A field expedient leg hold trap can be created with parachute cord and a square of cardboard with an x cut in its center. Locate an animal trail of the desired species (you can read sign can't you?). Dig a hole in the trail which will let the desired critters foot and leg drop into the whole about half way down the critters leg. For a deer this would be eight to ten inches. This hole should be small in diameter the necessary depth. Now make your slip knot in the parachute cord (or whatever cord or wire you have that can take the struggle). Weave the cord so that id remains held open by the x in the cardboard. Place the cardboard over the hole and stake the snare or better tie the snare to a drag. Now a deer or similar critter can carry a pretty heafty snare a long ways. Ensure that you have something that will snag in the brush but always be yielding to sudden hard tugs. A section from a small fir tree works well if you leave branches intact. Critter will come trundeling down the trail and step (eventually) on the carefully camofluaged cardboard. It will slide up critter's leg and stick there partway up the leg. Critter will try to shake it off or walk away from it. Slip knot slips in only one direction sooo....

Don't remember where I picked that one up but do remember that it worked.

Simple bird catching trap can be made of an old plastic milk crate. Dig a depression about half as big around as your crate. Dig a wide shallow V going into the depression. Ensure that the total depth of the depression is about 1/2 the height of your target bird. Hand full of grain inside depression. Handfull of grain outside depression. Cover depression with milk crate such that the V makes a trail into the depression under the crate. Birds spot grain and follow grain down V into depression under the crate. Amazing thing is they never seem to be able to find their way back out. Wind up inside eating your handfull of grain. This works especially sell with flocking and coveying birds... quail, turkey... etc.

A simple spool of 15# fishin line (mono) uncoiled onto the ground and staked down a half a dozen times makes a tanglefoot that a bird will entangle himself in when he is scratching for grain or gravel...

Well... later

-- (...@........), October 27, 1999

Answers

Since Prop 4, traps are unlawful in the State of California. Can't use even the padded ones.

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), October 27, 1999.

Marsh: so what?

-- A (A@AisA.com), October 27, 1999.

Indeed so what? Trapping birds is illegal almost anywhere in this country. If you are starving you better catch the birds BEFORE the gamewarden catches them himself.

Racoons really like rotten tuna fish. They also seem to like anise for some odd reason. Favorite food of foxes where available are skunks. Catch a skunk, use him for bait (if you want a fox).

Havelina (peccary) are really tough to hold with snares... takes a really good wire AND very stout drag even then the poor fellow will tear up half an acre trying to get free.

Most wise hunter/gatherers elect to persue small game. Just enough for the day. Not too much to carry and less loss thru spoilage. You do know how to smoke meat dont you? You do have a bit of extra salt in your kit don't you?

A fellow tells a story... his friend's grandpa was an Indian (don't give a damn about political correctness as I too am a Native American just of Irish extraction) The young fellow wanted to learn how to track. The Grandpa said he would teach the boy when he fed the birds and gave the boy grain to do so. Boy goes into yard and begins casting grain... Grandpa says no YOU must FEED the birds meaning hand them the grain. After a very long while of remaining as if dead lying prone in the yard, hand outstreched with grain it it, the birds came and ate. True story.

Can you hide in a small shrub beside a house and remain unseen by the owner of the house when he stops beside the shrub to pee? If you cant you have never fed the birds.

City folks have eyes for seeing city things. Good camaflouge and patience are just this side of invisibility. Did you know that polar bears can't be detected with night vision equipment? Did you know that coyotes are pretty much the same, you just can't seem to see them in your NOG's, even when you see them with your eyes...

Mesquite beans contain a yellow power, mixed with water you can bake it on a hot rock into cakes and it's pretty darn tasty. Lot of work though. Buds and leaves of prickley pear cactus are edible and a good source of moisture for your solar still. Are you reading these sorts of books? Do you have one that is more or less specific to your area?

Acorns are falling now, plenty starch in them. They are a bit bitter though.

Muskrat, racoon, nutria, are execllent eating. All these live around places where cattail grows. Meat and veggies in one spot. Beware snakes (kill and eat).

Enough for now.

-- (...@.......), October 27, 1999.

I understand that acorns are edible once the tannins are leached out of them. Leaving them submerged for a full day, with several changes of water, is said to render them suitable for consumption once dried and ground to flour, then baked. Excess tannin consumption can lead to renal failure, so one must be very careful.

A mature oak tree can produce as much as five hundred pounds of acorns every fourth year, less in intervening years.

-- PKM (.@...), October 27, 1999.