Search Trapping Incidents Database

Near Garden State Parkway and Jones Creek — a red fox photographed running with a wire snare wrapped around his neck. Fox escaped the object that the snare was anchored to but not the snare itself. On 03/13/05, the fox was found dead.

Jeffrey’s guardian was walking him close to the water’s edge in a town nature preserve when Jeffrey stuck his head into some brush where the trap was hidden. “The pet owner arrived in our office frantic with the trap on the dog’s head,” said a representative from the Animal Rescue Fund in Wainscott. Jeffrey, which ARF rescued from the Bahamas after Hurricane Francis in 2004, was killed. The trap appeared to be illegal, its target probably muskrat.

Zoe was a certified therapy dog who worked with at-risk youth in a wilderness program. She was hiking on a public road with a girls’ group when she was killed by the cyanide trap. The trap was 10 feet from the road at the most. A federal government trapper placed the trap on the private property at the rancher’s request. Zoe’s caregiver is contemplating a lawsuit against the USDA’s Wildlife Services for not following guidelines of placement of M-44 traps (no closer than 50 feet from a public road or path and no closer than 200 feet from a public stream).

A local resident found the young adult bobcat on his 4-acre property, hiding under a bush. On the end of the chain opposite the trap, the prongs that are designed to secure the trap had obviously come loose from whatever it had been attached to, and became hung up in a chain near the man’s driveway. A Game and Fish officer speculated that the bobcat may have been walking down the paved street, dragging the trap, and spooked by a car darted for the driveway.

Dixie’s guardian was heading outside to let her back into the house when he realized that she had gotten away from the yard. As he headed across the street, he found Dixie crawling up a ditch with an animal trap around her neck, fighting for her life. Dixie died a short time later. The trap had no identification, so it couldn’t be traced to anyone. Sheriff deputies then questioned the neighbor but said they could not prove anything. One of the man’s neighbors says two of his dogs were murdered and thinks that the man who he believes is responsible, actually admitted to him that he traps and buries neighborhood pets. Sheriff deputies said they could not prove anything.

The Tyrone Tramps, a local hiking club, was when one of the members’ dogs was caught in a trap set in the middle of a well used trail up a dry wash. Another member reported that everyone in the group was upset by the incident and that the person who was able to free the dog from the trap angrily threw it into the bushes.

In the Greenbelt Nature Preserve in Suffolk County, a Conibear trap was set in a 5-gallon bucket 50 feet from a trail by the edge of the water. Zephyr, who was rescued from Hurricane Frances in 2004 by the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, was in the trap only two minutes, but that was long enough to kill. The owner of the trap was cited for not having a tag on the trap.

A woman was charged under the Criminal Code of Canada with two counts of causing unnecessary pain and injury to a cat, Snowflake. The Timmins & District Humane Society received a complaint from her neighbor saying that the family’s cat had been caught in a conibear trap (a body gripping trap traditionally used by licensed trappers) on the woman’s property. Snowflake’s guardians took him to a veterinarian where he was hospitalized for further observation and treatment before being sent home. Sadly, Snowflake had a poor response to therapy and his condition worsened. Less than a week after Snowflake was discharged he was brought back to the veterinarian and euthanized due to symptoms associated with severe head trauma.

Leroy was trapped by a steel jaw leghold trap and suffered sustained swelling, bruising, cuts. Amputation was considered but antibiotics healed the wounds and leg was left intact. They found the cat under a dumpster with the trap on him. He’d been caught near a creek behind his guardian’s house. It’s within city limits. Trap owner was not found and no one was charged.

Monty was caught in a snare trap for 5 days but survived. He now has a scar that goes all the way around his neck from where the snare cut into him like a knife.