My Office Today

fiver

Well-Known Member
if he gets splosive certified he can count on my part time help... LOL.
I'll even buy him a big door sticker that says certified beaver blaster for his truck.
I'm sure the wife will love that.

i'll even bring my own canoe and 4 wheeler.
 

Rick H

Well-Known Member
if he gets splosive certified he can count on my part time help... LOL.
I'll even buy him a big door sticker that says certified beaver blaster for his truck.
I'm sure the wife will love that.

i'll even bring my own canoe and 4 wheeler.


Be sure and bring a video camera. I can see it now....."FILM AT 11" :rofl:
 

Rally

NC Minnesota
Just a thought. I have friends that work for MNDOT and they are explosive certified to blow dams. Could it be possible to have insurance coverage extended to you by agencies your are doing beaver remediation for, such as Counties?
I doubt it without being an employee. Also state regs requiring means of transport, procedure, storage, etc.
 

Rally

NC Minnesota
88857014-5474-415F-B763-16F289525A72.jpeg
Went back into the contract area yesterday, and of course, caught the big female ^^ and two of her pups at the pond I have to walk the farthest to get to! LOL. Also ran my county highway sets on the way down and back, to include one township spot and a spot for a state forestry job.
E43944FD-E475-4FF5-8364-E935908D8D0D.jpeg
Ended up with fifteen for the day ^^. Five from the contract area, one from the forestry spot, and nine from the county locations, total of 225.2 miles and a 4.5 mile ride on the wheeler. Blue Bird day, even got a little sunburn, tics are out heavy. Didn't remove any dams just cleaned up a county culvert some to make the beaver mad.
E90732BD-EDAE-4907-8EC1-DFC2DC6C0CAC.jpeg
These ^^ are the five from the contract.
14F7DBD4-27EE-478E-BF1A-508EF3A7DA59.jpeg
My skinning/ drying area, with the nine beaver I caught three days ago. Spent all day today skinning 12 and nailing 11 beaver on boards. The beaver are starting to show bites from territorial fighting and the fur is getting stiff and starting to shed. I won't be putting many more up.
201059B7-1B04-45A4-9E7D-33B3AA9E88D3.jpeg
This pic ^^ is dam one on the three pond series where I had the canoe at. Tore them all out and it's free flow now. Left the canoe there for a couple more days and will move it next trip in.
4D3213CD-55AE-49C9-948D-21074EDDD887.jpeg
Same dam ^^ after I dug it out.
52AE0A48-012C-4679-BA80-A2264B054F9D.jpeg
This is Dam one mostly dug out. ^^
BA8818A9-FDA9-44D0-B0C6-10E0AB396AF2.jpeg
This ^^ is a picture of the bottom of the notch I dug out in dam one. All the gold/ light colored are is a huge rock on the bottom, like a huge boulder split in half and a flat platform for me to stand on just for digging out this dam. It was pretty handy!
BCC8C4A6-96DB-4B43-9CD2-7E72D23A9850.jpeg
This is the downstream side of dam one before I started digging. ^^
D8C6357F-C0BF-4C1D-9E9A-EF9323B5333A.jpeg
This ^^ is taken from the base of dam one looking out onto pond two. Note how much the water level had dropped in pond two, I'd already pulled dam two and three and they had drained that much in the time it took to open dam one. I almost always start at the lowest dam and work upstream so I have water to canoe back out.
 
