Survival hunting: Ensnaring a deer and axing it.
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Owen
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wearing untanned hides?
Hick!
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'Card
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Snaring a deer? Good lord. What do you make the snare out of? Steel cables? Having a hard time imagining this one. I'd like to think I know a thing or two about deer, and even if you could get a snare around one's leg, and even if you could make it hold, I can't figure out how you'd prevent the deer from beating itself to death trying to get out of it long enough to justify applying an axe.
I'm interested in hearing the story behind this one. I did a little hairball miltary training myself back in the late 80's, and I've heard of eating roadkill, and I've heard of having to kill and prepare rabbits and chickens yourself (tame ones, in that case) but I've never heard of a school where you'd snare and axe a deer.
I'm interested in hearing the story behind this one. I did a little hairball miltary training myself back in the late 80's, and I've heard of eating roadkill, and I've heard of having to kill and prepare rabbits and chickens yourself (tame ones, in that case) but I've never heard of a school where you'd snare and axe a deer.
OP
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Folks - this was done through cooperative agreement between the Armed Forces and the Park Service. The member will provide the details. The information is provided not to encourage others to ensnare big game as a means of harvest. Rather, it is a survival tactic used as an alternative is starving in the wilderness.
It was USAF Combat Survival School, mandatory for aircrews...
When I attended as part of my aircrew survival training, the practical field course was being taught in the Colville National Forest - due North of Spokane and Fairchild AFB, home of the 336th Combat Training Group and 22nd Training Squadron.
More here:
http://public.fairchild.amc.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3771
Regardless, a snare is considered a very efficient means to gather protein in a combat survival situation. It also is energy-efficient for the trapper/survivalist, because he can set it and simply return at a later time to see what he's caught, vs. babysitting or running down the animal. You don't want that kind of visibility in your combat survival situation, either. Remove the combat aspect of the survival situation from the picture, and you still have a big protein return for a minimal energy investment on the part of the survivalist.
The intent is to catch smaller critters like rabbits and squirrels. A gentleman's agreement between the Dept. of Interior and the USAF Survival School at Fairchild allowed the taking of deer in Colville National Forest, contingent upon complete use of the deer by the school, and that there wouldn't be a trail of discarded deer carcasses for rangers and park visitors to see once the agreement went into effect.
Suffice it to say, not many deer were taken by the school, and I doubt many were taken even after I graduated. Deer aren't so stupid as to normally be caught by snares, we were just good at emplacing ours and camouflaging it. One rule after that part of the combat survival training ended was that we were to locate ALL of our snares and remove them to prevent mayhem after our departure.
(Side note: We were instructed to avoid contact with the public visitors of the national forest, and not to mooch, leech, beg, borrow, or steal foodstuffs and conveyance while undergoing training. Evidently some industrious survival students had talked the Clark Griswald Family in giving them a station wagon ride to their rally point during the evasion portion of the training, so it was now taboo. I wondered afterwards how many civilian campers got spooked by camouflaged USAF aircrews stealthily moving through the forest in their vicinity...)
We used brass wire for our snares, and a couple students in my flight decided to braid their wires to make a stronger snare, attached to a log near a visible deer trail. My first thoughts were that we were going to catch a badger or wolverine, and that would be a lot of fun dispatching an angry version of either.
It was a whitetail doe, and the noise she made when snared was enough for us to hear from our improvised parachute cloth shelters 50-100 yards away. By virtue of my Wisconsin upbringing, I was a rifle hunter, not a big trapper, so the sight of such an animal thrashing around with one leg securely fastened to a log saddened me a bit, but we had been existing on about 800 calories a day, scrounging for wild strawberries and field mice, squirrels, and one issued rabbit to supplement a couple MREs and whatever water we could find. It was a no-brainer, we trapped her, and we were going to eat her.
If nobody here has seen a USAF issued crash axe, it looks like a handheld hatchet, with a curved serrated edge on one side, and a big marlinspike looking thing on the other side. The technique for exiting a mangled, post-crash aircraft is to use the spike to open a hole in the aluminum fuselage from inside out, then use the serrated axe edge like a can opener to cut an upside-down "U" in the fuselage, folding the aluminum down and creating an exit from the wreck. (Yeah, this is done while the plane is burning, smoke is burning your lungs and eyes, you've got one good hand left, etc.)
