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The first time I actually set snares for food — not practice, not for the hell of it, but because I genuinely needed to eat — I was two days into a solo trip in the Beartooth Wilderness and my food bag had a hole in it. Lost about half my supplies to a squirrel I never even saw. Ate six snare-caught rabbits over the next four days.
Those rabbits were stringy and gamey and absolutely the best thing I’d ever tasted. Sometimes the necessity sharpens the skill.
I’ve been setting traps and snares since my dad showed me when I was maybe nine. He learned from his grandfather, who trapped for income during the Depression. There’s something genuinely old about this skill — older than rifles, older than bow hunting. When everything else fails, a snare still works. That’s worth knowing.
This isn’t a comprehensive trapping guide. I’m not going to walk you through fur trapping or commercial-scale setups. This is about putting small game meat in your belly when it counts — survival snaring and practical trapping for anyone hunting in a pinch.
Table of Contents
- Know the Law Before You Start
- The Anatomy of a Working Snare
- Where You Set It Matters More Than How
- Rabbit and Hare Snares
- Squirrel Poles and Tree Sets
- Simple Deadfall Traps
- Common Snaring Mistakes
- Checking and Resetting
Know the Law Before You Start {#know-the-law}
Before anything else: snaring and trapping regulations vary wildly by state, and in most jurisdictions you need a license. In a true survival emergency, that calculus changes — but in normal backcountry hunting, know your state’s rules. The state wildlife agency for wherever you’re hunting is the definitive source.
Some states require snares to have break-away swivels. Some prohibit wire snares entirely. Others only allow them during specific seasons. Check before you go.
The Anatomy of a Working Snare {#anatomy-snare}
A snare is just a loop of wire or cordage set in a game trail so an animal walks through it, keeps moving, and tightens the loop around its neck. Simple idea. Execution is where people screw it up.
Good snare wire is 24 or 26-gauge brass or stainless steel wire. Brass is traditional — easier to work with your hands, holds its shape well, and doesn’t rust badly in damp environments. I’ve run snares with paracord inner strands in a pinch, and it works, though wire is more reliable.
The components you need:
- A loop, sized to the target animal
- A lock mechanism (a fixed eye in the wire the free end slides through — tightens but doesn’t loosen)
- A support wire or natural anchor to hold the loop at the right height
- A swivel point or anchor at the fixed end to prevent the animal from spinning free
The lock is the piece most beginners get wrong. You need the wire to tighten as the animal pulls forward and not release when it tries to back up. Thread the wire back through a fixed twisted eye — that’s it. Pull it tight and test it with your hand before you set it.
A decent commercial snare kit has these features built in with proper swivels and locks. Not glamorous, but they work. I keep about twenty in my pack.
Where You Set It Matters More Than How {#placement}
Honestly? Location is 80% of whether a snare works. The mechanics are dead simple once you know them. Placement is where the actual skill lives.
Animals are creatures of habit. A rabbit running the same trail three times has practically worn a highway through the brush. Find that trail and you’ve found your set location.
Look for:
- Pinch points — where two natural obstacles (a log and a bush, a rock and a fence line) force an animal through a narrow gap. This is gold. The animal has no choice but to go through the exact spot you chose.
- Fresh sign — tracks, droppings, gnawed bark, fur caught on thorns. If you’re not seeing fresh sign within the last 24 hours, move the snare.
- Trail wear — compressed grass, disturbed leaves, worn dirt. A heavily used trail is obvious once you’re looking for it. A lightly used one takes practice to see.
- Natural funnels — creek crossings, gaps in fences, culverts, tunnel-like spaces in thick brush. Animals use these constantly.
Don’t guess. If you’re not confident you’ve found a real trail, keep looking. A snare set in the wrong spot might as well be set in your living room.
Rabbit and Hare Snares {#rabbit-snares}
Rabbits and snowshoe hares are the most common targets for survival snaring. They’re abundant, they’re calorie-dense relative to their size, and they run predictable trails.
Loop size and height:
- Cottontail rabbit: loop diameter about 3-4 inches, bottom of loop 3 inches off the ground
- Snowshoe hare: loop diameter about 4-5 inches, bottom of loop 4 inches off the ground
- Jackrabbit: 5-6 inch loop, 5 inches off the ground
The height matters a lot. Too low and the animal steps over it. Too high and it passes under. You want the loop positioned to catch the neck, not the leg — a leg snare often results in a live, panicking animal that can work free or injure itself badly before you check it.
Anchoring the support wire: The snare needs to sit in the trail without flopping over when the animal touches it. Bend a piece of wire into a support stake and push it into the ground. Some guys cut a small forked stick and push it in. Either works. The loop should stand upright on its own with the bottom edge the correct height above the trail.
Don’t touch the snare with bare hands more than necessary. Rabbit olfactory detection is strong and human scent on a snare will spook animals for a day or two. Wear gloves when setting — cheap latex gloves work fine, or just handle the wire by the very ends.
Pro Tip: Rub your snares with a handful of local soil and pine needles before setting. This kills some human scent and also takes the shine off new wire, which can flash in sunlight and spook animals.
