Yesterday I walked a 3 mile stretch of crick that I had never been on before. I had trapped both ends of this section before but the middle is accessible only by foot. This year the weather and my schedule both made it possible to hike thru there on the ice. The place was loaded with beaver sign, both fresh and old. There was too many beaver dams to count, some were being maintained and others were old and broken. In the 3.17 miles of creek I walked I marked 8 beaver houses, not all active. Of the 8, 5 appeared to have been active this fall (mud and fresh sticks on the house along with a fresh feed pile). Of the 5 only 3 had frost holes. Although it was an interesting walk, it was not very productive. Something that I found odd was that every one of these ponds was 2-5 feet lower than they had been when they froze originally. I was only able to set one of the ponds as I had a hard time finding more than 6 inches of water under the ice.

I do not believe anyone else trapped these colonies as it is all private land and hard to access. Has anyone ever seen this before and any thoughts on what happened? I have seen ponds lose water before but not that many in a row.

Did it flood before freezing? That has caused some interesting effects here.