Besides clients who sometimes mistake debris in a culvert for a beaver dam, ending up in an unnecessary trip, "you get touch and goes." I used to believe if there was a dam, there was always a beaver. Small yearling / two year old beaver will travel and make small dams on small streams, stay a few days to a week, then leave and do it somewhere again until they find a mate. In the past I would set a bunch of traps, run them for a couple of days at least, get nothing. When you find one of these "leaky" "stale" but fresh dams that were made a week earlier you can keep moving. Don't bother setting them. The client wasn't wrong, just a day late. Got lucky a couple of years ago. Highway guys called the first day they saw cuttings, fresh, still active. The beaver was under the entrance ramp to the interstate where there were three trees, two cut. I was about a mile from the location, swung in, set one trap and popped him. Know he would have been gone or road pizza in a matter of hours.

Thanks Jim more good info....been there for those "ghost beaver"....some of my clients call right away in a panic until I mention set up fees and charges. Other veteran farmers usually wait a few days and check it out looking for more fresh indicators....then call.
Phones been ringing recently as our beans and corn are looking brown....farmers are checking things out.

Interesting to watch beaver when they first move in. If you arrive after just a few days after the beaver arrive there will be a dam in place, partial anyway, no lodge, no bank den either. They will spend the night on the bank. There will be a matted down area or areas where they have been nesting on top of the ground, packed down. Won't be that way for long. When the beaver move in where there are a lot of people, houses etc., the call comes quickly, before the beaver are established. I've seen a lot of "nests" over the years and also caught them napping on the bank, once in back of a garage in neighborhood. Ran them into some conibears.

Jim, re: your original post...Next time I go to a pizza joint and the waitress asks me what toppings I want on my pizza, I'll have an intersting answer!