The first thing you need to do is find a suitable post on which to build the snare. The higher it is the better. It should preferably be in an open area, where it would appear to be an attractive place for birds to land. The one I am using here is surrounded by trees, so it’s not great, but will do for this demonstration.
You will need to make a hole in the post. If you are lucky, the piece of wood you have found will be of such a shape that you can easily make a hole with your knife. More likely however, you will have to pull out your saw and axe and shape it in such a way as to allow for a small hole to be made. Here I did it by chopping off part of the tree.
The hole has to be just large enough for the string to pass through. Now take your knife, and enlarge the hole on one side.
Put the string through the hole. Take the end that is on the side where you enlarged the hole and make a noose. Tie the other end of the string either to a large rock or a branch that is under tension.
Now take a long thin stick, and shape one of its ends so that it can be stuck in the enlarged part of the hole.
To set the trap, pull the string so that either the rock is off the ground, or the branch is under tension, and place the thin stick in the enlarged part of the hole so that it pinches the string and keeps it in place. If the stick falls out too easily, reshape it so that it goes further into the hole.
This will always be the hard part of any trap. The trigger has to be loose enough so that it sets off the trap, but it has to be secure enough so that it does not trigger on its own. You will have to play around with it a bit.
Now that the stick is in place, put the noose over it. When a bird lands on the stick, the stick will fall, releasing the string. The rock will fall, pulling and tightening the noose, and hopefully catching the bird.
Or so the story goes...
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