Snare School: Episode 1 Anatomy of a Snare

hey fellas meet trapper here I'd like to welcome you to a new multi-part series called snare school this is going to be a five or a six part series and it's going to be the equivalent of a full feature-length trapping instructional video so it'll be an hour or so of material if not more now most people know that a full length trapping educational video today sells for thirty or forty dollars but I'm going to publish this on YouTube absolutely free and the only thing that I ask in return is that if you find the information useful or valuable please click on some of the ads you can right click on them and say open a new tab and just let it play in the background it doesn't cost you anything and every little bit helps support the channel because it does cost time and money to bring these videos out now this series is designed to take somebody that knows absolutely nothing about snaring and educate them on the parts of the snare the tools they're gonna need how to build a snare and ultimately how to set a snare so they can catch the fur or meat that they need so I'd appreciate any and all feedback and thank you very much for watching so let's get started with episode one and let's talk about the components of a modern cable snare one of the first things we need to discuss is the cable itself there are two basic types of cable the first type of cable is called a seven by seven twist of cable and that's because it's comprised of seven bundles of seven strands each the seven by seven cable is a cheaper cable and it is generally considered to be a loopy er cable it doesn't hold quite as stiffle loop it's not the cable that I use but since it's cheaper I use it a lot in extension cables and we'll talk about those a little later you can see this is seven by seven twist cable here and you can actually see the fibers in the cable the other twist of cable is called a 1 by 19 cable and the one by 19 is one bun of nineteen strands and that's a a tighter woven type of cable and it holds a much stiffer loop and that's what I use the two cables here this is one sixteenth inch and 5/64 inch diameter those are both one by nineteen cables so I used both type of cable I use a one by nineteen twist cable for the snare itself and then I use a cheaper seven by seven twist cable for my extension cables and tiles the next factor to consider is the diameter of the cable and what I have here are the three most common diameters this is a 1/16 of an inch diameter cable which is the smallest cable that I normally use you can buy a little bit smaller cable it's a three sixty fourth inch and that's mostly for sneering squirrels and mink and and that sort of thing but the one by 16 is the smallest commonly accepted snare cable the middle cable right here is what I use most and that's a 5/64 inch diameter cable and finally we have a 3/32 inch diameter cable and a general rule is the larger the diameter of the cable the easier it is for the animal to see but also the stronger the cable so there's a trade-off there a 1/16 inch cable is very difficult for an animal to see but it's also easier for them to chew out of that's why my standard go-to cable is a 5/64 inch diameter one by nineteen twist personally i feel that a 1 by 19 cable is a tighter woven cable and it's harder for the animal to get their teeth in between the strands to start chewing out one strand at a time whereas you can see the 7 by 7 twist cable you can actually see the twist in it and i believe it's easier for the animal to get their tooth or their teeth in between that and unravel it and start chewing out also as a general rule the same diameter cable in a 1 by 19 twist is going to be a stronger cable then that same I ammeter in a 3/32 inch cable therefore the holding power of a 5/64 inch cable in one by nineteen is roughly equivalent to the same cable in 3/32 inch diameter when using seven by seven twist so cable is a complicated subject you have to choose not only the twist for your usage but also the diameter for your usage now one final notice that all cable is not created equal to my experience the best cable is coming out of Korea right now and Chinese made cable is of inferior quality one factor that can affect the quality of your cable is how evenly it's wrapped as you can see when they start wrapping this cable up if the cable is wrapped unevenly or different torque is applied at different places in the cable your cable is going to tend to corkscrew and it's not going to hold a good loop when you're looking through trapping catalogs and you see premium cable what they're talking about is korean-made cable that's usually of a higher quality in a more even consistent wrap than the Chinese cable so back to my original point when I'm choosing an extension cable holding loops not a big deal so I'm gonna buy cheap seven by seven cable however when it comes to my actual snare cable itself I want a nice round farm loop and so I'm going to go with the best cable that I can buy and a one by nineteen twist personally I buy all of my cable from neut sterling at snare one I know he carries good stuff and I've never had a bad experience as far as the material that I've received you can buy cable in one hundred five hundred and thousand foot links a serious snare Minh is going to buy this cable in thousand foot links as at a minimum and and make their own snares and we'll cover that in a later video so the main takeaway here is know what twist and what diameter cable that you need for