My personal example is bright red, but look at the crash axe on the right - that's what I have and what I used on the deer:
It was not pretty - she was worn out and panicked from thrashing with the snare, big scared eyes, and all of a sudden a bunch of hungry guys in dirty flightsuits and BDU's converge on her. As a 6-foot tall deer hunter I was "volunteered" to be the executioner. I said a silent prayer, then used the spike end of the axe, which measures all of about 3.5" in length, and swung as hard as I could in the vicinity of her ear - I figured the bone there was thinnest and I wasn't about to take my survival knife and try to slit her throat. I wanted instantaneous trauma that would minimize additional suffering, AND I had an audience. I'm not going to get any more graphic than saying it took several swings to get the job done.
The instructor said I did a good job, but I field-dressed the doe just like I would during Wisconsin deer season. The difference was that the instructor was making me stop partway through the procedure to explain what I was doing, and also make me conserve things I normally wouldn't. Organ meats like the heart and liver I would normally take, but the instructor took other items, (brain and marrow are good sources of protein, but that was before the current CWD scare, too) leaving a very small gut pile that we eventually buried to minimize our footprint in the forest. The whole flight got busy quartering the deer into portions small enough for each person to carry. There was a bit of a heated discussion as to who would keep the cape, but we eventually agreed that the school would be best served by it.
We had a sister flight in the woods with us that week, not more than a kilometer or two from our own location. The instructor didn't want us to get greedy and mess up our scrounging practice, so the venison was shared via the other instructors to the sister flight, complements of the WC-135 guy with the crash axe. I had some boullion cubes in my survival pack, so I rightfully claimed the tenderloin as mine, and with crushed boullion cubes and a little water sealed it in a hasty aluminum foil pouch, then placed it in the hottest part of the campfire until done. Truthfully, I don't think I've ever tasted better venison before or since then.
When I attended as part of my aircrew survival training, the practical field course was being taught in the Colville National Forest - due North of Spokane and Fairchild AFB, home of the 336th Combat Training Group and 22nd Training Squadron.
More here:
http://public.fairchild.amc.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3771
Regardless, a snare is considered a very efficient means to gather protein in a combat survival situation. It also is energy-efficient for the trapper/survivalist, because he can set it and simply return at a later time to see what he's caught, vs. babysitting or running down the animal. You don't want that kind of visibility in your combat survival situation, either. Remove the combat aspect of the survival situation from the picture, and you still have a big protein return for a minimal energy investment on the part of the survivalist.
The intent is to catch smaller critters like rabbits and squirrels. A gentleman's agreement between the Dept. of Interior and the USAF Survival School at Fairchild allowed the taking of deer in Colville National Forest, contingent upon complete use of the deer by the school, and that there wouldn't be a trail of discarded deer carcasses for rangers and park visitors to see once the agreement went into effect.
Suffice it to say, not many deer were taken by the school, and I doubt many were taken even after I graduated. Deer aren't so stupid as to normally be caught by snares, we were just good at emplacing ours and camouflaging it. One rule after that part of the combat survival training ended was that we were to locate ALL of our snares and remove them to prevent mayhem after our departure.
(Side note: We were instructed to avoid contact with the public visitors of the national forest, and not to mooch, leech, beg, borrow, or steal foodstuffs and conveyance while undergoing training. Evidently some industrious survival students had talked the Clark Griswald Family in giving them a station wagon ride to their rally point during the evasion portion of the training, so it was now taboo. I wondered afterwards how many civilian campers got spooked by camouflaged USAF aircrews stealthily moving through the forest in their vicinity...)
We used brass wire for our snares, and a couple students in my flight decided to braid their wires to make a stronger snare, attached to a log near a visible deer trail. My first thoughts were that we were going to catch a badger or wolverine, and that would be a lot of fun dispatching an angry version of either.
