I used to do a lot of fur trapping...water and land. After the market fell off, and change in work, it has dropped way back. I now am doing no recreational trapping but have a fur trapping license and a commercial nuisance wildlife permit. I do a few paid jobs a year, mostly skunk. It pays well. I have taken more than a dozen skunks out of one house. This area has a lot of skunks and nobody doing professional ADC work.
So a few weeks ago I got a call to do a paid beaver job. They were crawling up into a city park and taking out a lot of trees. I went over and checked it out. There is an old man-made dam on a small river. A side channel diverts above the dam for several hundred yards and comes back into the river below the dam. There used to be a mill on this side channel. The park is between the 2 flows. On the other side of the river I could see a ton of chew sticks below the root system of a large tree. I figure they have a den or feeding lodge there.
So I find lots of fresh cutting around the park. Chew sticks as well. There are no cross-overs, slides or pull outs. I can figure out logically where they must be crawling out, but they have not been at this location long enough to where it is obvious. And the shores are rocky. No obvious beaver channels.
I agree to take the job. I realize it's been 4 years since I set a beaver trap. I get my equipment in order and then the cold snap hits. It is well below freezing for over a week and the banks are all iced up. Above the dam is a sheet of ice. And this park is crowded with people and dog walkers everyday.
The little river the park is on I am sure is crowded with beavers well beyond this park. The situation here is just to get the ones coming into the park and cutting the trees, not to get noticed, and not to catch any people or dogs. Due to the amount of human traffic, dogs, and the lack of beaver channels and pullouts, not an easy job. In fact, the hardest beaver job I've ever done.
After the ice thawed out enough for me work the banks, I got out and set 2 footholds. I believe the beavers are coming into the park from below the dam, where the side channel flows back into the river. There is a point here with a foot trail above it, but the bank is steep and it is about 10' down to the water. One of the sets I did was castor mound on a ledge in the flush bank about 2' above the bottom. I chopped out a place at the waterline big enough for a MB750, where the water would cover it, and put it on a drowner. I threw some mud on the ledge, slicked it up and lured with castor. I had a 45# beaver at the end of the drowner in the morning.
Then it froze up again, and the water dropped. So that set could not be reused as the trap would be out of water.
I went back saturday and put in another castor mound, and a baited stick set. I cut a young poplar from a different location and took it in and used for bait. I had another beaver at the set in the morning, close to 40#. No more activity since, so I pulled my traps this morning.
I hope that does it. If they have more problems I will go back. Catching 2 adults with no young seems to indicate that this is a long way from the den. I hope this was a mated pair that moved in, raised some young across the river, and came into the park as their winter food supply. If so, the young will probably take off in spring to establish their own homes. I did not find old cuts in the park to indicate beavers had been there before recently.
Here's a pic of the dam; the place where I was trapping...the side channel coming back into the river; and the baited stick set, peeled poplar with food lure...you can see the trap in the water below, with breasting sticks against the jaw (this is the finished set before the beaver was caught).
So a few weeks ago I got a call to do a paid beaver job. They were crawling up into a city park and taking out a lot of trees. I went over and checked it out. There is an old man-made dam on a small river. A side channel diverts above the dam for several hundred yards and comes back into the river below the dam. There used to be a mill on this side channel. The park is between the 2 flows. On the other side of the river I could see a ton of chew sticks below the root system of a large tree. I figure they have a den or feeding lodge there.
So I find lots of fresh cutting around the park. Chew sticks as well. There are no cross-overs, slides or pull outs. I can figure out logically where they must be crawling out, but they have not been at this location long enough to where it is obvious. And the shores are rocky. No obvious beaver channels.
I agree to take the job. I realize it's been 4 years since I set a beaver trap. I get my equipment in order and then the cold snap hits. It is well below freezing for over a week and the banks are all iced up. Above the dam is a sheet of ice. And this park is crowded with people and dog walkers everyday.
The little river the park is on I am sure is crowded with beavers well beyond this park. The situation here is just to get the ones coming into the park and cutting the trees, not to get noticed, and not to catch any people or dogs. Due to the amount of human traffic, dogs, and the lack of beaver channels and pullouts, not an easy job. In fact, the hardest beaver job I've ever done.
After the ice thawed out enough for me work the banks, I got out and set 2 footholds. I believe the beavers are coming into the park from below the dam, where the side channel flows back into the river. There is a point here with a foot trail above it, but the bank is steep and it is about 10' down to the water. One of the sets I did was castor mound on a ledge in the flush bank about 2' above the bottom. I chopped out a place at the waterline big enough for a MB750, where the water would cover it, and put it on a drowner. I threw some mud on the ledge, slicked it up and lured with castor. I had a 45# beaver at the end of the drowner in the morning.
Then it froze up again, and the water dropped. So that set could not be reused as the trap would be out of water.
I went back saturday and put in another castor mound, and a baited stick set. I cut a young poplar from a different location and took it in and used for bait. I had another beaver at the set in the morning, close to 40#. No more activity since, so I pulled my traps this morning.
I hope that does it. If they have more problems I will go back. Catching 2 adults with no young seems to indicate that this is a long way from the den. I hope this was a mated pair that moved in, raised some young across the river, and came into the park as their winter food supply. If so, the young will probably take off in spring to establish their own homes. I did not find old cuts in the park to indicate beavers had been there before recently.
Here's a pic of the dam; the place where I was trapping...the side channel coming back into the river; and the baited stick set, peeled poplar with food lure...you can see the trap in the water below, with breasting sticks against the jaw (this is the finished set before the beaver was caught).
