That's a beast. Had to be pushing 80 I'd guess??

I have seen two feet in one day. Just takes a wind shift to send the water over here from Michigan, and a shift to send it all back.

I wish they could only fluctuate 18 inches...We were drilling a one inch hole in the bedrock for a dock chain once, and the hole was at water level. Was during some thunderstorm activity. After lunch we had to get a longer bit because it was not a foot underwater and the drill would get wet. That was in a half hr.

You make a castor set and you check windfinder. Then you come back and your set is high and dry. Or it is underwater, and a bunch of floating debris has trashed the set. lol All part of the fun. I set the trap based on the current water level. If I expect it to rise, the trap gets set almost out of the water. If the water is already high it gets set two inches out of the water. I don't care any more. Cant control the weather.

I agree but I thought you meant the whole beaver was 6 inches wide and the head 4 inches wide. That of course got my attention.

It looks big because it was laid flat and then frozen. It weighed 60# and was caught on an under ice #4 coil on a platform under Popple bait on a dead pole.

Nothing to see here. Carry on. We have small beaver in Montana also. Lol. Trapstickman like his beaver small.

I’m with bogmaster. As long as the beaver/otter gets caught, I don’t care. It’s kind of like shotguns with 3-inch mags. You can use a 20 gauge, 16 or 12. At the end of the day if you have a limit of ducks and geese, what difference does it make?

We caught 2 otters recently. One was in a 20 year old 280 and the other was in a 3 year old Belisle 330. Both were set for whatever used the trail. I do like 330s for dam cross overs but I’ll use either in most other instances.

Posting these because you mentioned avoidance. This is not a 280 nor a 330. These videos show beaver avoiding a MB1216 12x16. This trap was hung in three feet of water so there is a lot of room to go under it. I placed this trap after several videos showed them going through that channel almost nightly.

The last two in this colony were removed on a damage permit. One in a Bridger 330 castor mound set and one in a MB650 rubber jaw covering a dam break. The big female wouldn't go near any of the cages or BG traps but a foothold on a cable finished the job.
2/18/17 https://vimeo.com/204933500

2/20/17 https://vimeo.com/204933886

1/31/17 Bailey catch video (because it shows the background before the MB1216 was placed). https://vimeo.com/202657069