Last edited:

Rally

NC Minnesota
1598D272-16AB-46E1-9DC0-279AA01B370C.jpeg
Dam two ^^ after I had it opened up pretty good.
2934D0D1-B919-4E71-A3EA-B2DF5787E11F.jpeg
Dam two ^^ before I started digging. That is a beaver/ Otter crossover in the middle of the dam there. I usually avoid setting traps at locations like this when otter season is closed and I'm doing nuisance work. Just about a sure bet I'd be catching Otter at a location like this, especially this time of year when the females are setting up house in these ponds to give birth about the middle of May.
08AD05B5-BE9B-43EA-BFF8-B3905BC92986.jpeg
Looking out over pond one. ^^
F5257AA5-A475-4BE1-AD27-514E0DAAE9F8.jpeg
Looking over Pond three from the base of dam 2, shortly after digging out the dam from pond three. Note how much the water level had dropped just in the time it took me to canoe to dam two. There is a big beaver house in the center of this pond, but you have to look close to see it. There were two active houses on this pond.
BD4C73FD-181B-4C8F-B334-A2557C53A074.jpeg
This ^^ is the dam on pond three before I dug it out.
089A5ECA-F51C-4E7F-B991-1B76FFEAE948.jpeg
This ^^ is dam 3 after I dug it out. It was almost dry below dam three when I started, but now all this water will go to the series of CCC ditches, then to the river from them(about 5 miles to the river).
51FF1774-10D4-4D93-ADF7-4165A82DA861.jpeg
The last picture I took of pond three before opening dam two up.
5DD74C9C-3FDD-44BD-9775-A0A78CC54666.jpeg
I'm keeping my wheeler and trailer about two miles from the contract area at a friends property. I met this man while trapping a contract south of his property, while he was trying to get rid of some beaver on the property adjacent to his, which is farther downstream from his place. This man is 87 years old and as decent as they get. I just happened to be driving by and stopped to see what he was doing as he "hobbled" up out of the creek in a pair of chestwaders. He wasn't having much luck catching the beaver and I was driving by there every other day, so set some traps and caught the offending beaver. He was pretty tickled about that and I didn't have the heart to charge him. Anyway, he has since given me the keys to his place ( he lives in St. Paul) and calls me any time him or any of the neighbors have beaver problems. When he's up and I see him the conversation usually ends up about hunting or beaver. He asked me once if I had a twenty gauge shotgun and I told him several. Well when I saw him, his son, and grandson yesterday, he gave me this coffee can full of 20 gauge slugs, buck shot, and copper #2's. Couple 12 gauge on the top also, wouldn't take a penny for it and said he'd talked to the neighbor about me trapping some beaver off their ground. Good day!
 
Last edited:

Rally

NC Minnesota
looks like your still getting some good furs.
They go down hill pretty fast this time of year. The backs on the bigger beaver start getting real thin and rough, then they shed out the long guard hairs. Those type beaver used to go into the hatter market for shearing, but even that market is pretty full now, and manufactures can get better beaver cheaper. I'm tanning my beaver for resale into the curio market currently, so I'm not gonna pay to have poor quality beaver tanned.
If you look close at the picture of my truck with the fifteen beaver in it, you'll notice several beaver on the left rear, are missing the tails. I'm pretty popular with my buddies Brittany spaniel. I stop on the way home often and bring him tails for treats and shoot the bull with my buddy. That dog barks at everybody else when they pull in his drive, but jumps around like Snoopy when I pull in. That Brittany is usually pulling on the end of the tails while I'm cutting them off! LOL
 

L Ross

Well-Known Member
They go down hill pretty fast this time of year. The backs on the bigger beaver start getting real thin and rough, then they shed out the long guard hairs. Those type beaver used to go into the hatter market for shearing, but even that market is pretty full now, and manufactures can get better beaver cheaper. I'm tanning my beaver for resale into the curio market currently, so I'm not gonna pay to have poor quality beaver tanned.
If you look close at the picture of my truck with the fifteen beaver in it, you'll notice several beaver on the left rear, are missing the tails. I'm pretty popular with my buddies Brittany spaniel. I stop on the way home often and bring him tails for treats and shoot the bull with my buddy. That dog barks at everybody else when they pull in his drive, but jumps around like Snoopy when I pull in. That Brittany is usually pulling on the end of the tails while I'm cutting them off! LOL
Do you remove and market the castor?
 