It was a whitetail doe, and the noise she made when snared was enough for us to hear from our improvised parachute cloth shelters 50-100 yards away. By virtue of my Wisconsin upbringing, I was a rifle hunter, not a big trapper, so the sight of such an animal thrashing around with one leg securely fastened to a log saddened me a bit, but we had been existing on about 800 calories a day, scrounging for wild strawberries and field mice, squirrels, and one issued rabbit to supplement a couple MREs and whatever water we could find. It was a no-brainer, we trapped her, and we were going to eat her.
If nobody here has seen a USAF issued crash axe, it looks like a handheld hatchet, with a curved serrated edge on one side, and a big marlinspike looking thing on the other side. The technique for exiting a mangled, post-crash aircraft is to use the spike to open a hole in the aluminum fuselage from inside out, then use the serrated axe edge like a can opener to cut an upside-down "U" in the fuselage, folding the aluminum down and creating an exit from the wreck. (Yeah, this is done while the plane is burning, smoke is burning your lungs and eyes, you've got one good hand left, etc.)
My personal example is bright red, but look at the crash axe on the right - that's what I have and what I used on the deer:
It was not pretty - she was worn out and panicked from thrashing with the snare, big scared eyes, and all of a sudden a bunch of hungry guys in dirty flightsuits and BDU's converge on her. As a 6-foot tall deer hunter I was "volunteered" to be the executioner. I said a silent prayer, then used the spike end of the axe, which measures all of about 3.5" in length, and swung as hard as I could in the vicinity of her ear - I figured the bone there was thinnest and I wasn't about to take my survival knife and try to slit her throat. I wanted instantaneous trauma that would minimize additional suffering, AND I had an audience. I'm not going to get any more graphic than saying it took several swings to get the job done.
The instructor said I did a good job, but I field-dressed the doe just like I would during Wisconsin deer season. The difference was that the instructor was making me stop partway through the procedure to explain what I was doing, and also make me conserve things I normally wouldn't. Organ meats like the heart and liver I would normally take, but the instructor took other items, (brain and marrow are good sources of protein, but that was before the current CWD scare, too) leaving a very small gut pile that we eventually buried to minimize our footprint in the forest. The whole flight got busy quartering the deer into portions small enough for each person to carry. There was a bit of a heated discussion as to who would keep the cape, but we eventually agreed that the school would be best served by it.
We had a sister flight in the woods with us that week, not more than a kilometer or two from our own location. The instructor didn't want us to get greedy and mess up our scrounging practice, so the venison was shared via the other instructors to the sister flight, complements of the WC-135 guy with the crash axe. I had some boullion cubes in my survival pack, so I rightfully claimed the tenderloin as mine, and with crushed boullion cubes and a little water sealed it in a hasty aluminum foil pouch, then placed it in the hottest part of the campfire until done. Truthfully, I don't think I've ever tasted better venison before or since then.
eidsvolling
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EDIT:
I was wrong in my analysis, which is why I'm deleting my orignal post. I found a precedent which would confirm the Forest Service's authority to allow the taking of the deer in the described circumstances: New Mexico State Game Comm'n v. Udall, 410 F.2d 1167 (C.A.N.M 1969).
I was wrong in my analysis, which is why I'm deleting my orignal post. I found a precedent which would confirm the Forest Service's authority to allow the taking of the deer in the described circumstances: New Mexico State Game Comm'n v. Udall, 410 F.2d 1167 (C.A.N.M 1969).
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OP
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As stated in Gewehr98's post, there was a "gentlemen's agreement" between the National Forest and the USAF. That the locals weren't involved is an oversight - but it has been a long established principle of law that Federal law supercedes State's laws. If the critters were under the jurisdiction of los Federales, they have final say on the issue. Finally, if this side issue of federal laws and state game laws must be discussed, let it be in a separate thread.
eidsvolling
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Free legal advice on the Internet is worth exactly what you pay for it.
EDIT: And I just proved my own point -- see my revised post above.
EDIT: And I just proved my own point -- see my revised post above.
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For the record, what's being described here isn't a snare; it's a foot-hold trap. Snares catch the animal around the neck and, if done properly, will kill the animal.
