Squirrel snares and gulo pens

September 7-9 & September 20-23.

Our first trip of these two was for a little beaver dam breaking and squirrel midden searching. Dakota wants to see if he can catch 50 this year. His plan is to find 10 squirrel middens and run horizontal poles with snares around them. Considering several of our marten boxes are near squirrel middens, ten shouldn't be too hard to find.

We also built, boiled and bagged 70 - 1/16" snares for lynx. Then we made 55 squirrel snares. We'll need more, but that was enough for this trip. Below you can see a good way to build squirrel snares. First, you nail a couple of nails on a piece of wood. The nails I like to be about 18" apart. Then you wrap the snare wire (I use 26 gauge wire) back and forth between the nails. This can be tricky unless you pay attention to how it comes off the roll.

Dakota wrapping the wire around the nails.

The next step is to cut the wire about one-inch in on each side near the nail. Not at the same nail though. Make sure you cut on one side of the wire at one nail, and then the other side of the wire at the other nail. Then you will have several equal-length wires with a hook on one end of each, much like a candy cane.

Make your cut about one-inch in from the nail on each end but opposite sides.

Then you should put an "Alberta Knot" on one end of each snare. This is the knot for the tag end of the wire to go through, making the snare loop. Then the snare's can be wrapped in tinfoil and stored until they need to be set. I will show this at a later date when we set the snares. I learned this technique from a post on the Canadian Trappers Talk Forum.

The Alberta Knot.

On this trip, Dakota and I explored some areas on the east side of the trapline. We took an old oil lease road I had come across the previous winter but didn't explore. It just looked like it went a short distance, so I never went that way. As it turns out, the old road goes for several miles off the trapline. What was interesting was that on this road, we encountered several animal tracks in the mud, including a sow grizzly and a cub, wolf and coyote tracks, moose tracks, deer tracks, and one spot where a lynx had crossed. Even better, we watched a fisher run across the road in front of us.

As the crow flies, where the fisher crossed the road would be about a mile- to a mile-and-a-half away from where I encountered a fisher's track last winter. Now, a fisher has very large feet for his size, but so too does a wolverine. In fact, they are very similar. However, based on my location, my bet is that it is a fisher and not a wolverine.

When my dad was here, we decided to build the ultimate cubby in that exact location. My plan is to use a 220 and catch the fisher. There is also a good chance of catching a lynx. Dad and I dubbed this cubby the Gulo Pen. The top half of the entrance still has to be enclosed but that's it. It is ready for when the snow flies.

The Gulo Pen sits on the edge of a small valley.

The Gulo Pen took us about two-hours to build. I'd like to build a couple more,
but we'll see how this one works out first.

On Saturday, Dakota and I had just finished a scouting trip up Clear Trail and were heading up Grizzly Road when I heard a loud crack! And then the steering went goofy on the old quad. I came to a stop and realized the tie rod had broke. Luckily it hapened on Grizzly Road and not up some trail somewhere. I was able to drive the truck right to it and get it loaded. We doubled for the rest of the trip. The quad is now in the shop.