Close call this week

[MuleShack]

Was hunting with my two GSP's out in SD on public land.

My male is almost 2 1/2 yrs and the female is 16 months.

We were walking along a fence line I turned to head in another direction away from the fence and got about 70' away from the fence and heard a yip. I turned around (luckily I located my younger girl right away) and saw her next to the fence behind me and looked like she was hung up on the barbed wire. As I got closer I noticed it was not barbed wire but something that was a lot more serious...she had her head caught in a snare. This was something that I had no experience with.

Two thing were luckily in my favor, she only stuck her head into the fence and pulled back and she didn't panic and try to pull her self out of it. if she would have tried to run thru the fence (which she had done before out there) it would have cinched tight and i'm not sure I would have heard her or been able to locate her in time. The second thing that I lucked out on was the fact that the snare was over her Ecollar so that gave her a little breathing room until I figured things out.

The first thing I did was to get behind her so she didn't back up and make the thing tighter. Then I started to figure out what to do. I grabbed my leather-man and tried to cut the wire but that seemed useless. Then I took off her Ecoller to give her a little more breathing room (you could hear she was gasping for air until I took the collar off. Then I looked at the connector to see if i could open it up and then I realized it should just slide open.

As i said before, i have never seen a snare or knew how it worked, and considering myself a fairly mechanically smart person, things didn't exactly click when you are panicking a little when your buddy is in trouble.

Take the time to familiarize your self with the different kinds of tools the trappers use, cause you never know when you are going to need to know how they work and how to undo them.

I was lucky this week and am going to try to keep my crew away from fence lines if at all possible.

[BLACKJACK]

muleshack,

What do you think the snare was set for? Raccoons? Do you think it was a malicious set? I mean, they had to know that on a public hunting area that hunters with dogs would be there. Was it set in a grass runway or water or ??? How far away from a road or public hunting area parking lot was it? Was there any identification on the snare??

Glad you were able to get your buddy out of it!!! Going to do a search on snares right now!!!

[MuleShack]

No I dont think it was malicious (meaning not intended for dogs). It was on a fence bordering private land. The fence line was covered in weed growth but there was an opening in the weeds that looked like it could be a coon trail and the wire was attached to the fence post. There was 4 or 5 barbed wires on the fence(dont remember) so that was probably the lucky part where my dog wouldn't fit thru the fence comfortably so she backed up.

After I got her out of there, we just headed back to the truck, checked for any other injuries and headed out to a different spot.