which animals and we'll cover the specifics as far as cable sizes and loop diameters in a later video the next thing we need to talk about our snare locks the snare lock is the part of the snare that allows the loop to close around the animals neck but not open up so if you take a look at the snare lock what it's going to do is it's going to allow the loop to close but it's not going to allow it to back up this way when the animal pulls the loop tightens and when they stop pulling it'll stop tightening but they're not going to be able to get it to back up the cable and get out of the snare so the snare lock is a critical part of the snare the first lock I want to talk about is called a cam lock and you can see the cam lock has a moving piece right here sort of a camming action and the snare cable passes through right here and then terminates through that hole right there now I use the cam lock for many years and I had pretty good results with it but uh in recent time I've moved away from the cam lock number one anything that has a moving part can cause problems especially if you live in an icy area where you get a lot of icing the Kym can ice up with a heavy do and then if this cam won't operate in the snare lock is down there's also the possibility of slippage in this area right here so some people have actually taken to filing notches or teeth into this part of the lock right here the reason that I moved away from it here in the deep south is simply because it's a large lock and it's more visible to an animal when he approaches the snare it's obvious that there's a foreign object there so I've moved away from the cam lock in recent time also keep in mind that you have to size your locks to your cable so a snare lock the fit 1/16 inch cable is not work on 1/8 or 3/32 inch cable so your locks like your fair rules and your stop buttons and everything else have to be sized to the cable that you're using one of the most common types of snare locks is the simple bent washer lock and this is a very simple very cheap lock and it actually works quite well when I first started snaring this is what I used and it's a good idea to have a large quantity of washers laid back for a grid down situation you can simply bend the washer and drill a hole in it and make your own snare locks that way when the Internet's not available or the stores not available as long as you've got washers you can still make your own snare locks and if you've laid in your cable five thousand feet at a time you've got a virtually unlimited way to collect meet the lock that I use is this lock and this is called a slim lock you can see this is a very low-profile lock very lightweight there's no moving parts and it's very simple and the snare terminates through this hole and you can see it's got a little tab and this is what keeps the lock from backing up on the cable normally I can you reuse a lock and three four five six times after a catch it just depends on how hard the animal was on it on any of your locks once you make a catch what'll happen is as you can see that the holes will tend to get watered out and I don't care if it's a washer lock or a cam lock or what have you that's going to happen eventually so your snare locks do have a limited life to them but those are three common snare locks everybody has their own opinion there's no right choice or wrong choice but the slim lock is the snare lock of choice for me the next component we need to talk about part of your support collars you do not have to have a support collar on your snare as you'll see when we get into this a snare video you can clamp a wire directly onto the snare cable itself but that's some sort of a time-consuming technique so I've taken to using a support collar or some people call it a whammy on your snare this is a piece of vinyl tubing and it's about two inches long an inch and a half two inches long and what this allows you to do is to use an 11 gauge or nine gauge support wire and insert it into this support collar along with the snare cable that goes through it and this allows you to support the snare by having a good solid support you can place that snare loop exactly where you want it and you can see this is just the vinyl tubing you can buy this at Home Depot or anywhere else once again this needs to be sized according to the diameter of your cable and the diameter of your support wire so if you're using one sixteenth inch cable and 11 gauge support wire you're going to need a slightly smaller piece of vinyl tubing then if you you are working with eighth inch cable and say a nine gauge support wire now some people will also use a coiled metal Lambie or support collar and this looks like this and you can see it's sort of conical shaped and what this allows you to do this is sort of a multi-purpose support collar in that once you wouldn't insert your support wire you can screw this on and this allows you to use the same size support collar for multiple different diameters of snare cable and wire because you can see it starts at a very wide opening and then it tightens down eventually to a very small opening nothing wrong with this it's just I don't know I've gotten used to using the vinyl tubing and always works for me I have no reason to switch one caveat on the vinyl tubing is that in very cold weather this stuff is going to get very stiff and brittle so if you're trapping in the far north of Europe in Minnesota or Canada Alaska you probably want to go with something that's not going to get stiff when it gets cold