I'm new to trapping. My 12 year old son and I just got our NJ trapping licenses and we're starting to buy our supplies.

I bought a roll of snare support wire at Cabela's yesterday and it's not what I expected. I've seen two weights of support wire. I'll call them "light" and "heavy". I wanted the lighter wire. The options were 9 gauge or 11 gauge.

I do a lot of work with sheet metal and with wire. as the "gauge" number gets larger, the material gets thinner. So...since I wanted the "light" wire, I picked the 11 gauge wire over the 9 gauge wire. When I got home, it's much heaver than I had expected. I measured the diameter and it is .11". I'm now wondering if 11 gauge trapper wire isn't really 11 gauge at all and if it's really 11 hundredths of an inch in diameter. That would make the 9 gauge not really 9 gauge but 9 hundredths of an inch - probably what I was really looking for.

Am I correct that trapper wire gauge size isn't really wire gauge at all but just decimal inches?

11 is pretty thick.

We showed you 14ga and 11 Most of us use 14 ga. for the inverted s and u set up and plastic collar. 11 and 9 for the stand alone supports with whammies and collars..

#9 wire maybe common in Minnesota but in many other states I have customers who swear by the snare supports I make with 12 ga wire so much so that I go through over 100 lbs of 12 gauge wire every year.
Allan

Doubled 11ga.

Thank you. That makes more sense. Still odd that the "11 gauge" measures .11 inches - which isn't 11 gauge.

I have found 11 ga wire suitable for supporting coyote/wolf snares when used separately, from the actual snare, as a support wire.

#9 all the way. No better support wire if you use anything longer than bctomcat shows in that picture.

Here we GO lol Newt and I will still use our 14 ga LOL

# 9 wire is close to 1/8"

To answer your question 9 gauge is almost twice as thick as 11gauge. If you want even thinner wire go to the hardware hardware store and buy a roll of 14 or16 tie wire.

This!

I use mostly stand alone even when I dont have to for speed sake and usually go with 9 wire. Wide open field sets get 11 gauge and 5/64th cable on the snare and the extension with a low profile lock in the open. I look forward to being able to use 1/16th 1x19 after the move on those wide open sets

For small animals like fox and cats,my support wire is also the tie-off.Very fast to set up in brush and rock solid support.

According to the charts:

9 gage is .1144"
11 gage is .09074"
14 gage is .06408"
16 gage is .05082"

Is that the AWG chart? Don't think that is the tie wire chart. As I recall 9 ga annealed wire is between 3/32 and 1/8

You are correct SNIPPERBBB.....That was AWG

This is Rebar Tie Wire:

9 = .148"
11 = .120"
14 = .080
16 = .0625

9 gauge wire. I prefer galvanized #9, seems stiffer than black #9, once weathered it looses the shine

We can only use snares in water here. I use 11 gauge for my support mostly, I do have some stakes rigged with 9 gauge.

In most cases It's not about what gauge It Is, It's about the stiffness of the wire. I have some fencing wire and I'm not sure about what gauge It Is but It's super stiff and works good and It fits my whammies.