Bog

[buckeye hunter]

I just finished re-reading your Caster Mound article in T&PC.  Do you ever have any problem with beaver approaching your mounds from the back or down the bank of the lake/river as opposed to coming from the water?

[RdFx]

Buckeye thought i would throw my one cents in here on yr question and Boggy can  add to it too.   Ive had bvr  come from the back side or whatever  and put mud and castor on  my made castor mound.   I  relure my castor mound with a diff  castor lure and set up a foothold where bvr is coming up bank avoiding a straight on approach up to castor mound...  I think sometimes bvr might be square shy ( 330) and avoids  it  possibly fm bad experience or the like.  I have bvr crawl up a straight up and down bank to avoid an easy way up to  castor mound...... i  usually take a  foothold and set up  even if deep water  with support sticks under trap and  usually works right away.... another way is to make another castor set nearby where if you are using a 330 and make a dive set with pole just before  mound set to get bvr to dive under pole into your 330 located right under pole that is floating on top of water above yr set..... you might have to fasten pole some way to get it to stay there..   Hope this helps you  and when Boggy wakes up fm zzzzzzzzzzzz he can add his two cents worth   :wink:

[steven49er]

Buckeye, if you dont mind i will add a little as well.  

I think that more beaver are being caught "leaving" the set than people realize.  I almost always use a small piece of popple bait in conjunction with castor.  I will get several beaver every year with the piece of bait in the trap with them.  Thus they are going out.  It isnt very many beavers, maybe one in twenty five.

[Bogmaster]

Buckeye,yes at times a beaver will come from the back .Sometimes they are walking along the shore,other times they just seem to go around things.This doesn't bother me,as I usually get them on the way out.
 I hade a huge male this spring,he would  appear every time I motored up to this island.He would swim away --showing no interest in my sets.
 The same thing happened on morning #4,I motored up,beaver swam out--but this time he headed up the islands shoreline.I checked a couple sets and had gone about 200 yards to my last set--castor mound and 330 on the side of a broken down old beaver house.There sat the big old male,right behind my trap,smelling my lure.He had come onto the old lodge from the back side.I shut off the motor so I could sit and watch him.I didn't get to watch long.He took a last sniff of my lure ,and entered back into the water,right through my 330.Over the years I have watched many beaver get caught,it is a very interesting experience.
 Also at times,you may have a beaver knock some of the side blocking down,and enter onto the mound that way.All I do then is increase the blocking on the sides.
 Lee you bring up an interesting point,beaver covering your castor mound.I have talked to other trappers about this also.I never have this done to my sets.Maybe it is because so many of them are caught in the 330 right away.My mounds stay the same till Ifreshen them up.
 Does this happen to you ,only when you set footholds?
 Tom

[buckeye hunter]

I grew up surrounded by habitat that supported beaver.  Although I saw them a lot as a kid, I never really stopped to study much about their habits.  I am venturing back into canine trapping this year, and I would like to trap beaver sometime down the road.  Your article really stirred my curiosity.  Thanks for the replies.

[RdFx]

Tom, it doesnt happen  a whole lot but when it does.... castor mound being built upon with fresh mud and castor......  it usually happens with  a 330 setting in front of it in view partially.   I then apply the foothold solution :grin: .   One time this spring we had a castor mound  set that i made from scratch as no other mounds in sight and when we came back my little three inch mound was 6 inches high..... the bvr really was making a statement as this was his territory!.... two checks later i had a big 61 lb male in foothold.     The situation where bvr are caught coming back fm castor mound or bait set ive seen  before also.

[jim-NE]

I think there is a lot of variation in how the various individual beavers react to the castor sets, too. Some charge right in and are all "territorial" about it. Build a mound right on top of yours, plow over traps with their muck and weeds, etc.
Some seem a little more hesitant and maybe more curious than territorial. I think a few young critters that have been whipped on by an older bachelor or two seem like they shy away from the sets altogether. At damage locations, where "they all have to go" seems like some of the little or younger ones are sometimes the tougher ones to take, and I end up with them almost always in blind sets exclusively (runs, crossovers, den runs, etc.) where the bigger ones show up in the castor mounds and sets that look like "other beaver" workings.
I too have always thought I caught more beaver leaving than approaching sets. Was hard to tell in snares because by the time I got there to collect the critter, was too hard to tell which way they were going when they went through the snare. Switching to #330s told me a lot, though. A surpising % seemed to be facing the wrong way and didn't move the trap much after dying, at the mound sets for me. This trap told me more about my sets than snares ever did. I could reduce that percentage by increasing my fencing on the approach, but also noticed that my catch and visit rate declined if I fenced it down "too much" so in the end I figured I really didn't care if I caught them on the way in, or on the way out. What was more important was to get that trap rock solid so that when you got the occasional visitor that was a territorial "charger" into the set that they didn't just knock the trap over. As long as the trap was stable, they fired it going in or out.
Jim-NE