FAQ
Tying off the snare and using a drag.
When you tie the snare off to something make it something strong. We have had t post pulled out of the ground and a good size yaupon broken off. If you use quick clips be sure and screw them all the way closed. I didn’t once and had a big hog spread the clip and was gone. Keep it short. Use as little chain as possible when you attaché it to the snare tie off end. Don’t give the hog a lot of chain to get up a big head of steam when he hits the end of the line. If you use a drag use a heavy one. If you have any drags built some. You can use a cord board box fill it with an 80 pound bag of cheap sack cert. Water it and push some 5/8” rebar thought the box and let it set up. Be sure to set in some kind of an eye bolt to tie off to. After it hardens you can come back and bend the rebar like anchors. It’s cheap and it works. I once had a hog drag a cement anchor like this over 50 yards so use strong chain.
A drag is not like tying off to a stationary object. I like to have 30 feet or more of chain between the snare and my drag. He will hang up a lot sooner with the longer chain.
I don’t tie my traps off. I remove the chain altogether on mine. There is no need to tie it off to any thing as the trap is going to come off of the animal’s leg. It will be with in ten feet of where you set it. Remember the trap is weak with a one inch jaw off set it is designed to fall off.
Baits;
What can I say? Not much will beat plain corn. There are several products on the market and its good too, it’s just more expressive. Sour corn or maze is good, a small amount of diesel fuel poured into a bucket of corn is good. We mix a little used oil from the tractor some times. With Hold A Hawg snare traps you don’t have to have any bait. Set them in hog trails or fence crossings. Several of us have started to use the Hawg Urine we offer and nothing more. I like this method in an area with a high deer population. It’s true you can release the deer unharmed but a deer means you did not catch a hog in that trap. Here’s my secret method for hard to trap hog. Set your trap and tie it off like you normally do. Now spread your corn on the ground in a horse shoe shape around your trap set, about two feet from the corn, never on or over the trap. With that done, use a garden sprayer with a pt. of diesel fuel in it and spray the whole area, corn, the soil over your trap, the soil over your snare the whole thing. Now every thing smells like diesel. I have found that the older smarter hogs smell the metal and or the pvc tube in the ground. The diesel makes it all smell the same and a hog loves diesel. This is good to know if you have dirty traps and you cant clean them set them cover and spray. The down stroke to this is now that trap smells like diesel so you have to keep it from your other traps. Dedicate this trap to this method of trapping and don’t contaminate the others with the diesel smell. Keep it separate or really give it a hot water soapy scrubbing. The trap must be keep clean of any scent.
Box traps
I have used box traps in the past. When your box stops catching hogs I have a tip for you that work. The hogs will eat the corn on the out side of the trap and not go inside the box. Set the Hold A Hawg snare trap on the out side of your box trap, where they do come for your corn and tie the snare cable off to the box trap. I have caught many hogs this way. You can try spraying the whole box trap with diesel fuel and that will some times pull them back in the box trap. Soak a corn cob with hog urine and toss it in the trap. I have caught some deer in a box trap and it was not a pretty sight. With our system we release the animal unharmed no tore off ears of broken antlers. Some times they will have a rope burn at the sight of the snare. The deer stops will not let the cable cut into the animals leg.
Scents;
One of my favorite sayings is, the very best scent is the total absents of human order. If you’re a bow hunter, trapper or cameraman and need to get close you watch the wind and keep your scent down. We use gloves, kneeling pads, and hawg urine to cover our sent. I like to make my sets alone. I don’t want several people standing around my sets, smoking, spiting, peeing and leaving a lot of extra odor. I like to use a dry corn cob to hold my trapping scents, mostly our hawg urine. I break off one end and push a stick in the middle. I apply about a table spoon of our hawg urine to the cob and stick it in the ground on the up wind side of my trap. I have a friend that uses three to four cobs with the urine on the up wind side. He kind of circles the set with them. You can put a little on the ground, bush or tree that’s near your set. It acts as a draw as well as a cover scent. We sometimes tie a diesel soaked rag to the fence on the wind side. Keep the area human scent free and you’re on your way.
Trap sets;
If you are or have trapped coyotes this is easy as hell. Think of using my system something like trapping coyotes except on steroids. You can make a dirt hole set just come back two foot instead of nine inches and to the left or right one foot instead of three inches. Here is what I just said the rest of you. dig a hole in the ground with some post hole diggers about a foot or two deep. Fill it about half full with corn and a little diesel. On the up wind side stick your urine soaked cob in the ground on the back side of your corn hole. we drag in some brush or small logs to channel the hog to the corn on the trap side. I like to come back from the hole about two feet and to the left or right about one foot and bed my trap there. the smaller animals can come and go and not get in your trap as easy. A hog will come in start to eat and start walking his back feet around and its just a matter of time till he steps on the screen. I like a back foot catch I feel like you take a lot of his power away with one back leg snared. Remember keep the chain to the snare as short as possible. Keep him in tight. I could go on for a while here on sets but I will add some more later.
