I never could keep out of a good trap thread
To your question, YES, traps can be very effective and don't take nearly the effort of active hunting to "make meat".
SNARES:
For a beginner, using man made materials (cord, wide, etc...) for simple, non moving, snares is one of the easiest ways to learn. Many states allow snares to be used during the legal trapping seasons but be aware of you local game laws in case yours does not. Targeting rabbits, especially in winter when their trails are much more obvious can be a great way to make a couple easy catches and bolster your confidence. The key to trapping, especially with snares is observation. You can't catch an animal where there isn't one. Watching animals movements and learning how to see their signs is the most important part of trap placement, especially when using non baited traps.
DEADFALLS:
My go-to traps. Snares are illegal where I live and in order to teach primitive trapping the people at the Primitive Skills Society all use deadfalls. They are versitile and numerous in style and can kill anything from a mouse to a bear. In fact the Coyote Back Breaking trap I'll show later in a down sized version of a deadfall designed to kill black bear.
Beginners deadfalls- The figure four is the best known deadfall for the beginning trapper to learn and practice. It is simple and VERY effective if you avoid some of the more common mistakes.
1- acute angle- You want as acute an angle as possible on the deadfall. If it is to high up the target animal can jump out of the way. Animals are FAST, especially squirrels and rabbits, and they can jump out of a falling trap faster than you would believe.
2- proper bait- this covers two separate mistakes I see often. You need to bait your trap with something that the animals are going to want to eat. They won't risk the danger of entering a strange trap without a nice reward to temp them. Also, you need to affix the bait so that it can't be easily removed without triggering the trap.
3- scent- Animals outside of your local walking park are weary of people, especially in areas where they are hunted. It is important to leave as little sign of your presence as possible when setting your traps. The best way to do this that I have found is to wash your hands off in the local water source and rub dirt on them so that the natural dirt smell is the predominant odor left on the traps. Always be careful not to rub your eyes or touch your mouth until you have cleaned your hands because the clearest fastest flowing streams can still harbor nasties like Crypto and Giardia.
4- long and sensitive triggers triggers- You want the animal to travel as far under that deadfall as possible so that he has less of a chance of escaping as it starts to fall. You also need a sensitive enough trigger that the small animal has no trouble triggering it while tugging on the bait item.
5- heavy deadfall- You want your killing weight to be at least five times heavier than the animal you are targeting. The last thing you want is to cause a major crushing injury and have the animal crawl away to die slowly somewhere else.
6- Vertical stick placement- My biggest pet peeve in primitive trapping is to see the vertical stick of a fig4 or paiute deadfall directly under the weight/log. This is a sure recipe for the log snagging on the vertical stick and giving the animal time to escape if the weight even falls at all. I have seen many examples of traps set in this manner stopping on the vertical stick and being suspended by it.
There are quite a few others but those are the most common mistakes I see.
My preference is the Paiute deadfall. It incorporates the use of cordage and a toggle so they are just a little more complicated to construct but I find them to be easier to tune.
Here is a Paiute deadfall. The only thing it needs is some bait and a few weighted sticks added to the deadfall.
This trap was baited with an acorn. the ground was frozen so squirrels were more likely to be looking for non-cached food items. The weight was a set of split firewood
Here is an example of one way to block off the sides of the trap when using a log or weight that is not very wide. In a real trap the sticks would be set into the ground.
Another way to make a wall to protect the sides from escape is to trap against a tree or other non-movable object. In this example, the wood to the right was also rolled against the trap to block off the other side. This was baited with sunflower seeds.
Bait- When baiting any of these traps it is important that the bait is secured with more force than it takes to set the trigger. One easy way of doing this is to split the trigger stick and wedge the bait in there tightly. The pics show a hard bait (acorn) and a soft bait (mushroom). It is also important that you do not touch any mushroom you are not familiar with since many of those eaten by animals are still very poisonous to us.
Trap lines- The same philosophy go with all types of traps, the more the better. A nice trap line, especially a cooperative trap line is a great way to increase your chance of catching an animal or of take greater numbers over the same duration. I'm not sure if this is the right pic but I think this is from a cooperative trap line left for only 36 hours a couple years ago. If I recall correctly It had 25 deadfalls total.
Trapping also allows you to use the entire hide of an animal without dealing with bullet holes.
Here is a vid I made a while ago to go over the ways to tune a fig4 to increase its effectiveness. This is about how to actually kill game, not just make it look like whats in a book.
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For those wanting to set up demonstration traps and to practice at home here is a trap practice board I made last year.
This vid is DEADFALLS
[youtube]OJAjxeO6wvw[/youtube]
This vid is SNARES
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This one is a spring spear trap thrown in just for fun.
[youtube]i9KiIjNlJhU[/youtube]
I also mentioned at the beginning that these deadfalls could be used for larger game. This Back Breaker trap is sized for coyote but the full size version is designed for black bear and is roughly six times larger.
Here is a shot of the trigger
And here is a short video of how this trap works (sorry for the low quality, shot on a cell phone).
[youtube]EQvEo-CE9WI[/youtube]
You can go the other route and make a primitive mouse trap. This one was fun and caught a few mice before being chewed up by the puppy who mistook it for a toy.
[youtube]hmPwV5dFzTg[/youtube]
I could go on for a lot longer but I'll shut up now. I just get all into these trapping threads and ramble on..... Sorry.