The best and easiest way to trap deer is to set a line of snare traps throughout a section of trees/woods and then walk around a mile or so, then push the deer into the traps.
The snares would ideally be made of braided or twisted small-gauge wire, with a 'knot' similar to a slipknot on the end (preferably using some sort of metal wire clamp if available), which then loops around and is threaded by the other end of the wire - which is then securely fastened to a tree. The end result looks something like this
The end result is that the deer get pushed into the traps and either break their neck immediately (if there is a large branch over a trail, attach the wire to this to assist this) or they suffocate to death within a minute or two due to the increased restriction of the wire brought on by their panicked pulling.
Note: I've never tried this, as it's highly illegal. But my grandfather has passed the information down to me, as it was still fairly common practice when he was younger, and he received a lot of information from his uncle, a game warden.
Ask me how to get game birds quickly and easily for the kettle.
ETA: snare goes about 2' off the ground about 3' wide and 4' tall to catch the animal
The best and easiest way to trap deer is to set a line of snare traps throughout a section of trees/woods and then walk around a mile or so, then push the deer into the traps.
The snares would ideally be made of braided or twisted small-gauge wire, with a 'knot' similar to a slipknot on the end (preferably using some sort of metal wire clamp if available), which then loops around and is threaded by the other end of the wire - which is then securely fastened to a tree. The end result looks something like this
The end result is that the deer get pushed into the traps and either break their neck immediately (if there is a large branch over a trail, attach the wire to this to assist this) or they suffocate to death within a minute or two due to the increased restriction of the wire brought on by their panicked pulling.
Note: I've never tried this, as it's highly illegal. But my grandfather has passed the information down to me, as it was still fairly common practice when he was younger, and he received a lot of information from his uncle, a game warden.
Ask me how to get game birds quickly and easily for the kettle.
ETA: snare goes about 2' off the ground about 3' wide and 4' tall to catch the animal
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Mannlicher
Member
snaring deer? There are more productive ways to provide food when in survival mode.
Bob R
Member
In the survival mode, one of the main objectives is to obtain food, however you can.
When I went through SERE in the Navy our first few nights were on the beach. There was a nice big jetty, and a nice low tide while we were there. Becauses of that we had more than enough abalone to go around for the students and the staff. We sure were glad that one guy never caught a seagull. As far as the abalone, we were told that season and size limits did not pertain to us during the beach survival portion. All they had to do was to collect the shells for F&G.
After moving into the mountains (in March), the food became much less plentiful.
bob
When I went through SERE in the Navy our first few nights were on the beach. There was a nice big jetty, and a nice low tide while we were there. Becauses of that we had more than enough abalone to go around for the students and the staff. We sure were glad that one guy never caught a seagull. As far as the abalone, we were told that season and size limits did not pertain to us during the beach survival portion. All they had to do was to collect the shells for F&G.
After moving into the mountains (in March), the food became much less plentiful.
bob
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Cosmoline
Member
Snaring anything this side of a bunny is VERY ILLEGAL in all states I'm aware of. It's a vile poacher's trick. The scum do it to collect organs from black bear for Chinese medicine.
MCgunner
Member
http://cgi.ebay.com/1-DOZEN-BEGINNE...ryZ71108QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Lots of these on ebay. I thought about it, but I'd be afraid a deer would get in it considering how many deer I have on my place. Trapping hogs in Texas is perfectly legal. I'm trying to figure how I'm going to build me a hog trap at present...catch 'em alive pen, not a snare. Building it is no problem, building it on a budget is the problem.
OP
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Gewehr98 was nice enough to share his experience with us. Now, I don't expect anyone here at THR is going out to snare a deer. We've got guns and since we do, we'll harvest our deer in a humane manner. What the Air Force taught was a survival technique. Period. It's something stored in one's bag of tricks and used only when it makes a difference between living or dying. Take care of your guns, learn to shoot well, learn woodcraft (keep plastic and cell phone handy) and you'll never need to resort to it, Okay?
'Card
Member
That's a genuinely fascinating story, G-man. I appreciate you sharing it with us.
Sorry if I sounded skeptical in my initial post, but... well... I was pretty skeptical.
