Beaver trapping 2021-22

[TwentyFive-Yard]

For a few years I gave consideration to trying trapping to understand it and it’s requirements rather make an uneducated judgement upon trapping. I am fortunate to live in a part of Montana that is steeped in beaver trapping, Osbourne Russell and Jim Bridger ran traps on the waters I am trapping as did many indigenous people of the Crow nation. In February I made my first sets with snares and got a good 53 lb beaver but quickly adopted 330 conibears and then foothold traps on a drowning pole. I knocked out 12 beavers in my first 3 months of trapping and one really big river otter. I closed the spring by getting the run around from an educated beaver that kept jamming up a spring creek in the land owners front yard. I’ve been back on the trap line for about a week now starting with the same problem beaver. He sprang a 330 three nights ago with a fresh chew as he was trying to enter bank den. This demanded outside the box thinking. The property manager recently ripped the dams out that the beavers had rebuilt since April, so I punched a small hole in the new dam and set 3 #2 foot hold’s in a gang set on the upstream side of the build site. With the water level down I couldn’t run a drowner pole, so I got there early and brought the .17hmr, as in Montana we can dispatch a legally trapped animal with a firearm.

 

[Undeg01]

You are better than me. I have trapped just about everything in Oklahoma, but I cannot master trapping beavers.

 

[Rjsand70]

I’ve got a beaver that does that too I think if you’re trying to trap on a dam he will do it forever have you tried a caster set in the bank

 

[Zappaman]

When I shot my buck, my buddy showed up with a freshly trapped beaver in the back of the mule. I laughed when we got back to the lodge and the fellow who trapped it gave me the beaver… a first for me!

So I skinned it and froze the fresh carcass for cooking this spring. Read a bit about cooking it up but thought I’d ask… do you guys EAT BEAVER? (Ya, I know… sounds like college here ). But joking aside… and off topic a bit- but what say you trappers?

 

[jmez]

No. Don't eat it. I use it for bobcat bait.

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[packer58]

I trapped beaver a lot back in the late 70's...........All i'll admit to is buy a crock pot and enjoy.......

Oh, and yes... save a little for your cat sets...

 

[TwentyFive-Yard]

I will rip the stigma off here, yes I kept the meat and ate it. It’s delicious. Ive done beaver burgers side by side test tasted against beef and beaver won hands down. I mostly keep the hindquarters, shoulders and back straps (yeah they have back straps), but I’ve also done racks of ribs with the strap attached. What I will say is that as beavers get bigger they get more “castor-y”, so I prefer a younger beaver than a grizzled old 53 pounder.

 

[TwentyFive-Yard]

I’ve got a beaver that does that too I think if you’re trying to trap on a dam he will do it forever have you tried a caster set in the bank

Oh yeah, I ran some castor mounds with conibears in the slides and also with a foothold trap attached to drowning pole, works well unless they’re well educated. I did get that beaver on the gang set on the dam. It weighed out 44 lbs, which according to the Montana field guide would make it mature adult for sure but mass to age does have a correlation so about 4-5 year old beaver. I was able to get the mate to it and 4 small ones from that “pond” last winter so I am reasonably confident this was the problem that gave me the run around. Now the question is, did that 44 pounder take a new mate over the winter and are there still kits?

 

[TwentyFive-Yard]

You are better than me. I have trapped just about everything in Oklahoma, but I cannot master trapping beavers.

Find their runs coming and going from the lodge, you’ll get em.

 

[Zappaman]

I will rip the stigma off here, yes I kept the meat and ate it. It’s delicious. Ive done beaver burgers side by side test tasted against beef and beaver won hands down. I mostly keep the hindquarters, shoulders and back straps (yeah they have back straps), but I’ve also done racks of ribs with the strap attached. What I will say is that as beavers get bigger they get more “castor-y”, so I prefer a younger beaver than a grizzled old 53 pounder.

Thanks Bsum82…

That is exactly the info I was hoping for… and with pics! Thanks

I’m planning to do it up goat style this spring, whole carcass (broke down like yours here) over a pit for about 12 hours (after a bag marinade). This guy was about 40 lbs so hopefully he’ll get taste (and eat) ok.

 

[TwentyFive-Yard]

You are better than me. I have trapped just about everything in Oklahoma, but I cannot master trapping beavers.

