I had a similar incident as Garry about 15 years ago. It was late grouse season in WV and about 6 inches of fresh snow. Was hunting Betty, the setter in my avatar on a public wildlife area where my RGS committee and I had done some small clear-cuts years before. Fresh snow, no tracks when Betty started whirling and biting--she was in a snare around her neck. Hard to control a panicked dog, couldn't get the snare off her neck. It was fence stapled to a tree, so I shot the cable off at the tree and was able to wrestle the cable off her neck.
That night I was attending a conservation banquet and told the story to my buddy. The gentleman across the table from me introduced.himself as the conservation officer for that county. He took a lot of info from me and said he was going to check out the area. He found more unmarked snares that hadn't been checked in days.
He called me, said he found out the person involved and ticketed him.
I didn't start carrying cable cutters however until several articles in Gun Dog, PDJ, etc wrote on the dangers of these new non relaxing snares popular out west.
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"How kind it is that most of us will never know when we have fired our last shot"--Nash Buckingham
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