Squirrel Poles and Tree Sets {#squirrel}
The squirrel pole is maybe my favorite wilderness trap. Simple, effective, and you can set five or six of them in an hour.
Find a tree with squirrel sign — gnawed cones, caches of nuts, obvious scratch marks on the bark. Lean a long, straight pole against the trunk at about a 45-degree angle. Attach 3-4 snares along the length of the pole, spaced about 18 inches apart. Loop size: 2-3 inches for squirrels.
Here’s the beautiful part: squirrels are curious and investigative. They’ll run up and down that pole checking it out. The snares catch them mid-run. When they panic and try to run off the edge of the pole, they hang. I know that sounds unpleasant. Survival is sometimes unpleasant.
Run multiple squirrel poles on the same tree or nearby trees. You can realistically catch 3-4 squirrels in a single overnight set on a productive tree.
Squirrel isn’t a lot of meat — you need several for a real meal — but they’re easier to snare than rabbits in most forested environments and they’re everywhere.
Simple Deadfall Traps {#deadfall}
Deadfall traps work on a different principle: a heavy weight (usually a flat rock or log) is propped up with a notched stick trigger. The animal goes for the bait under the weight, touches the trigger, and the weight drops.
The Paiute deadfall is the best beginner design. It uses four sticks in a specific arrangement — a toggle, a bait stick, a post stick, and a cord. It’s fussy to set but incredibly sensitive, which means faster and more reliable kills.
The figure-four deadfall is simpler and uses only notched sticks — no cord needed. Takes about 20 minutes of practice to get the notch angles right. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it.
For bait, use whatever the local animals are already eating. Acorns for squirrels. Apples or leafy greens for rabbits. Berries for everything. Peanut butter is the classic, and a small jar of peanut butter in your pack pulls triple duty as trail food, emergency energy, and the best universal trap bait I’ve ever used.
The rock needs to be heavy. Three times the weight of the target animal is the general rule. For rabbits and squirrels, you’re looking for a slab rock that weighs 8-10 pounds minimum.
Common Mistakes:
- Not enough weight — An undersized rock will just stun the animal, not kill it. Then you have an injured animal that can bite and scratch when you go to collect it.
- Unstable ground under the set — If the ground is soft, the trigger sticks sink and the trap goes out of alignment.
- Bait placed wrong — Bait should be just at the edge of the weight’s drop zone so the animal has to reach in far enough to trip the trigger.
- No practice at home first — Seriously. The first 10 figure-four sets I built all fell apart. Practice before you need to depend on it.
Common Snaring Mistakes {#mistakes}
I’ve made most of these. Learn from my incompetence.
Setting too few traps. You need volume. A 10% catch rate per trap per night is actually pretty good. Set 10 traps, expect 1 catch. Set 20, expect 2. In a real survival situation, set everything you can.
Setting in the wrong habitat. Rabbits need edge habitat — where brushy cover meets open areas. They don’t live in dense old-growth. Squirrels need nut-producing trees. If you’re setting snares in the wrong habitat, you’re wasting wire.
Checking too infrequently. Check snares every 8-12 hours. An animal left in a snare too long is either dead and partially decomposed, or still alive and extremely stressed — and more likely to work free. Daily morning checks at minimum.
Not re-baiting or resetting. A spring deadfall that has been tripped resets itself sometimes. Snares that have been touched by an animal that got away need to be completely reset and re-scented.
Being impatient. I’ve pulled snares after two nights because I wasn’t catching anything, moved on, and then found the area was loaded with rabbits that just needed one more day to get comfortable with the set. Give it at least three nights in a good location before you move.
Checking and Resetting {#checking}
Check at dawn if possible. Morning is when nocturnal small game are finishing up their active period and before scavengers have had time to steal your catch.
Approach quietly. Walk a wide circle around the snare area before closing in — you’d be surprised how many times I’ve seen a live rabbit still in a snare that panicked and ran when I walked up too fast.
If you catch something: kill it quickly and humanely. A quick, firm blow to the back of the skull. Don’t drag it out.
If a snare has been tripped but there’s no animal: look for tracks, fur, blood. Figure out what happened. Did a leg get caught and slip free? Reset higher. Did a larger animal steal the catch? Set a few feet away from the old location.
Once you know how to field dress a deer, small game is easy — the same basic principles apply on a smaller scale. A small, sharp fixed-blade knife is all you need. My Mora Companion has processed more small game than I can count. $15 knife. Does everything.
For longer-term trapping, check out the full guide on hunting for food in a survival situation — snares are one piece of a larger food-acquisition strategy that includes foraging, fishing, and longer-range hunting. Know all of them and your chances of eating go up dramatically.
Snares aren’t glamorous. There’s no trophy involved, no story to tell about the perfect stalk. But when you’re two days out and the weather’s turned and you’ve burned more calories than you’ve taken in, catching a rabbit in a wire loop feels like striking gold.
My grandfather trapped beaver and mink in northern Wisconsin through the 1940s and fed his family with it. He’d laugh at the idea of putting a snare on a pole and calling it survival skills. To him it was just Tuesday. Learn the skills before you need them. Practice in your backyard. Take one less piece of store-bought food into the backcountry each trip and trust yourself a little more.
You might surprise yourself.