Trapping for Preppers

In a survival situation, traps can capture animals that provide us precious calories from meat and fat. Think of them as little hunters that you put out to do your work for you while you are off accomplishing other tasks. There are seemingly as many different traps as there are critters to catch. To us, learning trapping for preppers is one of the essential survival skills.

Trapping for preppers is an essential part of most survival strategies. By setting up a number of well-placed traps which you check regularly, you can save yourself a lot of energy. As with most hunting and gathering strategies, it is best to set up your trap line at a bit of a distance from your bug out location. Should an extended perimeter from your bug out location become too dangerous, you will not have exhausted the game in the immediate area. In addition, while hunting can certainly be productive, it also uses up valuable calories, something that you simply can’t afford to lose during a survival situation. For that reason, as well as increasing your chances of finding food, you need to know how to build a wide range of hunting traps.

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There are hundreds of different variations of survival traps and snares that you can use to procure wild game. At their most basic, they are designed to choke, crush, hang, or entangle wild animals, and are an important skill to know for anyone who spends any amount of time in the wilderness.

The best thing to know about trapping for preppers is the best survival traps are usually very simple to make and can usually be made with natural materials if you know what you’re doing. That means to be effective; you need to practice these skills before you find yourself in a situation where your life depends on them.

Where to place them

In a survival situation, the more traps you set, the greater your chances are of capturing food. That means you need to be always building new ones, constantly maintaining and fixing existing ones, and always on the lookout for good places to set them.

When looking for places to set your traps, make sure you’re always on the lookout for:

Known game trails and runs.
Known watering holes and feeding sites.
Animal tracks and droppings.
Chewed vegetation.
Nesting sites and den holes.

Figuring out where to set your traps is probably the most challenging part of the equation, especially if you don’t have a good grasp on animal behaviors and tracking.

A good trap in the wrong location is a bad trap!

The most common types of survival traps.

Typical survival traps usually fall into one of two categories: snares and deadfalls. While there are a couple other categories, most of what you’ll probably use will be a variation of one of these two types of traps.

Building a Survival Snare

survival trapping for preppers

A snare is essentially a small noose that tightens around an animals neck as it passes through the hole. They are usually placed on known animal trails or right outside of den holes.

Make sure the noose is large enough to allow the animal’s head to pass through it.
As the animal moves through the snare it should tighten around its neck.
The more the animal struggles to get loose, the tighter the snare will get.

Building a Deadfall Trap

Unlike snares which are meant to choke the animal, Deadfalls are designed to crush the animal once the trigger is released.

trapping-for-preppers

Getting the pieces to work together:

Carve a flat screwdriver point on one stick; this will become the vertical post.
Carve another screwdriver point on one end of a stick and a notch near the opposite end; this will be the diagonal stick.
Carve a notch at one end of the third stick, and carve a point for bait.
Lay out the sticks so they look like the number 4, the line up the vertical post and cut a notch on the horizontal bait stick so it catches the carved square edge on the post.
Put the three sticks together so the notches catch each other and hold up the deadfall weight.

trapping for preppers

Top Field Guides for Learning How to Trap

If you’re not a seasoned hunter, or have never actively tracked an animal, then I recommend picking up a good field guide, and really taking some time to study its contents. Learning how to build a good trap is important, but knowing how to track animals, spot game trails, and understanding where to set the traps is the key to actually catching something. We will suggest the following field guides, they are all a great introduction to what you should be looking for.

In the meantime, check out this trapping guide to animal tracks infographic.

Buy the essentials for trapping small game here.

Trapping Small Game Essentials

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