whereas down here in the deep south the tubing works just fine normally your snare is terminated with some sort of swivel this is a typical snare swivel and what this looks like on the snare is this right here and you can see the cable goes through the twist the twisted part comes out here and then the cable is terminated with a double ferrule you'll see there's a washer there the purpose of this washer is to provide a flat surface right here so that when the cable starts to twist and to rotate you can see it has a flat surface and it doesn't get bound up in here the purpose of putting a swivel on your snare is said that as the animal flips and flops and rolls in the water or what have you it doesn't bind the cable up and cause the cable to kink and twist and start to weaken you'll be surprised at what an animal can do to an aircraft cable snare once you start seeing what they can do to an aircraft cable snare you'll quickly realize that people that think they're going to go out in a survival situation with brass picture wire or shoelaces or 550 cord or anything like that that's they're just fooling themselves so this is your traditional snare swivel and what I've started moving to over time is something a little bit different this is a barrel swivel now you can buy these now for deep-sea fishing tackle places that have braking strengths of several hundred pounds I only use these on my beaver snares because beavers don't pull very hard I would never use a swivel like this for for a or anything else but the idea is this is going to give you two swivels one on each end and it tends to work a little bit better than your traditional snare swivel so just keep that in mind we'll more of this in the advanced sneering video now when it comes to building your snares you're going to need a couple of items the primary item you're going to need are double Ferrell's now just like everything else in staring your double Ferrell's are sized to fit the cable so ab double ferrule that's designed to fit 3/32 inch cable is going to be too big to use on 1/16 diameter cable 1/16 inch so you can see that you need to figure out what type and what diameter cable that you're going to use because that's going to determine the size of the snare locks you buy it's going to determine the size of the associated hardware that you're going to buy and so you can see when this snare comes up through the lock its terminated with a double ferrule and you can see how that works that's a very secure connection now some people will terminate their snares with a stop button something that looks like that and there's nothing wrong with that but I feel that a double ferrule since it has two connection points is going to be more secure and it's going to keep that snare from popping the animal from popping that feral off and I believe that the stop button is easier to pop it off now some people will actually use annealed nuts that's another way that you can terminate your snare to anneal the nuts you simply go in by nuts from the hardware store put them in a tin can drop them in a fire until they get cherry red and then let them cool and that's going to make them soft and easier to hammer shut on your cable so once again if you're looking at a grid down situation where you can't go out and order a thousand double Ferrell's or stop buttons if you've laid in a bunch of nuts and then you can make your own snare terminations so you have that at the loop end and also at the swivel end another thing to consider is how you're going to attach your snare to a to an anchor how you're going to anchor your snare you can anchor your snare a number of different ways you can take the swivel and you can simply wire it to a tree what I usually do is I attach an extension cable a six-foot extension cable to the snare right here and then I attach the extension cable to a tree or to an earth anchor now my standard snare setup is going to be something that looks like this and what I have is my snare coiled up and that's my 5/64 inch diameter 1 by 19 twist cable then I have it attached to a 3/32 inch 7 by 7 extension cable and at the end of the extension cable I have two things here number one I have an earth anchor and this functions as sort of a deadman anchor this allows me to drive this into the ground and so if there are no trees around I can drive this into the mud or the dirt and anchor my snare even though there's nothing to tie off to in my area which is heavily wooded there's often trees or branches that I can tie off to so I also keep a spring clip on each one every one of my snares has this so I don't have to hunt for hardware when I have my snare coiled up and ready to go I have everything I need to make the set right here I can clip off to a tree or I can drive it in the mud one other option is some people will use split rings and this makes this easy to attach to a piece of chain or something else so if you're going to use a split ring use a good solid heavy-duty one and we'll give some examples of this when we get out in the field a little later

Channel: The Meat Trapper

Views: 74,049

Rating: 4.9391637 out of 5

Keywords: beaver trapping, how to catch beavers, survival trapping, snaring, survival snaring, how to build a snare, prepper, meat trapping, trapping for meat, how to catch food, how to snare rabbits, how to trap turtles, trapping snapping turtles, how to catch turtles, how to catch snappers, snare school, how to snare

Id: mrJhDDBL_As

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2015