Body catches with snares

[MChewk]

Rod brought up an interesting subject dealing with choke springs and cable tightness...Up 'til now Robert and others have mentioned killing coyotes and fox with neck catches ...BUT what about those occasions when the canines are caught by the mid section or hips or back foot/feet/tail. How many coyotes have you killed in these odd catches...and with which lock type.
I'll start...several years back when I was just starting to learn how to snare I used a big loop for everything AND I didn't really understand positioning the bottom of the loop to fit the targeted animal. I was snaring out of state on private ground and was catching 'coon by the rear end, gray fox by the back hips and had a ton of pulled down loops. One snowy morning my eyes were opened when I caught a coyote in a nice beaten down trail. The problem was the coyote was hip caught but had wrapped the 3/32 cable up high around a cedar and was dead. Couldn't figure out what happened until I walked back and checked my other snares that I had in the same trail. The coyotes tracks and others showed they were stepping thru or bumping snare and not being caught. I had missed the captured coyote three different times... in other snares. If I had used a better positioned loop and used a slightly smaller loop I would have had a chance of tripling on coyotes as several moved thru. I was using washer locks on snares back then with a deer stop.
Lets hear from you...

[RallySnares]

Mike,
Can't remember ever body catching a coyote that was dead. Have caught many fox and otter that were dead when hip caught and believe it kills them for the same reason a neck snared animal dies. Causes restriction of blood flow and lack of oxygen to the brain. Like you it took me a while to figure out what caused body catches and learned something about snare height, snare speed and quit putting "chin lifts" under my snares. I can't think of anything that will cause more animals to be body caught then putting stuff under the snare loop and causes them to step through with Cats, fox, and coon , in that order being the easiest to get them stepping through. Slow locks can also be the cause of body catches. I believe that when an animal feels the snare touch their chest it should close shortly there after. If the snare is slow or drags the animal starts stepping, just like we do when walking through the brush and feel a stick hit our shin that we can't push aside or a wad of grass that catches your foot. I wish I could tell you I always head catch everything but still do body catch some animals. I find beaver to be the hardest to head catch do to dramatic size differences in age within the same colony. Fisher are sometimes hard to trail snare do to their loping gate also. I believe coyote are the easiest to learn to snare due to their straight legged walk and bulldozer determination compared to say a grey fox or mink.Too bad them coyotes don't just lay down when snared.

[MChewk]

TTT....what nobody ever body snares furbearers?

[Rod17]

Just a few thoughts on body catches and cause of death. Body/hip snares kill differently than neck snares.

External compression from a snare collapses veins and prevents venous blood flow. This causes back pressure into the capillaries (causing edema formation..i.e., water head). No matter how high the arterial pressure, it can't open the veins because capillaries are a fixed resistor. That is, there is a fixed pressure drop across the capillaries. So, the tissue gets deprived of oxygen due to lack of in-flow.

When this occurs in the guts, from body catches or hip catches, the gut get ischemic (no oxygen) real fast. Some organs can tolerate this for longer periods than others. Organs like the kidneys can't take a punch and shut down. While the guts are ischemic, they change their mode of metabolism to pathways which dont require oxygen. Unfortunately, the by-product is lactic acid and this builds up quickly and can affect the heart and brain. As the guts become swollen, it is harder for the animal to breath and the combination of respiratory insufficeincy and acidosis puts the animal to sleep (i.e. coma) and they expire.

Rod

[SteveCraig]

Mike,
Nothing is 100%. Body catches are a fact of life when snaring. It is going to happen. I dont like it, but hip catches tend to be a much slower death. Rod did a great job of explaining it above. Some will die and some are alive when you get there. I dont recall ever having a live snared bobcat though. Neck or body caught. Most grey fox are dead too. I have had lots of reds and coyotes alive with the snare down to almost nothing. Coons are about 75% dead. I prefer my beaver alive though.
Rally, I too hate chinups and refuse to use them anymore.
Steve

[MChewk]

Thanks guys...I have had my experiences with body caught critters...any one else want to share.

[45/70]

Back in the early days of the various otter restoration programs, we sold hip snared otter. On the surface they seemed to be ok, but usually died within three days, or
so. That's when we began expermenting with various traps. Several of us setteled on the # 11 DLS as live traps. The otter did very well in these traps.
We have a lot of otter in my area, and they can get to be a problem in the off-fur months, when doing beaver control work. Several years back, I
started making my otter kill snares on a 17"-18" length of cable. Well swiveled, these snares "automatically" opened to an appx. 6"
loop which is what I want when neck snaring otters. There are a number of ways, pretty much well discussed, that are used in attempts
to excluded otter from beaver snares. The best way I have found is to install a limit stop which allows my beaver snares to only close to
a 6" or so loop. While this is the size of open loop I prefer in a kill snare for otter, a loop that will close to only 6" will allow otter
to work their way free, w/o wasp-waisting them. These otter have little damage, if any, and do well when they go their own way. Do I have a
definitive study to prove this? No. However, I have earmarked otter and caught them again 6 months to a year later. This will not
happen to an otter wasp-waisted in a snare.
Adios,
45/70,
RKBA !!!

[MChewk]

Great info...thanks 45/70

[CoyDog]

Body catches are gonna happen .

For coon, what has made a big decrease in body catches for me is snare camo and sight decoys.
Many coon snaremen around my neck discredit coon and dont camo there snares and end up flanking 90% plus of the coons they catch simply because they set a shiny silver 3/32 snare in a trail and it stands out like a you know what.
Well, Im not saying you are not going to knock the hell out of coon with shiny snares, I have for years, but man I sure hate listening to what I may have gotten for good coon if they didnt have that big burn across the sweet spot. And thats with the "relaxing" locks.
For the past few seasons Ive taken advise of some good snaremen and started dying my snares, or painting them so they blend in, switched to a fast lock and have dramatically decreased body catches.
I also believe a sight decoy helps keep there heads where you want them.

[MChewk]

Coydog, I agree with you as far as taking the time to treat snares...too easy not to.... can you extrapolate on your use of sight decoys?

[CoyDog]

By decoy, Im talking an object, flag/type attractor , placed in sight of the location you are snaring, that will focus an animals attention whether it be high or low , preferably high to get the animals head focusing where you are targeting by snare placement.

There are some d**n good trappers/snaremen on this forum that are well more advanced in animal behavior than I, but am sure all will agree that loop size and height can vary with different circumstances, geography.
I feel sight attractions/decoys/ etc... aid in increasing the percentages of an animal being in the anticipated position of your snare placement.
Please note that I am not advocating that "decoys" are mandatory, nor is the only way to snare, but in a lot of situations I run into, visuals aid more than hinder.