Say you find yourself lost in a heavily forested area. For whatever reason, you have a bunch of fishing gear, but there is no body of water to fish in.
Would it be possible to catch small game like rabbits or squirrels, using a hook and line? What would be the best thing to use as bait? Squirrels eat acorns, but I can’t think of a good way of securing a hook to an acorn without glue or some other adhesive.
Rabbits eat plants and grass. I can’t for the life of me think of a way to use those things as baits. Would certain kinds of berries work?
It just seems…mean…to “fish” for animals other than fish. Whether or not fish can actually feel pain, they certainly seem like they’re less likely to feel pain than bats and rodents. I wouldn’t do it for sport. But for survival, I’d try it, if I had no other options.
I’ve seen lots of hits on the Google search term “squirrel fishing”, but they’re not actually catching the squirrels when they do it. It is more a micro tug-of-war. I too would go with a snare or small deadfall trap.
I would think it wouldn’t work well because rabbits and squirrels actually bite and chew their food. They wouldn’t just swallow it whole, and then pull on it (thus hooking themselves) when it turned out to be tied to a string.
You can ‘fish’ for large frogs. I have caught them before both intentionally and unconditionally and the legs taste pretty good. You need to be next to a pond or lake that is infested with frogs. You can just dangle the line in front of them and they will usually bite the hook with or without anything on it. You can catch turtles the same way. If you can’t get them to bite, you can hook them in the side as well as long as you cast the line carefully over them and yank when the hook is next to them. That strategy might also work for a squirrel or rabbit. I know it works for Water Moccasins (poisonous aggressive snake) but take my word for it and don’t fish for those.
A friend of mine living in Florida claims to do quite well at possum fishing. He ties some rotten liver to a triple hook and throws it into the bush. Claims to reeled in up to 20 pounders.
National Lampoon had a long photo article in the 1970’s about fishing for dogs in the inner city; but it was more for sport than for food. You could troll with a seat mounted in the back of a pickup truck, just like fishing for Marlin. If you were poor, you could just drop a line of the side of a building. Use meat for bait, and the whole purpoe was for the fun of the fight. I wonder which budding vegan wrote that piece?
Do mammals have the reinforced lips that fish seem to have, that prevents a hook from just tearing through? And as mentioned, will they bite a hooked bait in such a way that the hook can be lodged?
A friend once recounted his stint in a far north Canadian town. They have very large crows or ravens up there, that loved to scavenge garbage. One day a few of them wanted to havesome fun, they tied a weiner to a fishing line and cast with a rod. Soon a raven came over and grabbed the bait and flew away with it in his beak. Then let the line play out, then stopped it with a yank. The raven stopped dead in mid-air and fell, plonk!, to the ground. He shook his head a few times, and then pounced on the sausage being reeled in. Off he flew, only to repeat his dead air stop and plonk! Several times. Apparently, over a few 12-packs, these guys found this hilarious.
When I was little I often caught squirrels in the park by using the technique often seen in cartoons: Turn over a box, and prop up one side with a stick. Tie a string to the stick, and put some bait under the box. When the squirrel is under the box, pull the string, and there you go.
The box will move around a lot as the squirrel tries to get away, but it can’t get out.
To answer the OP…
Yes, you can readily use typical fishhooks and line to capture small game. For bigger game you will need larger hooks and stronger test. In most places this is illegal except in a survival situation. Can you use an acorn as bait for a squirrel in this situation? I suppose, but squirrels usually hide rather than immediately eat acorns. If squirrel was the only option, then likely I would either chew or pound an acorn in the hopes of making a paste that would stick to a hook. (For all of this I hope you have a treble hook. After all, if you are heading off into the woods you should have a pre-prepared survival kit of some sort. My supplies are likely to include something a bit better for bait.)
To everyone else, in general, snares and traps are not especially efficient. Based on my learning a snare has about a 25% success rate provided it is set properly. The “set properly” portion of that statement is the key phrase. There are many variables involved and the information is too readily available, if you want to learn, for me to detail here. Knowing this rate of success the wise person will set more than just a few traps in the hopes of making meat, especially if it’s a survival situation.
To answer another question posed in this thread; if you are using fish hooks and line to trap, your hope is not to hook your prey through the lip, but rather gut hook them. You want your prey to swallow your bait, not merely chew on it. Along similar lines look up the word gorge as it relates to fishing or trapping. It’s a good option if fish hooks are not on hand.
Good post Mister Owl. I see humans aren’t the only ones that have found the value in hunting tools rather than the old swoop and grab technique. I have never once gotten a snare to work right. Granted, I don’t really know what I am doing but I tried many times when I was a aspiring survivalist child with no luck. I have never seen anyone else get one to work either. I have had better luck with every other tactic.
Just to add, if anyone wants to play with simple snares and some types of traps, please use a light thread for the snare portion. It allows the critter to go harmlessly on its way and gives you some feedback as to whether or not anything at least did not see your trap. Of course, this won’t work with the various dead fall type traps, but will still give you feedback as to whether or not your methods might have success.
To Shag, I’m pretty much a city born country boy and so haven’t made all that much meat for myself. However, given the economy (and my now seemingly stupid choice of profession,) if I had a backyard I would be eating much squab and bushy tailed tree rat. that’s only a half joke I fear
I read about a five-year-old boy that did this to catch his neighbor’s roosters that were running around loose. (His siblings laughed at this plan, but it caught all the birds.) This was in Country magazine.
As you hint at, this is the reason snares used by subsistence hunters are set in lines consisting of up to hundreds of properly-set individual snares over a large area. With volume, snaring becomes an extremely efficient method of procuring meat. Ample ethnographical data on this from both Eurasia and North America. Stuff like two dozen grouse per each walk through the trap line, a fantastical bag compared to going after the birds with bow and arrow for a similar length of time. And the snares do their work 24/7 while the hunter is away doing something else, which can’t be beat.
As per the OP, hook and line was traditionally used for catching birds such as sea gull and swan in various parts of Europe (and the U.S., too, I guess). Granted, these are species not found in heavily forested areas.