Snares on BBC now!

ivanthehunter

con traversal use of snares on BBC country file now

ivanthehunter

An unfair view on snares!!
The show was not completely one sided with points of view from the RSPCA and Game keepers who under operate under the guidance of DEFRA guidelines and within current charter of the law in the UK. They both failed to show problems with Snares.

In both cases they failed to note that snares do not kill animals if the are properly set and of the correct design,(CORRECT DESIGN!!! they failed to show correct design points), this is as true as possible when pertaining to rabbits. Exceptions occur when rabbits at full pelt crash in to an open field snare, in these cases the instant death is secured through a neck fracture. In these neck fractures the skin is never severely cut, if even cut at all!!. In normal conditions the rabbits are not strong enough to cut their own skin with the best of pulling against such a relatively thick cable, i say relatively thick cable in terms of the thickness of the snare wire and the strength at which such a small animal can pull when starting from a stationary position with in the reach of the snare and teather.

The problem snares in the UK contain a locker device which only allows travel in one direction! in the tightening direction. they only allow tightening of the snare on the animal, these were once once legally until their usage was rightly banned.
These lock snares are destructive to soft flesh (even to badger flesh, which is super tough) as they only continue to tighten with every yank against the teather that the caught animal exerts on such a noose. As such these are the snares which are giving snaring all the bad press and provide the anti's with all the ammunition they need in order to show any and all forms of hunting in a barbaric light and unfortunately any person involved in the hunting world is seen in the same light..

Problems occur when Governments place legal requirements on the design of snares. They obviously take their information from a group of people who know very little of the craft of snaring albeit that their intentions are in the interest of animal welfare. Here in Ireland we have regulations which demand that snares for rabbits have a stopper device fitted along the snare such that the snare will only close to a specified size, this gives sizes of 52mm dia and 104mm dia for Rabbit and Fox nooses respectively. There seems to be no reason given for this in the legislation but if a reasonable person was to read between the lines, they might think that it was to prevent skin breakage under extreme exertion that a trapped animal might demonstrate when caught or perhaps it is possibly to allow a larger animal to remove a foot/leg from a snare such an animal might be a Sheep or even the coveted Deer.
Both deer and Sheep and any such large animal can exert extreme force on the point of contact between the skin and the wire snare and therefore it is an absolute necessity that these snares are livestock proofed against any possible contact.

I am mainly concerned with Rabbit snaring as it relates to Irish law and I feel that Ireland has chosen a bad design for rabbit snares,
Their design says nothing of the removal of locker devices as I would believe that the Irish Government thinks that this problem is irrelevant because of the limited travel of the snare noose dictated by the use of the compulsory stopper.
Dilemma:-When a stopper is set so far back from the eye of the noose;
In this case when the brass wire is dragged to wards the stopper as it would be when in normal usage, it will travel no further than the designed stopper. At this point the wire will have been bent(plastic deformation) and will have taken a new shape. The problem is that wire has elastic properties, with these properties a wire must be forced beyond its elastic limits for a new shape to be retained. This means that the stopper is not the point at which the wire will stay when the force is taken off the system..
With the stoppers set so far from the noose a locker device is required, as the wire/brass needs to go past its elastic limit before it will take any new shape..with the stopper impeding the travel of the brass wire the (dia) diameter of the noose is further increased.
The problem then occurs that if snares are placed in such a fashion(with lockers) and that if an animal is caught not by the neck but by the mid-drift then the locker device will cause discomfort in the case of Rabbits and severe injury in the case of Fox snares or even Badgers (The snaring of Badgers is allowed under license!)These are the pictures that the media use so successful to rally support against all forms of snaring and the have even managed to rally such support among farmers and the shooting community..

The solution for rabbit snares is the simple. It requires the use of a brass/plastic/glass hook which gives way when a certain loading is reached. by loading i mean a certain pressure. this would mean that large animals would easily break any snare in which they were caught.. the strength of such a devices could easily be engineered such that a fox or any larger animal could easily break free.... Surely this is the way forward and would allow the removal of the stoppers which are a nuisance to the home snare builder/maker..
The thing about these stoppers is that their security of purchase on the snare wire cannot be guaranteed as apposed to the "brake strain device" mentioned above....
Any comments lads...... this is important as it more of a Irish tradition than a sport.....