We usually set snares on obvious rabbit runs. After a new snow, they usually become readily apparent in 24-48 hours. This is fairly efficient, and it’s often easy to read the sign even in new areas.
I had always been told that setting up a concentrated feed pile, “fencing” it off, and setting snares at entrances was very effective. What I’d also been told is that rabbits primarily eat willow (which is not in dispute). Recently, through observation, I began to notice a lot of dense rabbit (snowshoe hare, technically) sign (pellets and tracks) around freshly fallen spruce limbs with green needles. It was clear that they were eating the needles fairly intensely.
So, I took the advice about fencing off a feed pile substituting the same fallen limbs they had been attracted to in place of willow (which is abundant within a mile radius, but not in this immediate area).
All I did was take the limb debris from a standing dead spruce (thatI’d felled and bucked for firewood) and stick individual limbs (some whole, some broken by hand down to about 12" lengths) into the snow in a circle around the small pile of green limbs. I took one sprig of green needles and crushed it with my hands with the idea that the scent would travel farther, but I don’t know whether that had any effect (other than making me smell like Christmas).
I then set 2 snares. One was in a natural opening between 2 spruce. The second was next to a single spruce, oppositely framed in with the impromptu stick fence.
The result was catching 2 hares overnight. The total work was about 30 minutes, and the forest provided meat for 2 people for 2 or 3 days.
In the future, I think this could be improved by lifting poles on each set, which I started to do here, but gave up on as my hands started getting cold.
Additional question: could I have caught 3 hates in 3 sets with the same fence? 4 with 4? I’m not sure. I set 2 snares mostly because I saw 2 hares in this area previously, which is a rather arbitrary signal.