Sorry if I sounded skeptical in my initial post, but... well... I was pretty skeptical.
Skeptics aside, we did it.
Would it be poaching under the normal letter of the law? Certainly.
Would I use the technique were I shot down in some forest in an unfamiliar country, evading the enemy and trying to survive to meet partisans and make it to eventual rescue? Damn straight I would! Nor would I stick around in enemy territory to find and make an apology to the local game warden for running afoul of their wildlife conservation laws, verstehen Sie das?
Snaring deer (or foot-trapping deer, as described by somebody above) isn't necessarily an energy-efficient means to a survival meal, either. As I mentioned before, rabbits and squirrels were considered the best targets of opportunity, with considerably less fuss and mess. For Mannlicher's non-tactical benefit, as a belligerent surviving in enemy territory, gunshots fired in the pursuit of obtaining food is/was considered an unnecessary signal towards one's location, so it remained highly discouraged.
Back to the real world, the survival school did have permission to take deer when in the context of training, and the instructor "knew" our chances of getting one was rather slim. So she let us combine our copper and brass snare wires into a larger and more stout device (simulating electrical wiring stripped from the fuselage) and set the snare. To say she was surprised when we caught the doe was an understatement, but she went into a confident training mode with the help of deer hunters like myself and a couple others in the flight.
What really surprised me was the avulsion to dispatching and reducing the deer to convenient portions, from my companions who represented fighter, tanker, transport, bomber, and reconnaissance units - air warriors, all of them. Nor did the majority of blanching come from the female members of our flight, quite the opposite. The survival instructor keyed in on those folks, and got them quite heavily involved in the process, to essentially break them of those phobias. Otherwise, were they presented the same situation in wartime, they might very well have skipped a good source of nutrition instead of keeping themselves stoked for the evasion and eventual rescue. Then again, perhaps by skipping the venison, they may have fallen into a cache of Snicker Bars, and all would be good in the world, click your heels together three times, etc...
It's not the same one, but I still have my crash axe. It's hanging on the wall next to a squadron photo and my shadow box. My deer-thumping days are nowadays limited to rifle season, but I do take comfort in knowing I can keep myself alive in a strange and hostile environment with some fairly simple tools and a bit of ingenuity. Now that my combat days are over, were I out west or up north in a survival situation and I thumped a deer using a snare and axe, I'd be more than happy to pay a fine to the local game warden after I got a hot shower and shave - because I'd be grateful to still be alive to talk to him about it, vs. being something else on the carrion eaters' menu myself.
Would it be poaching under the normal letter of the law? Certainly.
Would I use the technique were I shot down in some forest in an unfamiliar country, evading the enemy and trying to survive to meet partisans and make it to eventual rescue? Damn straight I would! Nor would I stick around in enemy territory to find and make an apology to the local game warden for running afoul of their wildlife conservation laws, verstehen Sie das?
Snaring deer (or foot-trapping deer, as described by somebody above) isn't necessarily an energy-efficient means to a survival meal, either. As I mentioned before, rabbits and squirrels were considered the best targets of opportunity, with considerably less fuss and mess. For Mannlicher's non-tactical benefit, as a belligerent surviving in enemy territory, gunshots fired in the pursuit of obtaining food is/was considered an unnecessary signal towards one's location, so it remained highly discouraged.
Back to the real world, the survival school did have permission to take deer when in the context of training, and the instructor "knew" our chances of getting one was rather slim. So she let us combine our copper and brass snare wires into a larger and more stout device (simulating electrical wiring stripped from the fuselage) and set the snare. To say she was surprised when we caught the doe was an understatement, but she went into a confident training mode with the help of deer hunters like myself and a couple others in the flight.
What really surprised me was the avulsion to dispatching and reducing the deer to convenient portions, from my companions who represented fighter, tanker, transport, bomber, and reconnaissance units - air warriors, all of them. Nor did the majority of blanching come from the female members of our flight, quite the opposite. The survival instructor keyed in on those folks, and got them quite heavily involved in the process, to essentially break them of those phobias. Otherwise, were they presented the same situation in wartime, they might very well have skipped a good source of nutrition instead of keeping themselves stoked for the evasion and eventual rescue. Then again, perhaps by skipping the venison, they may have fallen into a cache of Snicker Bars, and all would be good in the world, click your heels together three times, etc...
