Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Trapping Beavers must go

I've been in Paradise for a little over a week. Would appear as if no one has been doing any trapping for some years out here. A couple of the roads are getting close to being flooded. More beavers here then I have ever seen in my previous assignments here.

War is coming....

What's your plan, if you can say? I have similar problem with limited solution options due to visibility, law and political correctness. I do know the last thing to do is invite Fish & Game in to help.

My plan is traps and snares up the azz, and stack'em up like cord wood...

Nevermind the azz, grab the head.... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Good plan. Have any experience with Conibear? I figure I'll have to set at dusk and remove at first light. Can't have someone walk up on a tethered beaver in this area.

330's ruin their day...

Okay. Thanks.

I contacted the Oregon department of fish and game, and got permission to kill beavers that were building a dam around the colvert on my driveway. Was kinda nict to be able to shoot 'em legally. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />
Virgil B.

Not wanting attention doesn't mean illegal. Some things are better done quietly.

If you find the house, knock a hole in the top, drop in a few swimming pool size chlorine tablets and presto, no more beavers.

We had a creek behind our house growing up that was full of beavers. One day I went to war with them using the 6.5 and the 12 gauge. 13 beavers in one day. One of them I shot on the bank and he was HUGE! I weighed him on our bathroom scale and he was 90 pounds! Another one that I fished out was over 60. It was good practice to try and shoot them in the head while they are swimming. Man I miss living on the farm...


SS

Beavers as big as 10 & 11 year old kids??? 60 & 90 pounds?

IIRC a beaver caught in Estes Park, CO weighed 126#!!!

You learn something every day.

Most beaver are real easy to trap. The smart ones can be a real head ache. Beaver are very jealous of their territory and will go anywhere you want them to go with scent. Find a place where you can conceal a #330 Conibear with grass and put a gob of scent on a mound (not really necessary, but it does add eye appeal, but can attract un-wanted attention from other people. I really believe a Beaver would climb a tree to get to strange scent. Never pegged a beaver because I could always get to come to water deep enough to drown them. Took a few toenails, but once I switched to #48 and # 14 Newhouse traps on a good slide wire drowner, the problems ceased. The #48 Newhouse was my favorite, and damm good on Otter also. It always broke my heart to cut that long fine chain to about 4-6 inches. If your just after the big stuff, and set quite a ways from the house or bank den you can take the big ones and then leave the cubs alone. The male always comes out first at night and makes a security swing around the pond or swamp. When he doesn't come back Mom comes looking for him and if you've set a couple of sets you will have both of them just after dark and can pull out the next day unless the colony has some two year olds you want to take.

On damage control beaver trapping you should always tell the land owner they have a vacant beaver hotel on their property, and when the two year olds get kicked out in the Spring, they will stop at that vacant Beaver hotel, and the problem will be back. Just some things I learned over the years. Beaver trapping and skinning is hard work. Never used snares so I know nothing about them. But if a Colony goes dead on your scent, you may have to give them up for the season. Another thing if the Colony gets scared, they may not come out of the house for a week or two, or at least that has been my experience.

I have a box of 330s that haven't seen action since the 80s. Trappin' beaver is more fun than stompin' chickens!

If you trap,the 330 is the way to go. But nothing beats a 12 guage and a mag light.

Try diplomacy first. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
Good plan to use the blanket-trap strategy. I used to get a few off a National Wildlife Refuge where I worked using an 870 w/ #4 buck on half-bright nights, with no light. Trick is to close your eyes just as you touch 'er off, so you won't be blinded for a half-hour by the bright flash.

why kill them without utilizing them. wait until they are prime or have a trapper who will utilize their skins come in and trap them.

We can't mess with beavers here in Utah. wife is watching too close.

Scotty, I thought you really liked beavers.......

For nuisance beaver in summer, we usually just break the dam a bit, put a 330 a little downstream and underwater. they always come to fix the dam at dusk and we have 'em by morning. A .22 Hornet through the top of their head can do wonders for your beaver headaches too. They're too tough to kill reliably with a .22LR or something quieter. Beavers are declared nusance animals in much of Saskatchewan. We killed 52 in one 1/2 mile stretch of stream on our land three summers ago. Didn't exterminate them either! We have eight new dams this spring, lost about twenty acres of hayfield. Our national symbol can be a pain in the behind! Good luck controlling yours.

I have nothing against a good beaver. Sometimes even Cougar Beaver does the trick <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

What do the chlorine tablets do to the beaver - just run 'em off or kill them with the chorine gas? Beavers do terrible timber damage in Arkansas. Brimfish

We had em cutting down our trees along our ponds in NM and my grandpa called the game warden. Being and old timer, he showed up with two boxes of shells and told my grandpa to "get his thirty" he did and they shot 7 or 8 beavers that day. I swear one of them was 80# or better- I could hardly haul it out of the water!

forget the beaver (there is a ton of them) and go after the martin. Prices are high. When the snow was here one of the few trappers with a snowmobile was stacking them..

I'm running 2 lines with a guy. One from the skiff and one from the road. We are doing our first set from the skiff in the morning.

I realize that this is an old thread, but this is a really funny post. I showed it to my wife and she just rolled her eyes and said Men!

Bill

Here are a couple from this fall, #3's and drowning sets. Our local watering hole is gettin' overrun by big beaver, but no pics of that, there are some things you just don't talk about.....grin

Especially with "Those Kind Of Neighbors".

The clueless many time are still he rulers,
If nothing else by MOUTH!

Beaver trapping, especially nuisance work in the summer, has to be the hardest work I've ever done. Did it full time for several years. One word of advice...keep that swamp water away from your mouth and nose. Even a drop or two splashed in you mouth can give you a case of 'beaver fever' , giardia, that, believe me, you don't want.

I do not agree or condone these attitudes or actions towards Beavers.

Just pet a beaver, or better yet, eat one instead.


Signed,

Beaver 🦫

I don't know where you are, do you get ice? I ask because I think the easiest way to eliminate large numbers is using what I have heard called the canadian snaring method see this link for a better description than I could give.

I would use a chainsaw to cut holes in the ice set the snares and come back two weeks later and rarely did a pole have zero beavers on it, many two and I did get three beavers on one pole that was a rush. I would pull the poles after two weeks as I had most of the beavers,

Where there are bear pour used peanut oil or cooking grease on dam and lodge and let the bear take care of it. They will tear it out trying to get to oil or grease.

Inside 30 yards a .22CB short broadside between the eye and the ear does the trick. With the 'puter knocked out they drown fast.
Taken many that way. Quietly.

I love the beaver.

We have to shoot them here, way to many, tree damage, roads flooded, lakes way to high.
I live in the country so I use 223 a lot. But some of my best days have been with a 22 mag, a dozen a day sometimes if I have the patience.
I have no love for these sob's, none. We are allowed to shoot em. The township thanks us too.

I like that idea, may have to try it.