Trapping

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Categories: Cleanup from October 2005 | 1911 Britannica | Hunting

This article refers to animal trapping. For the prepress/printing technique called trapping, refer to the article Spreading and choking.

The human activity of animal trapping consists of hunting for animals to obtain their furs, which are then used for clothes and other artifacts, or sold / bartered (see fur trade). Trappers may often, but not exclusively, use traps to catch their prey; hence the name of the activity and its practitioners. Hunters may also trap animals for food.

Trapping other animals for food is also practiced by some animals, for example, the funnel web spider traps its prey.

History

Animal trapping is perhaps one of the first methods of hunting. It requires less time and energy than most other methods, and can give a very good result, if not quite as fast. It is also comparably safer for the hunter.

200,000 years ago, in the Lower Paleolithic period, traps were used by central european people to hunt mammuts.

In 1590, jaw traps started being used in England.

The mouse trap, with a strong spring mounted on a wooden base, was patented in 1910 by James Henry Atkinson, a trap maker fron Leeds, England.

Trapping was one of the main economical forces in the early days of North American settlements (such as the Canadian Fur Brigade).

Even today many people rely on traps to remove smaller animals, such as mice.

Traps

Today most of the traps used can be easily divided into four types: body gripping traps, snares, leghold traps, and cages. There are also a number of traditional designs.

Body gripping/crushing traps

The body gripping traps are traps made to humanly kill the animal caught. They are frequently called “Conibear” traps after one of the most common brand, but even a simple mousetrap is one. The animal must be lured or guided into the correct position before the trap is triggered. The trap is usually built to strike at the back of the neck or behind the shoulders of the targeted animal and snap the spine. The effect should be instant or next to instant death, but if the animal is incorrectly positioned, the trap may not work as intended and cause the animal to suffer. There has been quite a lot of research to create traps that can be made more humanly. Among the proposed constructions are a box in which taking the bait actually triggers the trap and crushes the animal against the bottom of the box. Most (if not all) of these traps rely on blunt trauma so to not destroy the pelt of the animal being taken.

Snares

Snares are one of the simplest and most effective traps. Made of high quality wire they are cheap to produce and easy to set a large number of. This has made them a large problem, as snares can kill animals years after the trapper has left the area. Snares can be set in a number of different ways. First of all, they can be set “locking” or “relaxing”. A locking snare has a small lock that makes the trap lethal. They are used to strangle the animal being captured. A relaxing snare works more or less like the leash for a dog. It keeps the animal in place, but without hurting it. Neither is fail proof however. In some areas spring loaded snares are used, often replacing leg hold traps. These are set on the ground with a trigger, just like the leg hold trap. As a precautionary measure, most modern snares are equipped with "deerstops". These devices are not completely deer proof, but can be helpful to keep from leg snaring deer, but ocasionaly snaremen neck snare deer. This usually happens when they make trail-sets for coyote or fox. Most states require deer stops.

Leghold traps

Probably most commonly associated with trapping, the leghold trap is a rather simple mechanical trap. It is made up of two jaws, a spring of some sort, and a trigger in the middle. When the animal steps on the trigger the trap closes around the leg, holding the animal in place. Usually some kind of lure is used to position the animal, or the trap is set on an animal trail. Traditionally, leghold traps had tightly closing “teeth” to make sure the animal stayed in place. The teeth also made sure the animal could not move the leg in the trap and ruin their fur. However, this resulted in many animals gnawing off legs in order to escape. More modern traps have a gap called an "offset jaw" and work more like a handcuff. Also there are padded jaw traps that work in the same manner. They grip above the paw, making sure the animal cannot pull out but does not destroy the leg. This also allows the trapper to release unwanted catches.

Cage traps

Cage traps are live cages and do not harm the animal, and are usually baited. They usually have a triger that is located in the back of the cage and it triggers a door to shut and not alowing the animal to escape. Cage trapping is the most humane form of trapping and is also ocasionally the only form of trapping many countries allow. They are mostly used to catch unwanted animals and moving them to another location, without harm.

Environmental impact

Trapping can have a very hard effect on the local population. The most active animals are also those most likely to be caught. A large percentage of the catches are adult animals. Trapping is also one of the main methods used by poachers. On its own, the impacts of trapping are equivalent to those from hunting.

