This article is part of
Wilderness Way
VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1.
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Much like other Wilderness Way readers, I have long been familiar with a wide variety of differing types and styles of snares and deadfalls. When the truth is told, practically any sort of trapping device is more productive than hunting in meat procuring. I mean, no matter what you might be busy doing; hunting, gathering plant derived food stuffs, sleeping, or whatever, your snares, traps, and deadfalls are always out there working for you day and night, regardless of the weather.
For me though (and probably for many of you as well), the only problem with deadfalls and snares has always been that when compared with commercially made steel traps, none of the standard snare or deadfall type traps could measure up! Over time, I’ve gradually developed a real sort of aversion to relying on any sort of mass produced products, yet, I seem to have developed a dependency on the superb efficiency of the steel trap.
In all honesty, my own meat and fur producing traplines, have for many years consisted of numerous compromises, deadfalls, snares, steel leg hold traps, wood and wire rat traps, drowning barrels, steel body grip killer type traps, and more, all in use together. While I have always managed to bring in plentiful supplies of both meat and furs (and eliminate many pesky scavengers as well), still, it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve actually felt comfortable with employing any factory produced traps at all.
This past summer however, I became acquainted with a retired missionary who introduced me to a new (at least new to me) trapping method which has really revolutionized my trapping practices.
While this remarkably committed fellow, along with his wife, were spending most of their lives carrying the Gospel, and modern medicines to the Western portions of Africa, they were also busy learning all they possibly could about the people who live there and their way of life.
Some of their stories are strongly inspiring
, while many more are tragically heart wrenching. I’m quite sure that most readers will have heard at least some of the horror stories in the major media regarding the horrid toll that AIDS, Ebola and other viral diseases, wars, revolutions, crop failures, and famines are extracting on the “Dark Continent.” You’ve probably also heard or read enough to be, at least in passing, familiar with the tremendous sums of money being spent by both government and private relief agencies in attempts to alleviate these sorts of sufferings.
However, apparently what most of us haven’t been hearing anything about is that even should you add together all of Africa’s terrible death toll, from AIDS and other plagues, famines, wars, etc., all combined deaths would represent only one more bucket of water in the ocean in comparison to the annual toll of suffering and death still wrought by Africa’s ancient nemesis: Malaria. And there isn’t any large well financed homosexual lobby concerned with malaria. It’s treatment is expensive; the people dying are among the poorest on earth. There simply isn’t any profit to be made, monetarily or politically, in combating this disease. Therefore, the poor inhabitants have basically been abandoned to Africa’s oldest, and most deadly killer!
Maybe some of this might seem like I’m straying somewhat from the point of this article, however, it may help you see things just a little clearer. It is a part of the reason I’ve become so strongly disinclined to rely on any of the products of our modern society, and why I feel Wilderness Way fills such an important role in helping us all learn and share real methods for increasing our own personal self-reliance.
At any rate, I will continue to my story about trapping devices I have learned about. Learning of my own interest and skills in areas of hunting, fishing, and trapping, and our reliance on these endeavors, this former missionary has shared an enoromous amount of what he has learned in these areas with me. He went so far as to actually build for me a working model of the most ingenious owner built type of trap that I have ever seen! Apparently in the African areas where he’d labored, this simple put together device has been the most common used means for taking every sort of animal, from tiny rodent pests, to the largest and most dangerous African game.
Being hardly any more difficult to fashion than a common deadfall, and just as efficient as any factory built steel trap, this ancient African device almost immediately became my own preferred trap type! As I’m writing this, I’ve already taken 76 muskrat, 42 raccoon, 54 opossum, 8 red fox, and 11 grays, two fat beaver, and a skunk using this trap design exclusively. This is essentially equal to any of my results in the previous years when using factory steel traps!
Seeing how amazingly effective this African style trap is working out for me, and realizing how valuable and useful it could prove for most of Wilderness Way's other readers, I felt sort of driven to attempt putting this one down on paper for the rest of you. I really think most of you will really like this trap as much as I do.
You should find the illustrations pretty easy and self-explanatory. While the measurements given are for the trap size I’ve found most useful for game in the raccoon, opossum, fox, size range, I’m sure you will readily see that it is no more difficult to assemble a similar trap, in any size you might find you need. Also, though I would not recommend making a habit of this, for building your first few traps using this design, it shouldn’t hurt anything to use a few nails or screws, and standard lumberyard boards for most of the project. It will give you more of an opportunity to become familiar with producing these devices a little more quickly. Once you have become pretty adept at fashioning this sort of trap, however; I’d recommend sticking solely with naturally occurring materials.
Though the folks from the animal rights groups (who would most probably fight to “protect and preserve” the Malarial mosquitoes of Africa), would more likely become actually physically sick over the “teeth” formed in the trap’s wooden jaws. These “teeth” do not seem to add a lot to the effectiveness of this device, but seems somewhat more humane than smooth jaws, helping to prevent “wring-off,” and other painful escape efforts.
When adapting this trap design to other sizes, you’ll need to experiment a little with the bow used as a spring. A bow/spring that is too powerful, can shear or crush the leg right off of smaller prey while a bow/spring just perfect for raccoon sized animals, couldn’t even hope to hold an animal in the wolf or whitetail range.
For the trap body, probably any available wood at all should serve equally well. Once however you have become fairly proficient at manufacturing these traps, you will probably find that the natural undisturbed appearance achieved by using split slabs of wood with the bark still attached adds just a little more to this trap’s effectiveness.
The wooden trigger pieces need to be fashioned from the hardest wood you can come up with. I’ve used beech, birch, hornbeam, ironwood, hickory, and well-seasoned red oak, all with equal success. In areas where dense hardwoods like these are really non-existent, pieces of antler or bone could be used to fashion the trigger, but where good hardwoods are available, these materials do not really seem worth the extra effort.
So far, all of the bow/springs for the traps I am now using, have been fashioned from either hickory or elm saplings. Proper tiller and most of all of the other important details involved in constructing a real hunting type bow are actually irrelevant for this sort of use. So don’t waste 
much time in worrying over fashioning a proper stave.
Of course, you do need to remember, that since your trap will be sitting out in the weather, if it’s at all possible you need to use some type of plant fiber bow strings, rather than sinew, rawhide, gut, or other animal source cordage.
Still, no matter what trap types or methods you employ, becoming familiar with the habits of your quarry, learning to put down proper sets, avoiding, eliminating, or masking your own human odor, employing and producing proper baits and scents are all the skills and bits of knowledge that you’ll really need to cultivate, and constantly refine.
However, everything else being equal, my own experience so far indicates this ancient African device to be absolutely the most efficient and productive user built trap style that I have ever encountered, even equaling the efficiency of factory made steel traps!
Should you decide to become familiar with producing and utilizing this unique African design in your own endeavors, I am pretty certain you will be as well pleased as I am, while further reducing your own reliance on mass produced products, without sacrificing anything. 