keep in mind the length of your snare cable, too. A longer cable means a caught beaver pulls horizontally against the stake versus straight up against it vertically. Its the same concept with tent staking. I stake a lot of my beaver snares up on the bank, in more "solid" soil where I can find it, and pullouts are not a problem this way. Attaching the snare to base of a tree works, too (wire it off low next to ground though). Beaver won't chew the tree down next to the ground if they chew on the tree at all, but wire it low and tight so that if they do work through a small tree you are using for an anchor point that the cable doesn't slip up and off the end of the "stump". My experience is that beaver spend more time digging or working the catch area in circles or trying to reach water than they do chewing off small trees for anchor points. If I find a decent-sized log jammed into the lower network of a beaver dam, these make decent anchors for me, too. I've yet to have a snared beaver destroy or pull out of this anchor point, either. Root systems above the water line along creeks work well, too. Wiring off the snare cable up over their heads on higher banks, to some overhead root system, is a good anchor point for me too. Have to get creative sometimes depending on the situation.