Unwanted catches

One of the hardest problems with trapping is unwanted catches. Skilled trappers can limit this problem, but it is never completely gone. Catching unintended animals may only be a problem for the trapper, but when people’s pets or endangered animals are caught, trappers can be in a world of trouble. Unwanted catching is one of the most common reasons for outlawing trapping, together with animal protection.

Animal protection

There has been much debate over the animal protection aspects of trapping. On one side are the trappers, claiming it is very humane due to the relative quickness of the kills. On the other side are the animal rights activists, claiming animals suffer longer when trapped than hunted. The far larger group, the hunters, has often not decided which side to support. Trapping can result in a lot of pain for the animals caught, and it is often more obvious than during hunting. It is hard to tell how much a wounded deer suffers from being hunted, but it is much easier to tell how much a fox badly caught in a trap suffers from the mauled paw. The fact that most of the animals trapped are also traditionally “likeable” animals has only increased the animal rights groups’ campaigns to ban trapping.

Traps and trapping

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain.

Trap (O. Eng. treppe or traeppe, properly a step, as that or which an animal places its foot and is caught, cf. Ger. Treppe flight of stairs), a mechanical device for the snaring or catching anything, and especially wild animals. Traps for animals are of great antiquity, and no savage people has ever been discovered, whatever its culture scale, that did not possess some variety of snare. In the most primitive form of trap no mechanism need be present, e.g. a cavity into which the animal walks, as the pitfall of the Arabs and Africans or the snow-hole of the Inuit. Dr O. T. Mason has divided traps into three classes: enclosing traps, which imprison the victim without injury; arresting traps, which seize the victim without killing it, unless it be caught by the neck or round the lungs; and killing traps, which crush, pierce or cut to death.

Enclosing traps include the pen, cage, pit and door-traps. Pentraps are represented by the fences built in Africa into which antelopes and other animals are driven: and by fish-seines and poundnets. Among cage-traps may be mentioned bird-cones filled with cern and smeared with bird-lime, which adhere to the bird's head, blinding it and rendering its capture easy; the fish-trap and lobster-pot; and the coop-traps, of which the turkey-trap is an example. This consists of a roofed ditch ending in a cul-de-sac into which the bird is led by a row of corn-kernels. Over the further end a kind of coop is built; the bird, instead of endeavouring to retrace its steps, always seeks to escape upward and remains cooped. Pitfalls include not only those dug in the earth, at the bottom of which knives and spears are often fixed, but also several kinds of traps for small animals. One of these consists of a box near the top of which a platform is hung, in such a way that, when the animal leaps upon it to secure the bait, it is precipitated into the bottom of the box, while the platform swings back into place. Another kind of pitfall is formed of a sort of funnel of long poles, into which birds fall upon alighting on a perfectly balanced bar, to which a dish of corn is made fast. The door-traps form a large and varied class, ranging in size from the immense cage with sliding door in which such beasts as tigers are caught, to the common box-trap for mice or squirrels, the door of which falls when the spindle upon which the bait is fixed is moved. The box-trap with a simple ratchet door, allowing the animal or bird to push under the door or wires which fall back and imprison them, is alike an enclosing and an arresting trap.

There are four general classes of arresting traps, the mesh, the set-hook, the noose and the clutch. The mesh-traps include the mesh and thong toils used of old for the capture of the lion and other large game, and the gill-net in the meshes of which fish are caught by the gills. To the set-hook division are reckoned the set-lines of the angler, several kinds of trawls and the toggle or gorge attached to a line, which the animal, bird or fish swallows only to be held prisoner. The noose-trap class is a very extensive one. The simplest examples are the common slip-noose snares of twine, wire or horsehair, set for birds or small mammals either on their feeding grounds or runways, the victim being caught by the neck, body or foot as it tries to push through the noose. When the noose is used with bait it is generally attached to a stout sapling, which is bent over and kept from springing back by some device of the "figure-4" kind. This is constructed of three pieces of wood, one of the horizontal spindle on which the bait is placed, one of the upright driven into the ground, and the third the connecting cross-piece, fitted to the others so loosely that only the strain of the elastic sapling keeps the trap together. When the victim tries to secure the bait he dislodges the cross-piece and is caught by the noose, which is spread on the ground under the bait. The Patagonians take the vicuna with one variety of this snare, and, before the moose (Cervus alces) was protected by law in North America, even that animal, weighing often 1,200 lb (600 kg), was caught in snares of wire and rope. There are two widely different types of clutchtraps: bird-lime and other tenacious substances, and jaw and claptraps. The simplest form of the first is adhesive fly-paper. A common practice in Italy is to smear with bird-lime the branches in the neighbourhood of a captive owl, which results in the capture of numbers of birds, gathered to scold at their common enemy. Examples of the clap-trap are the clap-net, consisting of two nets laid flat on the ground and attached to cords in such a manner that they fly up and close when the draw-cord is pulled by a concealed trapper; and the various other spring-traps used by bird-catchers.

