Building Traps without Tools

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http://www.thepathfinderschoolllc.com

Tags: Building Traps without Tools,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder

Video Transcription

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okay like we've talked about in quite a few videos already you know conservation of resources is huge in any survival or self-reliance situation and it's taught very heavily in the Pathfinder system conserving your resources includes conserving the blade of your knife so if you can build traps without cutting tools then you're that much better off so what we're gonna do today is we're gonna build a quick dog bone trigger trap right here off the trail to decide show you how to do that using nothing except your hands and a piece of string stay with okay here's the first component of our trap is a y-you can see that both ends are snapped off this is pretty much a dead piece it's very light but it's been broken off not cut off okay we need a trigger we need a dog bone for that we're gonna need a small stick so it's gonna break this off a little bit and see which is going to be the best piece for that I'm gonna say it's probably this one right here at the end break that off a little bit long right now start off with hang on to that I'm gonna need a bait stick for that I'm gonna use this end and I'm gonna need a stake in the ground and I'll use this for that

hopefully not I can always go get another one

and now we probably need a baton I'll throw these down here beside this rope and that's trigger and get a baton and be right back okay you can see we split this off and bust it off by hand I just shove the branch in the fork of a tree and snap it off I've showed you guys that before

in videos there's still green on the inside so it's plenty heavy for bouton work so let's give us a trap built right down here by this dead Bush honeysuckle right so the next thing we need to do this we're gonna use this as our spring device it's not live it's pretty well dead but it's still got a lot of spring to it this is green on the inside so let's break all the stuff out of the way that's gonna interfere with this thing springing

yeah we don't want to use a knife or an ax or saw for this like a surf or cutting just getting everything out of our way we want to make sure that this gonna be plenty springy it looks like it is and now we're ready to start first thing I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna take this piece of line here I've gotten it's more than long enough or what I want to do so I'm gonna tie a half hitch or a overhand knot and here to give me a loop I'm gonna take that loop over the top of my spring device right over the trail and I'm gonna put a loop in there so that I can get it back off very easily when I'm done and if I want to move my trap somewhere else it's not going to be a problem bring that down off the trail over here where I want to go this we're going to build our trap okay so we're going to build our trap right here off the trail like I said this piece of the string is more than long enough for what we need so what we'll do is we will reverse engineer this a little bit because normally what I would do is I would tie my dog bone in right where our one of my trap to be as far as the trigger system goes but in this case I need to look at how much loop I've got left here how much string I've got left because what I'm gonna have to do is I'm gonna have to wrap some of this around the tree to conserve my resource so I don't have to cut my line and I don't have to use my cutting tool so I'm just gonna wrap this line around the tree and it might take quite a few times I really don't care about that because all I'm worried about right now is not cutting anything and not using a cutting tool that'll make it a little easier have a shorter trip to go around this thing yeah okay now let's see we got alright now we got enough for a loop so now we'll just tie a loop in this other end real quick

same exact type loop except smaller we don't want this loop much bigger than the diameter of our cordage so I'm going to tie that loop pretty small you can see that's actually just a little bit bigger than what I intended to stop with not very big and then I put the loop back through and that'll give me my snare loop then I'll bring this thing down into the trail good time my dogs on trigger where I want it wrap around a couple times on this side and half hitch it off just like that a half hitch at once I fix it twice again easy to get off of here if I need to then I come around to this other side I'll slack it up and I'll half-inch around that side the trigger a couple times just like this there's one and there's two and that'll be more than enough to hold that trigger in place but yet I'll be able to get it off easy when I need to okay now that I've gotten that and you decide where I'm gonna set my trap get my fork going here into the ground gonna be about right here I want that fork directly over the top of where my traps gonna be now if our grounds real hard right here that may be the only issue we run into with using these dead branches but it doesn't look like it's gonna be too bad I'm gonna bend this in in just a little bit as best I can try not to break it off I heard it snap a little bit but that may not matter if it breaks because as long as I've got this edge on here I could put it in that a little bit steeper angle like this it's still gonna do what I wanted to do because it's got that hook on there and that's where I'm trying to trap my dog bone is in that hook okay and I've got my other two pieces over here which are my bait stick I'm gonna try to break that off at an angle if I don't it's not that big of a deal that one's kind of got a sharp angle on it already now what I would put on here for bait depends on what I'm trying to catch obviously but in this case it would probably be some kind of a peanut butter or something like that that I had my backpack I try to keep peanut butter anytime I get it whether it's in an MRE or whatever I try to keep peanut butter because it seems to be very very effective on squirrel now I'm just going to measure this out see where I want this to be this base stick counting my stay in the ground over on this side just like that my bait sticks too heavy it's not a big deal I'll just go make another one if it's too long it's not a big deal I'll just break it off and I think this is a little bit thicker than what I want to use so I'm gonna go find a different one that'll take me just a second I'll be right back

I've got a dead branch here this is gonna work this will give me plenty of length do whatever I want to do with it I'll try to break it off sharp on this side if I can measure it out a little bit here in between my stays break it off again try snap as clean as I possibly can that's still a little bit long what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna wedge that on a stump right here just snap a piece off of it and I just split a piece off the side of it like that and that's fine a lot of people get way too critical with this stuff it's not that critical just like breaking this fork is not a big deal as long as I've got that hook in there because all I really want to happen is I want this dog bone to be captured underneath it as long as that happens and it doesn't come out of the ground that's all that really counts my dog bones a little bit long again not a big deal I use the dead branch I'll snap it off if I have to I'll retie it it's not a big deal this stuff is not as critical as a lot of people make it out to be the smaller my dog bone is the better off I am sometimes because it's gonna set off easier so it's shortened up now I'll half hitch it off on both sides

just like I did the first time there we go

like I said that is more than enough to hold that in there bring it down watching my face obviously I'll hook it underneath as long as I hold my finger on it down here not gonna go off then I'll put my bait stick in here now if I were setting this trap for real I would obviously want to make sure that I had bait on this stick before I put it here again anything that you think that animals gonna eat whether it is the guts of something that you just killed whether it is something that you have leftover in your backpack like peanut butter or something like that you know that's part of conserving resources is not always eating everything that you have because you might be able to use that for bait for a bigger animal all right then we can set our snare loop over the top stake it out if we need to out here cover it with a few leaves it's spread with peanut butter you know it works very easy the animal comes in trips it and he's hung and that's all there is to it it's very very simple

we used absolutely no cutting tools to make that trap we can move this trap anywhere we want it it's very easy to set it takes seconds to set it up once we get our stick baited all we have to do is hold it in place long enough to set it

we can set it to a hair-trigger if we choose to do that that's not difficult with this type of trap put our snare loop back over the top of it spread it out let's take it down if the need arises and again boom nothing to it guys

trapping is over complicated by so many people it is not that difficult the issue is sheer numbers of traps the more traps you have the more chance you have to catch animals but if you can make traps like this without using tools you're much better off you