get him. One of the biggest problems with these spring pole snares is that over time as these saplings stay bent they lose a lot of their spring. And if it's cold they'll actually freeze bent over like that and just won't work at all. But there's another variation of this that uses a cantilever lift pole that'll get around all that stuff. Let's take a look. I need to clear out some of this underbrush so that this pole can move freely. That right there ought to work just fine. All right so for this variation I'm going to be using the same trigger and stake. I'll actually set it right back here. All right so our lift pole is set. Same type scenario. Set this along the trail. Brush in the sides so that their easiest or path of least resistance is right through the snare. Goes through gets his neck caught. Makes a little lunge. And he's waiting there for you in the morning. So for these trail sets we're setting our snares along the natural travel paths of these animals. But there might be times when you want to bring an animal to you. And so let's go ahead and look at a couple of baited sets. So for this next snare I'm going to show you something that will work pretty good for paracord or catching bigger animals with small gauge wire like this. We're going to make a snare that will kill the animal very very quickly before they have a chance to twist out of the wire. Or if you're using paracord, chew through it. All right we'll go ahead and start on the trigger here. This is going to be very similar to the trigger on a Paiute deadfall using leverage. Then I've got my snare loop here I'll tie on there. Okay so we've got our trigger stick and everything tied to the sapling. We're just going to take the snare loop stick it right through there and then this trigger stick just toggles off of your cross piece there. And then we need to find a piece that we can use for our bait stick just like so. For this type of set we're going to have to force the animal to enter the trap in the place that we want it to. And the easiest way that I've found to do that is by creating a cubby. And I'm going to use these two trees here to help with that just save a little bit of work. All right we're ready to set it. So we'll take the snare loop put it right down between the cross bars that's important. Now we tie this tie the bait to the top of this stick right there. It's set make sure you keep your face away from it because it will smack you if you're not careful. Place a couple of little guide sticks there to help give that animal a place to know where to stick their head. So critter comes along smells the bait sticks his head through the loop because that's the only way he can get into the trap. You got him. This trap is lethal very very quickly because they're pinned against these cross bars here. It applies constant pressure and even with a body catch it kills them pretty quickly. All right so I want to show you a variation on this cubby type snare that you can use where you don't have a sapling for your power pole. And for this we need a little bit of paracord. I'm going to go ahead and wrap it around this tree a couple times. So we're going to make a windlass. Turn this thing until it's got a lot of tension. Now when you're doing this you need have a couple wraps of paracord because if you just do one or two wraps with a snare this big you will break the cord. It's set in the exact same way. All right so the snare is set. Animal comes along. You got him. Again held very very tight. He's not going to go anywhere. All right we'll be back next Thursday with another video so stay tuned.