Trapping a cougar can be challenging if you don’t know how to go about it. Sometimes, depending on the trap, the cougar can get out of it by pulling itself. And that is why you need to familiarize yourself with the best tactics to trap the cougar successfully.
In this article, you will get in-depth information about cougars and how to trap them. Read on!
What is a cougar?
A cougar, also known as a mountain lion, is one of the most significant cat species native to the Americas. Cougars vary in average body size based on their geographical locations; for instance, those closer to the equator are smaller than those close to the poles.
How to trap a cougar
Cougars are powerful and require exceptionally robust snares. Along these lines, to prevail in your catching, you should utilize a huge wire attachment to heavy weighty hauls, solid stakes, or big trees, posts, or rocks to secure snares to guarantee against escape.
Without much of a stretch, you can snare cougars along their constant travel paths, plunder zones, and kill sites. Moreover, trap made of fish, rabbits, and poultry are portions of the successful attractants. Note that Mountain lions are interested and react to moving banners of skin, quills, or brilliant articles.
Top ways of trapping a cougar
The nighttime propensities and covert character of cougars make it challenging to trap them. Here are the best methodologies for catching a cougar.
Utilize the ideal season
Winter is an extraordinary chance to trap a cougar. The soggy, cold ground can make it simpler to trap it.
Scouting
Before your chase, invest energy in the field exploring for cougar. Find cougar signs like tracks, executes locales, and even aroma markers. Report what you find on a guide or GPS. As you gather information, you may begin seeing examples of how a cougar goes in their region.
Use trail cameras
Set up trail cameras on ridgelines and game paths to perceive what’s going on when you’re absent. Focus your cameras on canyon areas where cougars like to spend their time.
Utilize great quality calls
Calling is an ideal choice for focusing on cougars and being effective. However, be prepared to spend cash on a decent call. Consider both the sources of the sounds they are recording and the nature of the advanced playback.
Utilize cat whistles
Cougars are territorial animals and are probably going to examine the sound of another feline in their domain.
Call long and hard
If you want success in trapping a cougar, ensure you make a longer call – 45 minutes of nonstop calling or more. Twenty minutes of calling every so often may work for certain hunters like coyote, yet it’s not the best approach to call a cougar.
Call safely
Cougars are peaceful and secretive – you don’t need one crawling up on you while you’re calling. Here a few strategies to remain safe.
- Get back to while sitting to-back with a mate. You’ll have a 360-degree see around you and will want to alternate calling as loud and long as possible.
- Set up with your back to something like a tall gorge divider that will hold a cougar back from crawling up behind you.
- Stay still, particularly when utilizing mouth calls. Moving may make a cougar believe you’re the prey.
Try not to disregard the subtleties
In some cases, it’s the littlest things that can destroy your chase. Here are the things you should regard.
Keep quiet: When you show up at your chasing site, attempt to be pretty much as covert as the felines you’re chasing, try not to punch the vehicle entryways, downplay discussion, walk gradually and discreetly to your calling site, and so on.
Deal with your aroma: cougars have a sharp feeling of smell. Where conceivable, set up downwind of the heading from which you anticipate that a cougar should approach, use fragrance splashes to treat you and your garments.
Exploit shade and cover to make it harder for a feline to see
Be prepared, regardless of whether you’re not cougar chasing. Most cougars are seen and taken by deer and elk trackers. Have a cougar tag with you so you can make the most of it whenever a cougar opportunity introduces itself.
Set a snare to trap the cougar
Stay a couple of meters from the catch and watch how things unfold.
Types of traps
Here are the various snares for catching a cougar.
Leg snares
Leg snares can be utilized to get mountain lions. This set is made on trails frequented by lions; stones or sticks are used to coordinate foot placement over the gadget’s setting.
Kill snare set
The kill snares can be set to execute mountain lions or hold them alive for sedation.
If you need to use an execute catch, place it with the lower part of the circle roughly 40 cm over the ground with a circle measurement of around 41 cm. However, if you mean to catch the cougar alive, place the catch with the lower part of a circle 36 cm from the ground with a circle breadth of around 45 cm.
Pen traps
Compact enclosure traps are utilized to catch mountain lions that execute pets and animals in rural or provincial territories. The snare is generally positioned where the mountain lion left the execution, and it is goaded with the remaining parts of the kill.
Shooting
At times, cougars may get back to a new kill to feed and can be shot from a trap when they do that. Find a snare site where the shooter can’t be seen, and the breeze diverts the shooter’s smell from the course that the feline will use to move toward the slaughter site.
Cougars can be called into shooting range with hunter calls, especially sounds that reproduce the trouble cry of a doe deer.
Trained dogs
Trained dogs can be utilized to catch or execute cougars. The canines are regularly delivered to the kill site, where they find the lion’s trail and track it until it is cornered or climbs a tree. The lion would then be shot and eliminated or sedated.
Tips on how to release a cougar from a trap
Here are the tips on how to release a cougar from a trap.
Look for help
If you can’t do it single-handedly, find support from a companion or natural life workforce.
Stretch the feline out
Get a catch post around the lion’s neck, and afterwards get a catch shaft around its back leg. Haul the lion out so its legs are not curled up because that is the place where the force comes from.
Utilize a cover or canvas to quiet the mountain lion down
The lion will be too frantic that he is in your snare. The secret to this tip is you need to get the cover or canvas over the top of the lion; if a wild creature can’t see, it will, in general, quiet down.
Use a catchpole to stifle out a mountain lion
This can be something to be thankful for and something terrible when attempting to release it. A lion can be gagged out for a couple of moments to muddle it so you can get the snare off its foot; however, if the catchpole circle gags it for a long time, it can kill the lion.