It's not the same one, but I still have my crash axe. It's hanging on the wall next to a squadron photo and my shadow box. My deer-thumping days are nowadays limited to rifle season, but I do take comfort in knowing I can keep myself alive in a strange and hostile environment with some fairly simple tools and a bit of ingenuity. Now that my combat days are over, were I out west or up north in a survival situation and I thumped a deer using a snare and axe, I'd be more than happy to pay a fine to the local game warden after I got a hot shower and shave - because I'd be grateful to still be alive to talk to him about it, vs. being something else on the carrion eaters' menu myself.
stevelyn
Member
I love the marrow and eat it out of caribou and moose soup bones, but in this day and age of Chronic Wasting Disease and related other CNS diseases, I'd avoid brains.
Protein nothing, marrow and brain tissue are almost pure FAT. Protein is a good energy source when you're bicycling on a paved road, but fat is a godsend in a survival situation. This is the primary basis of the terms 'rabbit starvation' and 'fish starvation'. Animals low in fat are a poor source of survival food.
swampdog
Member
Great story, Gewehr98. You do what you have to in a survival situation. A deer snared by it's back leg only is a worthy antagonist. You might be lucky it was the deer's brains that got bashed.
I killed a deer last year that had been wounded by buckshot with a machete. It had ran quite a distance and had made it into a housing development. A gunshot was out of the question.
It wasn't pretty, but I have even more respect for deer now. The will to live in a deer is incredible. Even with a busted shoulder and punctured lungs, this deer made it a long ways and was still ready to fight to the death. It actually sounded like it was growling at me and it certainly tried to take my head off with it's rear hooves.
Would a busted leg be worth a deer's carcass in a real survival situation? If it had happened in training, the other trainees could have learned all kinds of first-aid, but if it was for real, and a gunshot was out of the question, would it really be worth it? Ask me in a week. Where's my flint knife?
I killed a deer last year that had been wounded by buckshot with a machete. It had ran quite a distance and had made it into a housing development. A gunshot was out of the question.
It wasn't pretty, but I have even more respect for deer now. The will to live in a deer is incredible. Even with a busted shoulder and punctured lungs, this deer made it a long ways and was still ready to fight to the death. It actually sounded like it was growling at me and it certainly tried to take my head off with it's rear hooves.
Would a busted leg be worth a deer's carcass in a real survival situation? If it had happened in training, the other trainees could have learned all kinds of first-aid, but if it was for real, and a gunshot was out of the question, would it really be worth it? Ask me in a week.
Where's my flint knife?Art Eatman
Moderator In Memoriam
A deer is not something to mess with, if you don't have a real edge. I once shot a running buck and didn't lead him enough. The hit was in the spine behind the shoulders. He couldn't go anywhere, but he was nowhere near dead.
He reared up on his front legs, shook his antlers at me and the best I can describe the sound is that he roared or bellowed. Spooky. Killing him with an edged weapon would not have been simple and easy.
Art
He reared up on his front legs, shook his antlers at me and the best I can describe the sound is that he roared or bellowed. Spooky. Killing him with an edged weapon would not have been simple and easy.
Art
daniel (australia)
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I am impressed!
I did a fairly similar course many years ago, and after a couple of days eating various bugs, chewing on starchy roots and little else the DS turned up a half-wild sheep for us, which we then had to run down through the bush, and kill and butcher with the pocket knife we had. It was nowhere near the level of challenge of your deer though.
I guess it was a little confronting for some of the group, but we cut up that old sheep and roasted it on skewers over a small fire, and we soon made it disappear!
I did a fairly similar course many years ago, and after a couple of days eating various bugs, chewing on starchy roots and little else the DS turned up a half-wild sheep for us, which we then had to run down through the bush, and kill and butcher with the pocket knife we had. It was nowhere near the level of challenge of your deer though.
I guess it was a little confronting for some of the group, but we cut up that old sheep and roasted it on skewers over a small fire, and we soon made it disappear!
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