Ragnar Benson - Ragnar's Urban Survival - A Hard-Times Guide to Staying Alive in the City

Solid, old, smelly roadkills make excellent bait for turtle traps.

Turtles are dressed for cooking by cutting the bottom shell away from the critter through the soft underbelly hinge. This exposes neck, leg, backbone, and tail meat. Turtle muscle continues to twitch even in the frypan an hour after butchering.

Some critters, such as wild turtles, can be kept alive till needed for the table.

Scooter or box turtles have solid shells which, in most cases, must be sawed away. Not much meat on these guys, but enough for a pot of excellent soup.

Catching turtles by hook and line is probably preferable to using traps if the hooks can be rigged unseen and then retrieved after making a catch. Turtles can be caught on unattended setlines, but these lines must be properly deployed or results will be disappointing. Manufacturing turtle set lines at home is reasonably easy.

Ideally, use a 6/0 hook. I fully understand that most city survivors will have to use whatever fishhooks they have on hand or can trade for. More important than hook size, an 8-inch piece of wire leader should be placed between the hook and line. Turtles have tough, sharp beaks. They quickly gnaw through any nonmetallic line.

Baited setlines can be attached to floating plastic bottles, overhanging branches or roots, though floating bottles may be too obvious. It is very important to keep any turtle bait well up off the bottom and 1 to 2 feet below the surface of the water. This is a very important concept. Don't use a long line-simply throw it out into a pool on the bottom. Baits held relatively near the surface won't attract crayfish and it might possibly catch a larger fish rather than a turtle. Turtles hooked near the surface on short lines cannot tangle and hide easily.

The hook should be baited with a solid chunk of muscle or gristle. Fat, skin, and feathers are not good baits. Piles of roadkill often make excellent hook bait.

Keep turtles alive till needed for the pot. They keep in waterfilled barrels, tubs, or small cages, but the very best way to keep them is by drilling a small hole in the shell edge and attaching a long wire. Simply throw the turtle back into the lake, tethering it by wire to a stake, root, or branch. They live and eat on their own and may even fatten a bit.

Turtle and bird hook lines. Note the fine line and small hook on the bird model, left, and the steel wire on the turtle line, right.

Other Aquatic Food Sources

Many other critters of interest to hungry city survivors are found near or in water. Crayfish and minnows are not much, but are something. They can be caught in small fish traps.

Muskrats live in water. They are excellent eating, tasting much like very lean duck or goose. The easiest way to catch them is to place a fish trap with a 3- to 4-inch cone in front of an underwater muskrat burrow. They swim out into the trap and are caught.

Frogs are good eating but I don't know of an energy-efficient method of collection unless it is with a powerful flashlight and spear at night. This method may not practical or possible in many areas.

Ducks and geese often frequent ponds, lakes, and rivers. They can be caught in a variety of traps. The easiest way is to place a tiny hook or a thin piece of light fishing line baited with a single kernel of corn or wheat. This gets them about as easily and often as virtually any other method.

SNARES

Other than water critters, many other different animals that could advantageously end up in the pot are available in the city. Cats and dogs are some of these!

The African bird snare.

For some unexplained reason, some cities have many more dogs than cats and vice versa. Both critters are fairly easy to trap using snares in places they commonly run. They can also be taken with silenced .22 rifles wl-.en the opportunity is there. Carry your gun and shoot them whey. you see them; don't go out hunting.

Snares are a kind of wire lasso into which critters push themselves resulting in their capture. Pushing into a snare is fairly natural for wild critters that move around through tight holes, under fences, or through openings in buildings. Professional snares have one-way locks that prevent the cable from loosening.

Ideally, city survivors will have a few snares in their tool kit. If not, snares can be made from light wire. A man living in a western suburb of Chicago caught two marauding beavers by using homemade soft copper-wire snares the first time he ever tried.

Out in the wild, rabbits are often snared with nylon cord or shoelaces. Readers who wish to purchase the real thing similar to ones pictured can write Neil or Rhonda Bock at The Snare Shop, 13191 Phoenix Avenue, Carroll, IA, 51401. The cost, complete, is about $1 per snare delivered in dozen lots.

Snares have been used to catch every animal on earth. Longtime readers are aware of my exploits using snares on moose, deer, and bear. Snares often strangle critters, especially those set to catch by the neck. Leghold snares are also reasonably easy, but not as easy at catching critters about the neck as they push through brush and grass.

Check snares at least once every day unless many critters start falling victim; then check more often. Unless set by experienced trappers, baits are seldom used. Set snares with an 8-inch loop from 12 to 14 inches off the ground for dogs. Smaller critters like cats are caught with smaller loops set closer to the ground.

RAT TRAPS

To city survivors, rats are an absolute bonanza. It is impossible to deplete or hinder a large, active colony even by taking as many as three or four 1-pound critters per week. Six to 12 young are born every 30 days to females, which rebreed 4 or 5 days after giving birth. Females start bearing at four to six months. Rats thrive on virtually any food, including power cables, feed bags, paper, nutshells, fruits, vegetables, or anything else of cellulose they can get a tooth into.

A slick colony trap can be constructed out of a 55- or 30-gallon steel barrel. Rig a smooth board or length of slick aluminum on a hinge on the barrel so that the board or metal extends to the ground but is carefully balanced at the top. Construct it so that a 12-ounce weight on the end over the barrel tips the beam into the barrel, dumping Mr. Rat inside.

Rub a very small amount of cheese or meat onto the end of the balance arm. Rats that walk from the floor up onto the barrel on the balance arm are tipped, screeching and scratching, into the smooth-sided barrel. Empty the barrel twice a day or they will eat each other.

Colony traps are useful for live-trapping many critters.

The first trapped rat will call others to come have a look. These traps must be set in among colonies of rats. At times, larger barrels must be dug into the ground a bit; otherwise the balance arms, which must reach the ground, are too long to balance correctly.

Rats can also be caught in small cage-type live traps set in their runs or with bait near the run. Commercial cage traps are available, or you can simply make a little cage trap out of 1/2-inch hardware cloth with a front door that only swings inward as the rat pushes on it to get to the bait.