Random Bushcraft Tip

h/t Commander Zero

The item in the header pic might look to you like a $2.99 roll of 18 gauge floral wire, available at any Hobby Lobby, with cousins for sale at Home Depot, WallyWorld, Michael's Crafts, etc.

It is, and it isn't.

What it really is, is twenty 5-foot long pieces* of snare wire suitable for all sorts of small game, helpfully all connected on one handy spool, with a nifty wire-cutting gadget on the bottom of the package.

If you're ever stuck and trying to survive, putting out a snare, i.e. ONE, is a joke, well-known to hundreds of SERE School instructors over the years who've seen or heard earnest students announce they put out their survival snare. Singular. Usually with absolutely nothing to show for the effort.

Putting out twenty snares on a trapline, or 3-5 squirrel poles in a target-rich woodland,

OTOH, is a much higher-percentage shot at getting something to go in the stew pot for supper.

Use the handy cutter on that package, once the need is urgent, to chop your entire 100' roll into handy 5' segments.

With each segment,

1. Pull a few inches around a small pencil-sized stick, twice around, creating a double loop, leaving about an inch or so beyond the loops created.

2. Slide that double loop off the stick carefully, keeping it open, and twisting an inch or so of the wire beyond the double loop tightly around the end before the loop.

3. Take the unfinished end, and pull it through the double loop, keeping the double loop open, until you've created a loop the appropriate size of the game you're trying to catch.

Repeat 1-3 another 19* times.

4. Find appropriate places on game runs, burrow holes, etc., to place your snares, and anchor them to driven or buried stakes or rocks, as appropriate, to secure anything you catch. Don't pull on the double loops, and minimize handling the snares. If you have anything to cover your scent, or to bait the set/run, do it after it's placed.

If you've done this right, anything passing through your snare will pull the noose tighter, causing the metal double loop to cinch down, preventing it from releasing anything you catch, and getting tighter the harder they pull against it.

Check all your snares at least once a day. Checking at dawn and dusk isn't a bad plan. Otherwise you're just feeding any local predators, instead of yourself.

There are myriad ways to set out snares like these for birds and small game, and all those approaches are beyond the scope of this post. Further study and real-world practice is highly recommended. Do it now, when your survival isn't at stake if you fail.

But now you have the knowledge of how to create the individual snares necessary. Sizing the wire you use and the noose size and height up or down gives you the opportunity to capture anything of almost any size, if you build the right noose with the right wire. (Snares for cougar, wolf, bear, and moose are not recommended. But you do you. Deer- or feral hog-sized snares, by contrast, could yield quite a bounty.)

Bear well in mind that whatever you catch may not be dead when you find it, and may not like being snared. Be prepared to turn it from a problem into a menu item by dispatching it without getting clawed or bitten in the process.

Boilerplate b.s.: Obey all game and hunting regs if you practice with these. Don't trap the neighbor's pets (or children) in testing these out. But remember that in a personal life-and-death survival situation, there are no game regs, and screw the bag limit.

You can buy purpose-made snares from several trapping suppliers, but generally for a lot more money. Unless you're trapping professionally, don't bother. But throwing a few spools of floral wire in your kit for survival purposes gives you snare options that might come in handy, with wire that won't rust, and is already a color found in nature.

*(Or thirty-three 3' pieces. Or fifty 2' pieces. And so on.)