My first post on this board and I am looking for any help I can get. I have about 150 mostly free range birds and as you know they are at the bottom of the food chain. I lose them all the time to Bobcats, Fox and Coyote and even some stray dogs. I have caught some in live box type traps but the fox and bobcats will not go in them. When they start hitting me they come back real often until I catch them or scare them off. I am trying to learn all I can about leg hold and snares (I have never seen them used). Shares that is I have used leg hold some. Thanks for any help you fellows can share.

Bluegrass, if you go to www.snareshop.com you will be able to see the snares they have available, and also some helpful info on how to use them.

Snares are a very cheap, reliable way to catch the critter that bothers you.

Reach out and touch them with a .223 ...

Check the regs where you live but I know of a set that has worked for me when I had some coyotes and greys gettign into my fathers barn and getting his chickens and rabbits.

take a cage about 3' by 3' and 3 to 4' of the ground. On some type of stand. Enclose the bottom of the stand and leave an opening on one side big enough for a fox or coyote - Like the opening of a dog house.

Put a rooster in the cage and locate the setup on the outskirts of the property - where you think the animals are comming in from. Make sure the cage is Weather proof and give the rooster the food and water that it will need for a couple of days at a time.

Make sure that the Cage part of the setup is concealed so that the Coyote, fox, whatever has to go through the dog door to get at it. But a leg hold trap in the entrance of the Dog door with a guide stick in front of it so that the animal has to step over the stick and into the trap.

Also look around from a coyotes point of view. Find the first pice of landscape that sticks out. An ant hill a woodchuck mound, clump of grass. Whatever sticks out the most to you within about a 20 to 30' radius and place another trapp there with a few feathers or a clump to spike the curiosity of the animal.

You don't want to approach the set any more than needed. Check the set every morning with a pair of binocs. Only go to the set to give the Rooster more food and water when needed. Use one access route - to and from the set and try to wear rubber boots and don't hang around any longer than neccessary so that you leave a minimal amount of scent if any. Bobcats and Coyote can be very skitish when they think something isn't right.

I have had success with this set.

Good Luck

Let me know how you make out with the problem.