Beaver Jiha at Bay Springs, MS

Share your tales (tall or otherwise) of hunting adventures.

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Jim Kidwell
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Post by Jim Kidwell »

Damn Doc............. Did he just get off working on Boulder Dam? Your cypress must have some healthy genes. I don't blame you for using anything below 10 gauge..................LOL....................................Jim
mdeland
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Post by mdeland »

Check the Fur Fish and Game for current pelt prices. Beaver are something like 20 dollars for raw pelts, 30 dollars tops. Castoreum about the same.
Pale northern Wolf are 350-500, Wolverine 300-400 and big pale lynx 300-400 last I looked.
Beaver meat makes a fine dog food for sled dog teams on the long haul. MD
pete
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Post by pete »

The house is an impressive structure, the beaver's pretty big too.
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Tasmanian Rebel
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Post by Tasmanian Rebel »

MD is correct. They're not worth the time nowadays to skin out. Back in the 90's when I was doing alot of trapping I skinned a couple out and tanned them and they turned out beautifully but can easily skin a half dozen deer before I can do one beaver. Unlike a deer, squirrel, or rabbit the skin will not pull off and it has to be done carefully with a knife. The skin is attatched to the muscles with a tough fibrous tissue. After doing a couple of them I said to hell with this. Since my knee has healed up I've gone back to trapping them and now caught or shot 9 of the boogers since Christmas. Still have one or two but they're keeping a REAL LOW profile now and not bothering my cypress trees. I think they're moving btween 1 and 4 AM now. One was about 30 lbs which was smaller than the one in the picture but the rest of them have been small juveniles in the 7-10 lb range-I think I must have had a litter of them or something.
Keith Lay
squire
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Post by squire »

Man vs. Beaver, the eternal struggle.
Steve Rhoades
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Post by Steve Rhoades »

It's all about the beaver!
FOUNDER OF THE BRENT DANIELSON FAN CLUB
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Tasmanian Rebel
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Post by Tasmanian Rebel »

LOL Steve! BTW, beaver #10 just bit the dust today. Apparently the beaver infestation is worse than I initially thought. Going to run my best spots later today after work, hopefully may have #11.
Keith Lay
mdeland
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Post by mdeland »

Seems I remember reading that during the WWll a blanket beaver pelt was worth 70 or 80 dollars and the greenbacks were a lot bigger then.
The year after Russel Watts got back from the war in the pacific (1946) , he and his dad trapped nearly 4000 thousand mink in a single season I was told by my dad. He said no one trapped them during the war and the country was alive with them at the time. I'm sure this far exceeded any legal limit but when one has his own land to trap on they often bend the rules, especially when your poor and in need. He was a shirt tail relative and a life long friend of our family.
I still find this hard to swallow but my Dad was not given to dishonesty so I report what he told me.
I must have heard this wrong because the more I think about it the more impossible it seems to me.
I could see possibly 1000 but that would be an incredible feat to accomplish in itself. MD
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Tasmanian Rebel
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Post by Tasmanian Rebel »

Yellowhouse, I have not seen or thought of doing that but know the folks down in Louisianna do that when they skin a gator. BTW, I caught #11 a couple of days ago. He was not a resident on my place but came off another landowner's place. Still think I have at least one more on my place though. That's a problem with beavers . I can catch all the ones on my place but can't catch everyone else's. I bought a 300 acre place in 1992 and turned it into a treefarm and the beavers had just put alot of it under water that winter. They were about to kill alot of trees and I was a self-taught trapper and caught 37 the first year, 19 the second year, and then 3 the third year. Didn't have any more problems for a number of years after that but they slowly filtered back in from surrounding landowners. One has to beat them at their own game-be persistent. Put a Conibear 330 in my hands and I'm a beaver's worst nightmare.
Keith Lay
High Plains Shooter

Post by High Plains Shooter »

Put a Conibear 330 in my hands and I'm a beaver's worst nightmare.


A little C-4 and a trip wire at the entrance to their dam....ought to work, too.

Just kidding!!!

I hate beavers. They came through my place several years ago. 'Ringed' a bunch of old stately cottonwoods....and then moved on.

The last 70+ mph crosswind we had a month ago...took 'em down. :(

HPS
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Post by Tasmanian Rebel »

HPS, I did the dynamite thing on a "hut" on my lake in 2000. The beavers were piling sticks on top of a brushpile but had not got established yet and the sticks did not reach all the way to the bottom. Had the local game warden bring the dynamite over and we blew the hut. That was my first experience with dynamite and he put a couple of sticks in that thing and we backed off and he used a battery to blow it. I figured it would blow the thing to hell and must of been a hundred yards and behind a tree when it went off. I was somewhat surprised when it just went "poop" but it did blow the place up. I'm thinking it didn't have anything to "push" against when it went off which explained the lack of a "movie effect" explosion. BTW, this was a year before 9/11 and he told me one could go and buy dynamite for 1.69$ a stick with only a valid drivers license. It was actually easier to buy dynamite here than a gun. I understood then why alot of farmers would use dynamite in years past to remove stumps. Would be alot cheaper. I doubt it is easy to buy now.
I found the burrow the beavers are/were using by accident back in Feb. when I was walking next to an island after setting one of my traps and in one step went from knee deep water to up to my tits then back to knee deep water. It's more fun to trap though.
Keith Lay
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Post by Tasmanian Rebel »

After thinking about it, seems he did tell me one had to have some kind of certification or class or somethinganother to buy dynamite so I don't think just anyone even back then could walk off the street and buy it. I was surprised how inexpensive the stuff was though and thinking it would be more cost effective to blow dams rather than take them apart by hand which my usual method.
Keith Lay
Woody
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Post by Woody »

Doc.

Back in my youth, as long as you were 18, you could purchase it at most well stocked hardware stores. No license, no permit required. We used it to break and move rock in caves. I did a lot of caving prior to joining the Army. I don't know what the rules are now, but a lot of western ranchers still use it to clear the beaver dams out of irrigation ditches.

Woody
Richard A. Wood
If you are surrounded. You are in a target rich environment.
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