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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> The only reason I am considering a live
> trapping/snare method is because there are eagles around here, and the
> last thing I need is to kill a chipped eagle by accident.

I concur. I was given some steel jaw traps to use by my old 
"hillbilly dirt-farmer friend," Farrell Berry when first I went to 
live at Heartwood. I was battling night-feeding coons, possums, 
weasels and other chicken lovers and having trapped in Wisconsin I 
thought to give it a try. Farrell had his traps tied together in 
pairs with wire and set them perhaps eighteen inches apart. He taught 
that an animal in one trap may extricate itself but with two traps 
tied together the animal would soon become immobilized. So I set the 
traps. A week or so later I was dismayed to find I had caught a Great 
Horned Owl. A rabbit had gotten caught in one of the traps, the owl 
had come down for midnight dinner, then, while dealing with the 
rabbit, had stepped onto the second trap pan.