Description
Professional Rabbit Snaring
Glenn Waters is well known in the UK and abroad as a trapper and hunter of skill, knowledge and great ingenuity. Although just as handy with the trap, net or dog, it is the development and championing of humane snaring for which Glenn is probably known best. Snaring since he was five or six years old, up on the shale bings of his native West Lothian in Scotland, Glenn was lucky enough to work with some of the snaring greats of the day like Willie McMaster and Alex Chisholm who shared their snaring wisdom with a keen and enthusiastic young man.
This book is compiled from a large box of Glenn’s original articles, hand drawn illustrations and photographs and is probably the largest concentration of rabbit snaring advice ever to be put into print. It contains information about the types of snares to use, how to use them, things to be avoided as well as the problems that you can encounter on the snare line and how to overcome them.
Very much in Glenn’s voice, this book is the distilled wisdom of almost 65 years experience of snaring the humble rabbit. Whether you are new to snaring, an accomplished practitioner or a frustrated amateur there is sure to be information here that will help you achieve better catches.
Softback: 316 pages, A4
ISBN-13: 978-0-9558535-3-1
Product Dimensions: 297mm x 208mm x 17mm
-
- How the rabbit hits a correctly set snare.
-
- Typical rabbit grazing pattern.
-
- A snare properly ready for storage and carrying.
-
- Setting out snares.
-
- A deer and hoop snares.
-
- Fenceline snaring
-
- Fixing the snare to the tealer
-
- Problems with small loops, set low
-
- Removing kinks from snare wire
-
- Tensioning a snare loop
Professional Rabbit Snaring – Contents
Section 1 – The Professional Pegged Rabbit Snare
Chapter 1 – Why People Struggle to Snare Rabbits
Chapter 2 – The Right Snare
Chapter 3 – The Right Size Loop
Chapter 4 – The Tealer
Chapter 5 – The Peg & Twine
Chapter 6 – Peg Snare Variations
Section 2 – Using The Professional Pegged Snare
Chapter 7 – Setting the Pegged Snare
Chapter 8 – The Peg Snaring Sequence
Chapter 9 – Advanced Tips
Section 3 – Exploiting Fences and Boundaries
Chapter 10 – Fenceline Rabbit Snaring
Chapter 11 – Snaring Drystone Walls
Chapter 12 – Snaring Hedges
Chapter 13 – Snaring Field Edges
Section 4 – Other Snaring Methods
Chapter 14 – The Hoop Snare or Bender
Chapter 15 – Hazel tealer for Woodland & Soft Ground
Chapter 16 – Old Style Snare System with Heeling Peg.
Section 5 – Problems on the Snareline
Chapter 17 – Environmental factors
Chapter 18 – Livestock
Chapter 19 – Avian Predators on the Snare Line
Chapter 20 – Ground Predators on the Snare Line
Chapter 21 – Non-Target Species
Chapter 22 – Other Problems
Section 6 – Making Pegged Snares
Chapter 23 – Making a Figure 4 Tealer
Chapter 24 – Making Alternative Tealers
Chapter 25 – Making the Loops
Chapter 26 – Putting it all Together
Section 7 – The Snarer’s Life
Chapter 27 – Tools for Snaring
Chapter 28 – The Rabbit Snarer at Work.
Chapter 29 – The Life of a professional Snarer
simon –
Just a few lines to say what a wonderful book, what i would have done for this book years ago. To get a distillation of years of practical experience in one place is rare and in such a readable form rarer still thanks to all concerned for making this book possible.
James Marchington –
Book review by James Marchington – published in Sporting Shooter November 2016
As a schoolboy, few things caught my imagination like rabbiting. By the age of 13, I had read all the poaching books in my father’s library several times, I owned ferrets and an air rifle, and in my mind was well on my way towards a career as a professional poacher. Snaring had a special appeal. There was an elegant simplicity in the idea of setting a wire noose and letting my quarry catch itself. Frustratingly, this black art proved hard to master. Time after time my wires would remain untouched, or I would arrive in the morning to find them knocked out of place and empty. I puzzled over the results, studied the signs and adjusted my methods accordingly until at last I began to catch the occasional bunny to supplement boarding school rations. My school friends were impressed and shocked in equal measure.
Goodness knows what might have happened if Glenn Waters’ book ‘Professional Rabbit Snaring’ had been available back then. With the subtitle ‘How to catch rabbits by the thousand’ I’d have been hooked. I would have studied it more assiduously than any school textbook, and quite likely failed all my exams and followed my dream to become a professional rabbit catcher. I would certainly have become much more successful at snaring rabbits in a fraction of the time.
Fortunately for my teachers, if not for me, back then there was no such book. In those far-off days a young Glenn was busy learning the art of snaring himself. The difference is that I buckled down and followed the career path expected of me, while Glenn went on to develop his skills of snaring and trapping to an extraordinary degree. Now, more than half a century later, John Bryan of Fourteenacre has brought together Glenn’s articles and drawings into what must the the most comprehensive and useful manual on rabbit snaring the world has ever seen.
Country folk are great ones for tradition, doing things such and such a way because that’s how it’s always been done. Glenn is that rare creature, a bright and enquiring mind who asks “Why?” and “Is there a better way?” Combine that with his remarkable skills of observation and understanding of animal behaviour, and Glenn has developed his own snaring methods and designs that are many times more effective than anything man had dreamed up before.
