Hunting and trapping

• Know the law where you are. Trapping is regulated almost everywhere: which species, which trap types, which seasons, and how often sets must be checked. Snaring deer and large animals is illegal in most places and cruel in all of them — snares hold large animals alive and injured for days.
• Check every set at least once every 24 hours, ideally at dawn. An animal left in a trap suffers, spoils, attracts predators that steal it, and in hot weather is inedible by noon.
• Count sets out and count them in. Mark every one — a notch, a ribbon, a written list with locations. A forgotten snare keeps killing for years.
• Avoid non-target animals. Set size, height and place for the species you want. Pets, livestock and protected species all walk the same paths.
• Kill quickly. A captured live animal is dispatched immediately with a firm blow to the back of the head. Hesitation is the cruel part.

Traps succeed on placement, not on bait or cunning. An animal moves along the same routes night after night, and a set placed on that route catches; a set a metre off it does not.

• Runs — narrow worn paths through grass and undergrowth, often tunnels. Rabbit runs show regular flattened spots where the animal lands between bounds.
• Pinch points — where a run passes between two obstacles, under a fallen log, through a gap in a hedge or fence. The animal has no choice of route there.
• Feeding sign — gnawed bark, clipped shoots, dug earth, scattered nut shells.
• Droppings — rabbit pellets in latrine piles at the edge of cover; deer in pellet groups; fox scat on prominent stones and path junctions.
• Beds and burrows — but set on the runs leading to them, not at the entrance, where animals move cautiously.

Human scent matters less than movement and disturbance. Do not trample a run while setting on it; approach from the side, set quickly, and leave.

A snare is a loop set on a run that tightens as an animal pushes through it. It is the most effective small-game trap for its size and cost, and the one most often set badly.

Setting a rabbit snare:

1. Loop about 10–12 cm across — roughly a clenched fist with room to spare.
2. Bottom of the loop about 10 cm above the ground — a hand's width — where the rabbit's head is, not its feet.
3. Set it on the run between the landing spots, not on them, where the rabbit is mid-bound with its head raised.
4. Hold it in place with a thin, split twig as a tealer, so the loop stands open and square to the run.
5. Anchor it solidly — to a stake driven deep, a root, or a heavy log. A lightly anchored snare loses the catch and leaves an injured animal.
6. Use a locking loop. Wire, or cord with a small ring or toggle that lets the loop close but not reopen. Natural cordage without a lock slips loose.

Set many. A single snare catches on a small fraction of nights. Ten to twenty sets on active runs, checked at dawn, is a trapline. When the catch falls off in one area, move the line.

Squirrel poles: a pole leant against a tree used by squirrels, carrying several small snares along its length, catches repeatedly from one site.

A deadfall is a heavy weight — a flat stone or a weighted log — propped over bait by a trigger that collapses when the animal disturbs it. It kills outright, needs no cordage for the kill itself, and works for mice to marmots.

The Paiute deadfall is the most sensitive design, and the one worth learning first:

1. A flat rock heavy enough to kill the target outright — several times the animal's weight.
2. An upright post about a hand's length under one edge of the rock.
3. A lever stick resting on top of the post, holding up the rock's edge.
4. A short cord from the other end of the lever, wrapped half round the post.
5. A toggle tied to the cord end, pressed against a long, thin bait stick that rests against the underside of the rock.
6. Any touch on the bait stick releases the toggle, the lever flies free, and the rock falls.

The figure-four — three notched sticks — is simpler to explain and harder to make reliable. Carve it, test it a dozen times, and adjust the notches until it trips from a light touch.

Deadfalls hurt hands. Always set the trigger with the weight blocked by a second stick you remove last, and never reach under a set deadfall. A falling rock breaks fingers.

Gut quickly — within an hour — so the carcass cools. Heat trapped in the body cavity spoils meat from the inside.

1. Wear gloves if you have them, or keep cuts on your hands covered.
2. Lay the animal on its back, pinch up the belly skin, and cut just through the skin and muscle with the blade edge pointing up, two fingers guarding the tip — never puncture the gut.
3. Remove the viscera, cutting the gullet high and tying off or cutting round the vent.
4. Inspect the organs. Spots, pale nodules, abscesses or a swollen, blotchy liver mean a sick animal — discard it, and bury or burn it.
5. Prop the cavity open and hang the carcass in shade, off the ground, protected from flies.

Skinning: small game skins most easily warm. Save the hide for tanning, and sinew from the back and legs for cordage and bowstring.