Trap care and turning;
We use a number five Bridger leg hold traps that has been modified to our needs. We have a full one inch off set jaw. All of the edges has been polished for a smooth none cutting surface. We added a metal lip around the outside of each jaw to assist in holding the cable in place. The brass pan bolt has been replaced with a bolt and locking nut. A bushing has also been applied to the pan bolt to allow for a little extra pan tension. The heavy spring has been replaced with lighter ones to better allow an animal to escape the trap. The trap is physically heavy which helps the animal to lose it.
When you get your trap go set it if you wish and it will work fine. To prohibit the rust thing I was mine in the dish washer and let it dry. I next spray paint them with brown colored primer. I apply several coats. This will not work with yotes I know but its fine for hogs. I can say here that it is a lot easier than boiling, log dyeing, and waxing. I take the chain off my traps. The trap will come off the hog’s leg and be lying close to your trap bed. Tighten the pan bolt down a good bit. Use a 5/16 winch and a screw driver to do this. Tighten it down till you think it will take a 40 pound shoat to set it off. That should be 10 pounds per leg. So I tighten to about 10 to 15 pounds. This will keep a lot of pigs and coons from tripping your trap. You can also put the dog loop in a vise and squeeze it down a little. If you do this you may have to bend the main frame up or down a touch to get the pan to set flush with the jaws when the trap is open or set. You don’t want the pan pointing up wards and above the jaw line. It’s all very simple just take a min. and study it. Please keep them clean and scent free. I one of my partner’s doe’s handle a trap bare handed I use one of several scent killers on the market. Set the trap and bed it put the pan cover in place and spray it all with the scent killer.
Hold a Hawg Snare ;
It’s hard to get some folks to under stand that its not really about the trap. The trap is nothing more than a snare delivery devise. The trap will not hold a house cat. It is not designed to do anything but deliver the snare. I have been putting springs on snares for ten years of one type or another. I stared years a go with screen door type spring and used a pulling motion to tighten the lock. I move on to the type we use now about five years ago. I finally paid some one to make them for me. Yea Rick they do work better. There I said it. I just like building it my self.
We had to be able to release any by catch, deer, unharmed. We can do that with this system. That’s the whole of it right there, releasing deer, that you will trap from time to time. The pvc tube is just that a ¾” thin walled pvc tube 14” long. When you bed the snare in the soil, the weight of the dirt on top of a bare spring hinders that spring from delivering it energy to the lock. The tube acts like a barrel of a shotgun, the spring is not diverted from its target and the lock receives the full force of the spring to slam it closed. You have to have both, the trap and the hah snare for this system to work.
We have two cable sizes a 3/32” 7x7 and 7x19 cable with a regular lock and a 1/8” 7x19 cable with a bigger wolf lock. We use the best aircraft cable we can buy. The springs are built for us in Houston Tx.
Q. WHY DO I NEED TO USE A IN LINE SHOCK SPRING?
A. SHOCK SPRINGS HAVE BEEN IN USE FOR YEARS. THE COYOTE TRAPS USE IT MORE THAN ANY OTHER. IT ABSORBS THE SHOCK FOR THE ANIMAL IN A LEG HOLD TRAP AS IT LUNGES FOR FREEDOM AND HITS THE END OF THE TIE OFF CHAIN. THIS CAN RESULT IN PULL OUTS. OUR IN LINE SCHOCK SPRING, HELPS TO LIMIT THE NUMBER OF HOGS PULLING OUT OF THE SNARE, WHEN THEY MAKE A HARD RUN. IT WILL ALSO REDUCE INJURYS TO ANY ANIMALS CAUGHT IN THE SNARE. THE SHOCK SPRING WHEN ATTACHED CORRECTLY TO THE TIE OFF CHAIN WILL ALSO REDUCE CABLE BREAKAGE. YOU CAN HOLD BIGGER HOGS LONGER. WE HAVE TRIED A LOT OF DIFFERENT SPRINGS AND THIS ONE WORKS BEST FOR HOGS AROUND THE 200 POUND MARK. I AM TESTING ANOTHER SPRING FOR LARGER HOGS.
Q. CAN I SAFELY STORE ALCOHOL IN YOUR HOLD A HAWG FLASK.
A. YES IT IS STAINLESS STEEL AND THE BUILDER INCLUDES A DOCUMENT IN THE BOX THE FLASK IS SHIPPED IN STATING IT IS SAFE FOR ALCOHOL USE. *IT DOES SAY NOT TO KEEP OR STORE ALCOHOL IN THE FLASK FOR OVER A WEEK.*