The jaw-traps are the most important class of device for the capture of fur-bearing animals, and are the product of civilization. While rude specimens are known to have existed in the middle ages, the steel-trap as used to-day dates from the middle of the 18th century, and reached perfection in the latter half of the 19th, the "Newhouse," named from the American inventor, having been the first trap of high grade. Steel-traps consist of two jaws, with or without teeth, which are worked by powerful single or double springs and are "sprung" when the victim steps upon the "pan," which is placed between the jaws and attached to a lever. They are made in many sizes, from the smallest, designed for rats, to the "Great Bear Tamer," weighing over 40 lb (20 kg), with jaws of 16 in. in which lions, tigers and grizzly bears are trapped. The steel-trap is set and concealed in such a manner that the animal must step on its pan in passing over it to secure the bait. In trapping such wary animals as the sable, marten, mink, otter or beaver, great care is taken to obliterate all signs of the trap and of human presence, the scent of the hands being neutralized by smoking the traps or avoided by the use of gloves. In North America castoreum, musk, asafoetida, oil of anise and common fish oil are used to entice the victims to the traps. Trails of some one of these scents are laid from different directions to the trap.

With the clutch-traps must also be reckoned the oldest form of steel-trap, now to be seen only in museums, the man-trap, which was used first about the middle of the 18th century when the systematic preservation of game rendered protection against poachers a necessity. Such a trap, from Gloucestershire, is over 6 ft (2 m) long, has 19 in (500 mm) serrated jaws and weighs 88 lb (40 kg). Another form of man-trap, the spring-gun, belongs to the next category, the killing traps, which are divided into traps of weight, point and edge. The most important of the weight class is the dead-fall, of which the typical form consists of a pen over whose narrow entrance one or more logs are laid across a lighter log, which is balanced upon a spindle necessarily struck by the entering animal, causing the logs to fall upon its back. In some cases the bait is attached to the spindle itself. The dead-fall was always the favourite trap of the American Indians, and is in use among many aboriginal tribes in Africa and South America. A slab of stone is often used as a weight. The common mouse-trap which kills either by a blow or strangulation is a variety of dead-fall. Of point-traps may be mentioned those of the impaling and the missile classes. An example of the former is the stake or spear placed by Arab and African tribes at the bottom of pitfalls for big game. Another impaling trap common in Africa is the harpoon down-fall, generally used for the hippopotamus. It consists of a heavily weighted harpoon suspended in such a way that the animal, passing beneath, breaks a cord and precipitates the harpoon upon itself. Another example of impalement is the hawk-trap, consisting of a circle of stout sharp wires, in the centre of which a live fowl is placed. A bird of prey attempting to secure the fowl is impaled upon the wires. Of missile traps the most universal are the ancient springbow and its modern representative the spring-gun. This is fixed upon stakes, or against a tree, with a line attached to the trigger and stretched immediately in front of the muzzle. An animal pressing against the string pulls the trigger and discharges the piece into its own body. An arrangement of sticks holding the bait in front of the muzzle is sometimes substituted for the string. Of edge-traps a curious example is the wolf-knife of Western America, which consists of a very sharp blade embedded in frozen fat. One of the wolves, licking the fat, cuts its tongue and a flow of blood ensues, with the result that not only the wolf itself but its companions become infuriated by the smell and taste, and the wounded beast, and often many of the others, are killed and devoured. The Alaskan knife-trap for large game consists of a heavy blade attached to a lever, which, when released by the animal biting at the bait, flies over and kills the victim.de:Trapper; Fallensteller; Pelzjäger ja:罠 pl:Traper