I've snared cats since I started snaring and was just as surprised as the cats when I caught one; after all I was snaring coyotes. I decided that I was going to become a cat hoopster come hell or high water. It wasn't that hard... all you got to do is know the basics and think like a cat. I showed the basics in the first posting.
Every book on cat catching speaks of "rocky bluffs", top and bottum. The problem is that there is usually alot of hiking invovled in the process and traps etc etc etc get to be heavy. For hooping however, a pocket full of snares, a coil of wire, side-cutters on your belt and some improvisation will do just fine.
Cats go down FAST and like to go into (rather through) tight places, this makes things really handy. The first photo shows what I'll call a leaning pole set.
The base of bluffs and even large boulders are great places for cats. All you have to do is "fix" things to suit. Here I leaned a log against the wall at a point of the bluff. The log was not as big as I would have liked so I wired a second one on. I then added a stone for weight (to provide substantial resistance for a good set of the lock) and added blocking to funnel the cat.
When I ran the line the first thing I noticed was there was no log :grin: :grin: Time to track down the log. I didn't have to go far ...just around the corner!
Cats go down FAST even when they are waist snared as this big Tom was.
Later, on a different part of the line, I couldn't see my loop hanging over a "necked" down trail, HMMMMMM :-) Now where is my cable...laying in a big Cholla was my Kitty. Here is Pic of the remade set.
Hope these help some. :wink:
