Beaver Damage control

Our beavers don't bring much. Too much trouble for a $10 pelt. I use to tan and put them on a willow hoop and I could get $50 to $75. I got to many irons in the fire to fool with them now. I snare one every now and then but I would rather shoot them and the 220 swift makes a biggggggggggggggg Hole. I shot one of these in the head and it took half of it off LOL. They are just a aqua ground hogs to me LOL.
 
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Got beaver?
 
Love that pic. How does that one rank in size compared to other beavs? Sure looks big to me!

Average size for our 22 acre lake....biggest so far has been 58# actually thought it was a muskrat. ...first time shooting over 400 yards with my new at the time 223 bolt gun....had a crappy Simmons 3-9x40 scope on it and it was a head shot at 440 yards swimming towards us.....This was 7 years ago or so
 
Back at them, again. Was out of town all of last month. Was snowed in at my cabin most of the time. Got back and rain and more rain. It dried up some and Finally got down to the creek yesterday evening and shot 4 more beavers, Went back this morning to another spot and missed one. Shot low and it was a snap shot before he went under to his bank den, just was getting day light could barely see the cross hairs, Dang I hate missing .
 
Beavers are unique animals, besides man they are the only animal that can completely control it's environment. I did nuisance trapping for years and found that you only have one way to get rid of beavers.You make a plan on trapping (snaring where legal ) at the same time digging out the dams with a backhoe. If you get rid of the dams only, you give the beavers work to do and they love it. If you only trap the beavers, you are leaving a wonderful already made home for the next transient beaver to come down the creek and your problems will go on for ever. Leave the traps and snares out for a good while and freshen the scent station with fresh castor and catch ALL the beaver. They can turn pasture land into a swap area and the Dept. of Natural Resources can stop you from destroying the dams, because now you have a water shed area for ducks etc....Good luck
 
Just found this thread. Very interesting as far as I'm concerned.

One of the guys I work with owns 160+ acres, and lost over 200 hardwood trees over the last few years. He knows I like shooting and asked if I could come help to try to kill some of the beavers.

I'd destroyed 14 dams in a section of about 3/4 of a mile. Some were small, and some were over 6 feet tall. I was amazed at the amount of water that I was able to drain from some of the small "ponds" the beavers created.

A couple of the beaver lodges were too darn big to try to take apart by hand, and with the terrain, it was too steep to get his backhoe in to take the dams apart. I mixed about 10 pounds of tannerite, packed it into PCV pipe, and had a friend shoot it with a .308. I could see the lodge "jump" about 6" into the air. Smoke started rising from the lodge. I wish I had a video, since it was pretty cool to see. He hasn't had any more dams build in the area around that lodge since we used the tannerite.
 
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