This is, hands down, my most popular posts. I get a good number of people who come here for learning how to make a snare from wire. So for you aspiring trappers, especially all of you in Norway, here's how you can make hare snares on the cheap:
A lot of blogs have gimmics, like pictures by semi-compotent photographers, insightful commentary from brilliant minds, or daily content served up with a dwallop of good humour. But what's a blog without any of these things to do? There are many options out there for the incompotent blogger, but none as time tested as faking it. Today, as promised, I'll fake teaching you how to do a neat skill that you can fake learn, and use to fake out your friends and family! Today, we're going to learn how to make snares about the right size for snowshoe hares.
You'll need the following:
The steel wire should be about 20 gague, and you can get it cheap from any local hardware store. I recommend you have a lot of beer on hand, because crafting skill and beer consumption is linearlly porportional. The multi-tool needs a pair of pliers, and wire cutters on them!
It also helps if you have some entertainment. This can be another person making snares with you, or you could watch documenteries on TV, like the
RedGreen Show. Oh Bill, when will you learn ducttape doesn't fix the mangled bodies of your horribly injured friends! So zany!
You'll want to cut off about 21 inches. That number is subject to change without reason, really. Use a tape measure if you want them consistently the same size, or do what I do, and just base each one off the previous batch.
Now take the leatherman and bend an end around into a hook about 20mm in. This translates to a good chunk of a knuck in, or about 3/4ths an inch.
Now take the end of the loop in your channel locks. I use channel locks because I like channel locks. You could use another pair of pliers, but then you'd be some sort of freak, and no one would ever talk to you. And you wouldn't want that, would you?
Next, grasp the short end of the J with the pliers, and use them and the channel lock to twist the two strands together until you have a loop. I can't show you how to do this, because I don't have a third hand to operate a camera with. After this is a good time to have some more beer. it should look like this:
Now put the straight end through the loop. If you can't accomplish this, you've had too much beer too early. Your mother would be ashamed. Otherwise, it'll look like this:
Now make another loop at the end. Start with a J:
And then using the pliers and channel locks, make another loop. The first loop shouldn't be able to slide off the strand of wire, now. It should look like this.
The snare is more-or-less done, now! The second loop takes a string of parachute chord, but that doesn't go on until you're ready to put down your snares. The final, final product looks something like this...
...except it's not ready to have the anchor added. I just did that to fool you into a false sense of security. First, it needs to lose some of its scent. Some people boil their small game snares, others seal them with various concoctions. But for what I'm doing, I don't really need that. I've found that hanging them outside for two+ weeks, in a safe manner, is sufficient to naturalize (though not neutralize) the odour.
And now you know! And knowing is half-the-battle. Remember, don't trap unless you have a valid license to do so. And if you trap hares for food, remember to boil them for thirty minutes, around Fairbanks, to get them good and edible. They're pretty wormy, otherwise. If you're using them for bait, obviously you don't need to!
