Get funny looks from fellow hikers.........

D

DOC-CANADA

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Apr 14, 2006
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Well, today was Labour Day Monday up here in Canada which meant we had the day off.

So what to do? Go out and play with traps, of course. So Phil (PhilT on here), Pierre the Ikea rat (named after Pierre Trudeau a former prime minister who gave us the metric system and official bilingualism) and I set off to try out some traps featured in the book, Survival Skills of Native California written by Paul D. Campbell and it is quite an excellent book.

We were curious how well they'd work so we put them to the test. The first trap was a Miwok spring snare. This is how it's depicted in the book:
Miwokspringsnare-1.jpg


Well, we tried and tried but found there was a problem with the spring pole (in this case some surgical tubing tied to an overhead branch) pulling the snare off the corner supports. No matter how we set it up - nada. So with a bit of modification, we came up with this that did work:
Miwokspringsnare.jpg

You have to pretend that the little gray rock at the trigger is an acorn. :rolleyes:

Pierre wasn't impressed and thought we could have at least used real food.
whatkindofcrapisthis.jpg


Moving along, the next trap we tried was the Mohave scissor trap. This worked as described and is one of our favourites. A view from the side, once again the little gray rock is an acorn.:o

modifiedMohavescissortrap1.jpg


A view from the front:
modifiedMohavescissortrap2.jpg


Normally, this trap would be built up around the sides and back to force the critter to enter from the front. The purpose of this trap is to catch the critter behind the front legs and "with every exhalation of the critter, the trap tightens its grip, not relaxing what it has gained".

He we talked Pierre into giving it a look. He was somewhat reluctant.
modifiedMohavescissortrap3.jpg


Another shot with a gratuitous picture of the knives du jour.
modifiedMohavescissortrap3bwithgrat.jpg



modifiedMohavescissortrap4-damnthat.jpg

Pierre: "Damn that smarts!"

more to come
 
This is a picture of a trap we found on the internet. Apparently it's used for catching rats in rice fields in Vietnam and other similar places. The challenge was how to make it work. The spring mechanism is a piece of bamboo braced like a bow. This is to drive the crusher bar down, when the trigger is tripped.
moatrattrapfromPhil.jpg




Phil came up with this mock up to see how well it would work. In place of the bamboo, he used elastic bands to simulate.
Phillipinerattrap1.jpg



Here we tried to convince Pierre to give it a whirl:
Phillipinerattrap2.jpg




But he would have no part of it unless Phil showed him how it worked:
Phillipinerattrap3.jpg

To Phil's credit he turned away so Pierre couldn't see the tears!


Phillipinerattrap4-Iknewit.jpg

"I knew it, you bunch of bas***ds!" :D

So anyway, except for Pierre, we had a pleasant, educational day despite the blistering 80 degree F. weather. :(

Doc
 
You definitely would get funny looks from me watching you make traps for your, what? Dog?
 
Those are some cool looking traps Doc. They look a lil complicated. Gotta be cool to try, but if need be I'll stick to a simple figure 4 or twitch up.

The scissor trap is awesome looking though!
 
Great stuff Doc, I love that Mohave scissor trap !

Gonna have to try those myself now !!!!
 
Cool pics - I've never tried making traps at all and they look pretty cool. I should try them out on those damn rabbits in my yard.

Did you actually get dirty looks from other hikers? I could only imagine what some people would think if they saw someone playing around with a stuffed animal and some traps.
 
I love this forum. That is all I can say:D. I am definitely hanging out with you guys when I get a chance to vacation in Canada:thumbup: Those traps are awesome. I am going camping this coming weekend with family and plan to set up some cool traps myself. But you guys really showed some ingenuity in building those traps. Very cool:thumbup:
 
Awesome traps doc. I need some trap work, those look a little advanced for me. Really cool stuff though!
 
The first trap: I'd be inclined to use a small stand off loop just above the noose and poke a pointed trigger stick through that. Thus, the four corner uprights would not be necessary to provide tension. You'd just need something there to lift the noose a little clear of the deck. My way only a single stick needs to be really driven in hard.

pierre2124841bp2.jpg
 
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I will have to try these out when I get home. Thanks for sharing.
I hope Pierre forgives you.
 
baldtaco-II said:
The first trap: I'd be inclined to use a small stand off loop just above the noose and poke a pointed trigger stick through that. Thus, the four corner uprights would not be necessary to provide tension. You'd just need something there to lift the noose a little clear of the deck. My way only a single stick needs to be really driven in hard.

pierre2124841bp2.jpg
Click to expand...


Yes, that looks like it would work, though, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the traps shown in the book and see how they worked. The picture showed the closest we came without the aforementioned problems.


myright: Did you actually get dirty looks from other hikers? I could only imagine what some people would think if they saw someone playing around with a stuffed animal and some traps.
Click to expand...

Yes we did, and not to mention the knives! :D

tonym :Those are some cool looking traps Doc. They look a lil complicated. Gotta be cool to try, but if need be I'll stick to a simple figure 4 or twitch up.

The scissor trap is awesome looking though!
Click to expand...

They aren't necessarily anything I would build in a survival situation, but they are a lot of fun to play with. We definitely liked the scissors trap, though. You probably need only 4 or 5 simple traps to be pretty well covered but you never know what you can learn by experimentation.

Anyway, thanks for the positive comments, guys.

Doc
 
Baldtaco-II,

I thought I would post this one for you, as it, too, eliminates the problem of the Miwok bird snare. It's probably my favourite bird snare.

SannBushmanBirdSnare.jpg


Doc
 
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