Rule No 1: You’ve got to like walking

Rule No 2: If you look you won’t find. Nine times out of ten the snare finds you, you don’t find it.

Twice yesterday I caught my foot and tugged before realising it was a low snare, but I have to say this was a first. Most of the time, merrily zooming along, you jump, having practically walked into one suspended across the path at body height.

But it just doesn’t work walking along a track between some trees, thinking, ‘oh, this would be a good place for a snare’, and eagerly start looking around – there are none there! This is rule 2, Grasshopper.

Fairly often (20-30%) set in pairs.

Here are some recent finds:

12 July 2026: walking to Nyanga with the girls and rule 2 came into effect = we were just on our way down and walked into the big one, and then I sat down beside the other four.

This was the giant 2m snare (pics) and the stash of four unused snares (pics) beside a tree.

19 July 2026 – the awful one. Varying my downhill route to take in the sights I start to smell a dead animal which can happen – however this time it did not pass and just became worse until smelling my way to the remains became unavoidable. What a terrible struggle had taken place.

After some sightseeing and exploring it happened again, the airborne rot, on and off, but I was hundreds of metres away from the kudu. This time there was a horror story of flies buzzing and hissing and flying up each time I stepped within their threshold.

Then within 100m another, and another, making a pair of large high up snares blocking the paths, with a branch broken downwards to create direction.

Tramping on, in a bit of a mood, within 400m I had tagged two more. This was never ending, and it wasn’t even over.

I pulled out 6 snares altogther, leaving the two dead animals to deal with later with National Parks, and bolt cutters.

7 August 2026: 3 snares + 2 stubs (remains of snares on trees)
8 August 2026: zero – looking too hard –
10 August 2026: 3 snares and a stub