English Translation
We tried to trap the fox.
We don’t usually spell 捕らえる in Hiragana. Especially 罠 is written in Kanji, and 捕らえる (漢字検定4級 = Kanji Exam Level 4) is a less difficult Kanji than 罠 (漢字検定1級 = Kanji Exam Level 1, the highest).
I guess the author didn’t know which Kanji of the two homophones is the correct one, so wrote it in Hiragana. 捕らえる is “to hunt an animal or to arrest a suspect” whereas 捉える is “to grasp the insights from context/situation or to understand the gist”.