Beaver hunting

[mhiltz]

I have recently been shooting a lot of beavers on the farm. They have our drain ditches so clogged with their dams that the drain water was starting to run backwards. It was told to me that these beavers haven't been hunted or trapped on this particular land since the '60's. They have had it very good for years and there are a bunch of them.

I first took an excavator down to their area and ripped out the willows, and cat tails, tamaracks and Russian Olives to make access to their dams. And at first would just rip their dams out. A couple days later they rebuilt them almost entirely! It was then that I decided that these little workers needed to be shot. I really respect these little animals for their hard work, but they have caused me problems for some time now.

Now, I don't rip out their whole dam, just a little bit of an exisitng main dam because they will rebuild a new dam in a hard to get to place. Every other night I sit out all night by the existing dam with my AR 15 with a stream light mounted on the front picatinny rail. Last week I shot 28 beavers that way, and did little damage to the pelts with the 55gr CT ballistic tips. If I sit out there every night it gets hard to even get them to come out by the third night, giving them a break in between hunting restores their confidence.

I have heard that you need a red light lens on your spot light so that you wouldn't scare them because they can't see red. I have found that if you just leave your light on and don't move it much they really don't care at all about it. All they want to do is patch the hole.

Skinnig these things is a time consuming tough task for me too. It is fun to learn new stuff, but there is definitely a skill there for those that can do this in a timely manner, and get all the fat and meat off of the hide, what a chore!

Thought I would post my experience, I don't see much in the way of beaver hunting on the forums. I don't even know how to sell the hides or if they are sellable with a bullet hole in them.