You wont have a very productive line for any furbearers around here if you don't harvest your beaver.Good healthy beaver habitat is good habitat for all furbearers and game.
Unmanaged beaver populations will degrade the habitat long term and it wont take long.

No worries here. In the coast range we have a healthy population of "long-tails" keeping the population in check.

Boco .......how many beaver does your line require you to remove ?

I have some relatives that live in coos but do most of mine salem area, willamette and yamhill rivers and tributaries mostly. i do irrigation service work and so i have access to a lot of farm ponds and ditches. too bad work got in the way of trapping this year -- was hoping to have about 100 beaver, i will be lucky to get 50 now. i have one more area that i "have to " trap, that should be a good one for beaver and otter -- they want me to take out the nutria -- and then i am going to have to call it quits for the year due to time constraints. Just curious -- do you market through OTC sales or do you ship elsewhere?

Of the 3 lines I trap on currently only one has a mandatory beaver quota.The minimum on that line is 40.The others are similar for management purposes.

I usually end up at Klamath Falls but have also shipped in some years. The last couple of years there has been only one serious beaver buyer at K.Falls and without competition they have been stealing them (imho). I know the market is suppressed, but I sold 100 last year for a $7.50 average.

The main problem is shipping charges are so high a guy is already a loser before the game even begins!

But, this year if I can't at least average $10 I'll withdraw the lots and ship anyway.

There’s enough trapping here in Pa. for me to find 2 of my #4 Dukes missing today.....sacks of rocks on rocks on shore, cables and traps gone.

Well, at least they didn't steal your rocks eh? Around here when we have trap theft it's usually the do-gooders.

i sent k. falls last year and did about the same on almost 50. i will probably do the same this year. By the way duck hunters do a good job of it too -- not many ducks this year though

Maybe this will help Carl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLM0tiZ5Kf8

Not me. At 35$ I would only trap them for wolverine bait.....and then only if I had nothing else.

Not but a few trappers I know of up here anymore. Beaver, many as the stars in the sky.
Trappers not so many.

Osky

It wouldn't load for me Goldy so I'm still lonely. Back to the fur shed to skin some beaver I guess.

Not here 30 miles to the next beaver place and then not many beaver then when you get there for trapping. Floating the rivers in the spring is big here during the runoff, float looking for them dug into the banks and pop with a 22 and landing net them.

I've seen a boatfull of guys doing that one winter here on the big river when it flooded. I was quite impressed, they had 6-7 beaver they had shot that way by spooking them out of the briars on the little islands sticking out of the floodwaters.

At one time a lot of beaver were shot on the rivers right after ice out.

My commute to work is 48.6 miles... On my drive home I like to keep an eye open for beaver sign. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are around a dozen spots that I see beaver activity. And that's just looking out the window as I drive down state highways. I could probably locate 2 or 3 times that many if I would detour down back roads and byways.

There's even a pond that has a lodge built in it... Not unheard of down here, but not real common. Most are bank dwellers.

Mike

Carl,
I trapped a handful for bait but to tell the truth there are so few left I feel ashamed of myself catching them. Cougars have about done for the WA coast and the last time I trapped the OR coast it looked like it was on the same trajectory. I used to catch 120 or so off the Humptulips every year but I could catch the last one and still come up short now. If it weren't for civits I would be out of business. I had two cougar into my cat cages today. I see more cougar tracks then just about anything else.
Oh well, civets are worth more then beaver and a good deal easier to take care of.

I miss beaver trappin in Oregon...and muskrat....

Yeah Bruce you and I both know the score on what the cougars are doing. The Willamette (and tributaries) still maintains a healthy population of beaver.