Practice Traps

I've been terribly busy at work the last couple weeks. To add to that are the numerous sporting events I've participated in or watched on tv lately. I went a couple straight weeks without working on skills which sucks. During that time I did spend a lot of lunch time and free time reading about the peak oil crisis though. In short, I'm glad I'm practicing survival skills. The last week I have spent a good amount of time working on my snap bow. I'm in the final tillering stage and hope to have a post up about it this week.

In the mean time, I thought I'd post some pictures I found while prepping my tillering pictures. Here are a couple practice traps I set up last year. Trapping and snaring is a skill I have practiced very little and need to work on more. I think it is one of the most important skills to have in a survival situation because it is a reasonably easy and efficient way to get food.

Keep in mind that these traps were for me to practice selecting the right size sticks, cutting the right notches and figuring out the mechanics of setting them up. The weight of the dead fall portion is probably not perfect.

Figure four deadfall trap - One adjustment I'd probably make to simplify this one is to use a "Y" branching stick for the upright instead of having to carve out the notch in the diagonal stick.


Piaute deadfall trap - Typically the bait stick is propped against the bottom of the deadfall, but I couldn't get it to stay there so I propped it against the ground. With a longer string you can lower the deadfall so the quarry has less time to escape when the trigger is pulled.