I set traps on a new lodge 2 nights ago, I screwed up on the first night because I forgot to completely submerge the conibear on the run, this is important when it’s going to be cold and the water will freeze. So yesterday I moved the trap out of the entrance hole about 2 feet so that I could place it 2 inches under the water to keep the trap bars from getting ice locked. That beaver likely blew right through the trap on the first night because it was indeed ice locked. The second night, no he didn’t make it. New personal record for heaviest trapped beaver, weighing in at 54.2 lbs.

 

[Zappaman]

Cool story… trapping beaver sounds as hard as coyote trapping. Takes years to figure it out, and I know from watching one of the best state trappers in NM in the 80s. Used to camp out with him when he came through back before the poison M80 days (which ruined state sponsored trapping for good about 1987 sadly).

Poor guy died back then… shooting a coyote from a Piper Cub… they stalled it over a boxed canyon and fell to their death. This is AFTER he shot the propeller on the same plane a few years back. Maybe not the safest/smartest trapper in the land, but he died with his boots on I guess, but a super smart trapper I learned a LOT from for sure though. Damn shame.

 

[TwentyFive-Yard]

Cool story… trapping beaver sounds as hard as coyote trapping. Takes years to figure it out, and I know from watching one of the best state trappers in NM in the 80s. Used to camp out with him when he came through back before the poison M80 days (which ruined state sponsored trapping for good about 1987 sadly).

Poor guy died back then… shooting a coyote from a Piper Cub… they stalled it over a boxed canyon and fell to their death. This is AFTER he shot the propeller on the same plane a few years back. Maybe not the safest/smartest trapper in the land, but he died with his boots on I guess, but a super smart trapper I learned a LOT from for sure though. Damn shame.

That’s crazy a crazy story. My biggest concern while water trapping in sub zero temps is quite frankly hypothermia; wet steel freezes to your skin fast! Oh and rabid beavers, I ended my night before bed last night reading about a guy in Mass. who was attacked by a large rabid beaver while out for a swim. Pretty nasty looking gouges all over his body. It certainly crosses my mind while I am hammering sticks into the stream to hold my traps in place, just what that beaver is thinking inside the lodge. Those teeth are large and in charge.

 

[Zappaman]

Wow… rabid beavers? Zombie beavers need fast lead

 

[Wingshooter]

I have had really good luck trapping beavers in castor sets they seem to be suckers for a new animal in their territory. Find their slide coming out of the water run a fence out of small sticks on both sides of the slide take a ball of mud fist sized and put it on the bank side of your fence. Take a small stick and put some castor scent on it and leave it sticking out of the mound. Put a #4 leghold trap submerged in the creek. It's worked well for me.

 

[TwentyFive-Yard]

I have had really good luck trapping beavers in castor sets they seem to be suckers for a new animal in their territory. Find their slide coming out of the water run a fence out of small sticks on both sides of the slide take a ball of mud fist sized and put it on the bank side of your fence. Take a small stick and put some castor scent on it and leave it sticking out of the mound. Put a #4 leghold trap submerged in the creek. It's worked well for me.

I have more success with castor mounds in the spring mating season around here in Montana. I hunt big game, so my trapping season doesn’t get going until December at the earliest, and generally there’s gonna be thick ice on the pond. During the heavy ice I concentrate on finding their runs to and from the lodge and around their under water feed pile. Once the spring melt thaws some of the ice I do run the slide set with foot holds on a drowning rod. Very effective. So much so that it got me curious as to why beavers are so affected by a different beavers castor from a different colony. That led me to the conceptual debate between “Scent fencing” vs “scent matching”. Down the proverbial “rabbit hole” to be sure, but fascinating stuff to me. The beaver I snapped on Xmas morning last week was a beaver that thoroughly screwed with me last spring. Kept burying my castor mounds and jumping the traps. Here’s the article should you care to check it out: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/respect-the-boundaries-of-the-beaver/

 

[TwentyFive-Yard]

Well, a week after setting a new personal best with 54 pounds I got the mate to that one and it weighed out at 58 pounds. There’s been 3 sub adults in between these two all about 30 pounds.

 

[Zappaman]

Nice and well done!!! Hunting and trapping test the best of our abilities... glad you nailed the mate!

 

[sneaky]

Caught enough over opening days of beaver season for bait mostly

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[TwentyFive-Yard]

Caught enough over opening days of beaver season for bait mostly

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Nice work, that’s a haul for sure. I kept some meat last year but my freezers are full so I’ve been giving the carcasses to a neighbor who a professional pest control company and he needed some carcasses to get some problem wolves on some ranches nearby.