L Ross

Well-Known Member
You bet. They’re at $100 a lb semi dry now and going up.
It's nice to have that old pair of BDU's nicely water proofed with beaver fat and smelling of castor. More pleasant than the cab of a pickup you climbed into after butchering buffalo. Thank God I had rubber floor mats instead of carpeting.
 

Rally

NC Minnesota
It's nice to have that old pair of BDU's nicely water proofed with beaver fat and smelling of castor. More pleasant than the cab of a pickup you climbed into after butchering buffalo. Thank God I had rubber floor mats instead of carpeting.
Isn't that how BDU's are suppose to smell?
I have BDU's in several patterns, and wear them most days trapping when it's warm. At the end of the day I take the shirts/ blouse off and put them on the passenger side seat. Well last Saturday, I took the wife on a "Date", which means she rode along to a location I needed to look over to submit a bid for. She likes to ride along to cut early Cattails and rose hips for her crafts. I took a lot of the stuff off the passenger seat to make room for her to go. About twenty miles from home she had the first tic crawling on her! LOL
 
Last edited:

L Ross

Well-Known Member
Isn't that how BDU's are suppose to smell?
I have BDU's in several patterns, and wear them most days trapping when it's warm. At the end of the day I take the shirts/ blouse off and put them on the passenger side seat. Well last Saturday, I took the wife on a "Date", which means she rode along to a location I needed to look over to submit a bid for. She likes to ride along to cut early Cattails and rose hips for her crafts. I took a lot of the stuff off the passenger seat to make room for her to go. About twenty miles from home she had the first tic crawling on her! LOL
I was up north of Virginia a couple years ago and found the biggest rose hips I have ever seen. I picked enough to make a couple of batches of jelly.
 

blackthorn

Active Member
For the life of me I cannot figure out how a Willow Grouse can swallow some of those huge Rose hips. Most times you can recover the hip fully intact. I think they must really hurt going down!
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
if he gets splosive certified he can count on my part time help... LOL.
I'll even buy him a big door sticker that says certified beaver blaster for his truck.
I'm sure the wife will love that.

i'll even bring my own canoe and 4 wheeler.
He will also bring at least 2 relatives. You don’t want that. They eat your food and shoot your ammo. At least they do that to him.
 