He soon realised that traditional ideas about rabbit snaring were all wrong – the loops were too small and set too low – and developed his own snare designs to catch more consistently. For Glenn it’s a continual process of learning and improving. “Remember smart trappers remain students,” he writes in his conclusion. “It’s really amazing how much we have to learn to realise how little we really know.” That mind-set has led him to develop new methods and snare designs throughout his life – and he would be the first to agree that he’s still learning.
We are fortunate that Glenn has managed to pass on all this knowledge, thanks in no small part to early internet hunting forums, and now John Bryan’s sterling work bringing it all together in one large volume – and it certainly is large, printed on A4 size paper and running to 316 pages plus the covers.
The sheer volume of information seems overwhelming at first. How can there possibly be so much to say about a simple method of rabbit catching? Except of course it is anything but simple. The rabbit itself deserves careful study – how does it live, feed, and move from place to place? You can’t hope to catch it consistently until you understand all that. Then there are the many variations of grass and crop cover, and the man-made obstacles such as ditches, fences and walls that present problems and opportunities for the rabbit catcher. There are livestock and other wildlife that might interfere with your snare, become trapped themselves, or make a meal of your catch before you can get there. There are unexpected risks to the rabbit catcher himself – one of my early mistakes was to dispatch a snared rabbit with a chop to the back of the neck. I still have the scar where the sharp edge of the eyelet cut deep into my hand!
All this and more is covered in intricate detail in Glenn’s book. The writing style is straightforward and to the point; he does a good job of explaining practical things in a way that doesn’t have you jumping back to the beginning of a sentence to work out what he means. It is well illustrated throughout with Glenn’s own pencil sketches. They won’t win any prizes at an art festival, but I find them both charming and immensely useful. His rabbits have a slightly Beatrix Potter look about them, but when drawing a particular type of snare he is meticulous about showing clearly what is looped around what so you can easily understand how to replicate the set-up.
Nowadays, of course, snaring like so much in the countryside is under the spotlight. Despite new legislation it is still hated by animal rights groups and is often the subject of campaigns to ban the practice altogether. Glenn acknowledges all this, and is in any case deeply respectful of his quarry and other wildlife, so there is plenty of advice on not just keeping the right side of the law but going beyond that to minimise any suffering to target and non-target species alike.
All in all this is a remarkable book, bringing together a lifetime’s study and practical experience. All too often such knowledge is lost, or becomes diluted by being passed on by word of mouth. We are lucky that Glenn has written it all down, and that John had the good sense to compile it into a book. It will never be a best-seller, but it deserves a place on every countryman’s bookshelf. If you want to catch more rabbits, you couldn’t have a better guide. But even if you don’t, it’s a wonderful insight into the rabbit catcher’s world, and one man’s quest to perfect the humble snare.
Ian Mckenzie –
The best book ever written on the art of rabbit snaring. Due to Glenn’s personality, he tells it as it is. A lovely bloke, and a great book. The book is a bible.
John Moore, Cumbria –
I have just received Professional Rabbit Snaring by Glenn Waters. This is the snarers’ bible and I’ll be a better snarer for reading it. I thought I was good until I read this but now I realise the mistakes I have been making and why they happened. This is the best thing I have ever read.
Barry Luckhurst –
Bought it. Reading it. Every conceivable situation catered for ! This book will make all of us better , safer more successful operators. #fact.
Phil Lloyd – post on The Hunting Life –
My thanks to John B for allowing me to see a copy of G.S.Water’s manual,.”Professional Rabbit Snaring”…
I say manual,.(as opposed to book),simply because this unique epistle really is, the definitive work on the subject of catching rabbits with snares. In a world,.so often choc-full of liars, exaggerators and worst of all, users,..this work is a breath of fresh air..
Glenn’s words cut through the antiquated bluff and bullshit, like a hot knife through butter,…he speaks as he finds,..and by that I mean, he does not mince his words or suffer fools gladly. I have felt his wrath on several occasions and have been on the receiving end of a tirade of abuse, when my own lack of practical ability has failed to come up to scratch.. :laugh:
I was always brought up to tell strangers nothing,..to never educate folk who would seek to use you for their own ends.. The seemingly lost arts of Snaring, Long Netting, Gate netting, etc,..were best kept , ‘in the family’,.so to speak,.however, Glen has always disagreed with me and said instead,.”Ya cannot take it with ya”….and perhaps he is right… :hmm:
For anyone with a penchant to learn the snaring business from a genuine master, this is your best chance…In terms of erudite and complete instruction,……there will never be anything to rival this treatise,..so,..forget all the antiquated nonsense that has been passed down from fool to fool and take this opportunity to benefit from the author’s 60 years of practical application.
My days as a pro rabbiter are over,..but I can still shape a brass wire,.put tension in the noose, ‘cock the eye’ and place the primitive trap on the right beat,.and use an ancient tool to capture a dinner,..
This is all thanks to that long journey I made so many years ago.
I packed my bags, boarded the National Express and vowed to stay away from home until I had acquired the necessary skills to call myself a snare man..
I learned from the best, and yes, it was emotional,…but now, this knowledge is available to all and sundry,….only a fool would walk on by.
All the best to both publisher and writer,…I predict this instructional manual will never be surpassed…
Phil Lloyd – post on The Hunting Life