What is a Rabbit Snare Tealer ?

One of the searches that often brings visitors to our site is the question ‘what are rabbit tealers?’ so we thought it deserved an explanatory post.

A tealer is a very important element of an effective snare set, whether that’s a snare for a rabbit, fox or any other legal quarry.  As a minimum it’s job is to do two things :

• to hold the snare loop at the right height so that it catches the animals head correctly
• to hold the snare loop correctly across the run so that it is square to the direction of travel.

Traditionally rabbit tealers were made from hazel twigs, sharpened at one end to be pushed into the ground and with a shallow split at the other end to hold the wire noose. Sometimes used in pairs, one either side of the noose. When the snare caught, the tealer would fall away leaving the noose attached directly to the securing peg.

The hazel tealer has now been largely superseded by the introduction of the ‘large loop & wire tealer’ system of snaring, an approach championed by Glenn Waters and demonstrated in Woodga’s DVD.  In this method the a large loop is held much higher and placed on the run to catch the rabbit as it leaps forward.

These wire tealers have a number of advantages over their hazel preprocessors:

• they are thinner so less visible even though they are longer.
• they are stronger and more firmly fixed in the ground, keep the snare in position more consistently.
• They form an integral part of the snare – being anchored to the peg at one end and the snare at the other.  The way in which the snare is attached to the tealer forms a natural swivel and reduces the chances of a rabbit becoming tangled.
• They are available in two designs; the classic ‘figure 4′ and the ‘single’ which is easier to insert in hard ground.

For a first hand explanation of the Glenn Waters method, read his articles on The Hunting Life forum.