Making A Survival Snare Lock

Survival Snare Lock for Trapping

Conventional Snare 

   Trapping in a survival situation can be a hard thing to do if you're not prepared with the right knowledge. You either need to make a primitive trap which take a lot of time and effort and can be unreliable at times, or make your own snares with any rope, string or cable you already have with you. With a simple piece of cable, wire or even string, you can make a snare that could be used to catch just about any animal alive. The trick is either having the trapping supplies to make your own snares or understanding how to tie a Hoffman Knot and make your own snare lock with the cable itself.

This is one of Craig O'Gorman's
Trapping Books that just came
out when my Dad took His
Trapping Course

 The Hoffman Knot was developed by a Good Friend of Craig O'Gorman's who is a Professional Trapper in Broadus, Montana. As far as I could find the book is no longer in print, but my Dad took Craig O'Gorman's professional trapping class when he was my age and passed this knowledge on to me. I'm not sure how much it cost to go out with Craig O'Gorman on His Trapping Line these days, but in 1982 it cost my Dad and his Friend $900.00 for two days.

How To Make A Homemade Snare Lock

 The first picture above is a modern snare with all the trapping jewelry including a deer stop and spring. As you can see it takes a lot of items that adds to the cost of making your own trapping snares.

 A Hoffman Knot is a snare lock that is made with the cable so the only thing you need is a good piece that's strong enough to hold your target animal. This knot can be tricky the first couple times, but once you understand what you're doing its really easy and can be done in minutes.

First Part in Making a
Homemade Snare Lock

The first step is making a circle with the cable and leave a five inch tail, take the tail and put it through the circle and repeat this step until there is no longer a tail.

The next step is pushing the other end of the cable up so it creates another semi-circle and put the end of the cable through the semi-circle so it creates a bigger circle. This is where the animal will put its head through when the snare is set on location and ready to catch an animal.

The semi-circle is the actual lock that is forced into closing once the animal pulls on the snare and closes around its neck. The biggest mistake with this snare lock is not feeding the cable through the correct way as shown in the picture below. If you do it the opposite way, the lock will just slide right back open and the animal will get away.

Homemade Snare with
built-in Lock

Learning how to make a snare knot is the easy part with the hardest part understanding the animal's habits you are trying to catch. The trick is finding main route trails with fresh sign and making sure you set at the correct height depending on the animal you're trying to catch.

Snaring is an Art that takes a lot of dedication and practice to be efficient at catching animals using this method.  If this is one of your main methods for catching dinner in a survival situation, then you really need to understand what you're doing because the slightest mistake could make the difference between the animal still there or walking up to an empty snare that the animal walked right over or around. The better the snare is camouflaged but no so much that it becomes a barrier in the animals trail, the better success you will have snaring any animal alive.

The best advice is knowing what all the animal tracks in your area look like and never ever set a snare where there's a chance of catching someones pet. The Hoffman Snare Lock is a "not" a relaxing lock and will get tighter the more an animal pulls on the cable.

You can also make the Hoffman Knot using shoe laces from your shoes and catch small animals like rabbits and squirrels when combined with a bent over live tree branch with a trap-like trigger attached.