Rally

NC Minnesota
He will also bring at least 2 relatives. You don’t want that. They eat your food and shoot your ammo. At least they do that to him.
He can bring all the help he wants Brad, as long as they can skin and flesh beaver!
Brought my last three beaver home yesterday, they are getting bit up pretty bad and shedding too. I'm pulling three locations tomorrow, and setting 3 new ones. Around 13 locations set now, didn't get home last night until 9:05, and the wife wasn't impressed because I didn't have cell service for a few hours where I was at. Phone lit up like a Xmas tree when I came out, all calls from the wife, so I knew she was worrying.
Last Thursday, I went to check a trap at a culvert along a county road. I had three traps at the location and one was missing, trap, ten foot drowning rod and 30" T-bar stake. The bank was tore up some so I knew I'd caught a beaver, and there was some beaver fur on a nearby patch of brush. I'm thinking maybe the beaver had pulled the whole rig up because there is a bunch of rip rap there on the bottom. The DNR calls it a spawning structure, with rip rap all through the cement culvert, shoulders of the road almost to the adjacent lake. Because of the rip rap on the bottom it's hard to get the deep end of the drowning rod into the bottom, but I'd thought I'd wiggled it through the rocks enough to anchor the bottom end , with a T-bar at the top to hold it in place. Well it didn't work as planned, because the beaver got the bottom of the rod pulled out and was now on a ten foot stiff leash! Paved road, hard gravel shoulder with short dead grass. I'm looking for foot prints different than mine thinking somebody stole my trap. Couldn't find any foot prints but a different set of tire tracks on the shoulder mixed with mine. So I'm thinking it could have been somebody pulled over to look at the lake or make a call or ETC. Spend a half hour walking downstream looking for a beaver or evidence it drug the whole rig downstream, to no avail. Upstream is a lake with some weeds, but no obvious trails through that either. Decided to bring my drag hook and culvert hook next trip through, which is two days later, which I do. Drag the bottom and hook nothing but rocks, weeds, and a few dead beaver sticks. Hard to believe anybody would steal a beaver in this market, but the trap, drowning rod and T-bar sell for about $50, and I'm getting pissed just thinking about the loss and not knowing where the beaver is or it's fate dragging around that 10 foot rod, it's going to get hung up somewhere sooner or later. Decided I may have to bring a canoe down here and take a trip around the lake next trip, which would be Tuesday.
Monday I'm in my shop putting up beaver and get a call from the Game Warden down there. She asks me if I had a trap at that location and I said I had three, but one went missing! She informed me she had the trap and beaver, which she had to shoot several times to dispatch it!!! She then inquired as to how those drowning rods work, which I explained. Her line of questioning was to confirm the set was set to drown the beaver, which Mn. law states has to be capable of drowning, to allow for a legal 72 hour check. We made arrangements to meet at the location on Tuesday afternoon while I was checking down there. I've only seen this Warden in their district office, from a distance, and not had any dealings with her, and most often deal with the senior warden in the district for beaver work assignments.
So, I called her when I got close to the area as we agreed, but get her answering machine, called her again after I got there, checked my remaining two traps and loaded up another big beaver from one of those traps in my truck. Get back in my truck and she's called twice while I was checking those traps, and left a message saying she's just a couple minutes away. Ten minutes later up pulls a pick up with a 4wheeler in the back dragging a 17' boat with 90 Hp Outboard, and out of the trucks comes two female wardens, either of which could have been on the cover of Vogue magazine! One blonde, one dark black hair and deffinately of Italian decent, neither weighed over 130 lbs! We did our introductions and some small talk and I hopped up in her truck and got the huge beaver out of her truck bed from under the wheeler, where it had been laying, black plastic bedliner and all, for three days!! I have no idea how she got it in her truck. She had been informed by her supervisor when she looked at my trap tag, that she shouldn't have removed the beaver from the location, and that it was a legal set. I gave her a card but she said her supervisor had already given her one, but the blonde didn't have one so she took it, for future nuisance beaver work. That should work in my favor some day in the future.
I skun the beaver when I got home and it was a mess! First bullet (.40 Cal) went in low behind the shoulder and came back out cutting a three inch path across the ribs, second was a head shot. Wouldn't have been too bad if it hadn't laid in that truck for three days. She had every right to shoot the live beaver, but not to remove it from the location. I'm pretty sure her supervisor informed her what she should have done and now she's got my number.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
Littlegirl can skin, but she'd probably draw the line at fleshing.... LOL.

sounds like the new warden got a little OJT from her supervisors, and you had a chance at doing a little bit of field educating too.
I'd have probably round filed the last one after pulling the castor out.
 

Kevin Stenberg

Well-Known Member
Well it is 5:30 PM and probably a 2 year old bore bear nervously comes out of the brush. He looked the house over for probably 3 minutes and slowly walked back into the brush.
Hold the phone. Its 5:37 and the bear is coming back. He came into the yard sat down and just sorta looked around for 5 minutes. He must have heard something to the south. All of a sudden he bolted N W on a full run.
 

Rally

NC Minnesota
Littlegirl can skin, but she'd probably draw the line at fleshing.... LOL.

sounds like the new warden got a little OJT from her supervisors, and you had a chance at doing a little bit of field educating too.
I'd have probably round filed the last one after pulling the castor out.
BE331AB8-61FD-4FD3-889C-07632B25A53E.jpeg
I probably should have let her keep it in her truck as poor as it looks. Lots of work for probably $8, but still better than throwing it away.

Kevin,
Just go out in the yard and put a headlock on that bear, just to show him it’s your yard!