I get different castor from individual beavers even on the same stretch of river. My river beaver near where I live are into willow, poplar, and blackberry roots. I get over to the coastal lakes and their staple is lily rhizomes. Castors are smaller over there and the effluent is clear-to orange.

Mostly mustard yellow where they're into poplar and willow.

Well I guess the beavers in southeast Virginia are just too close to the Mason-Dixon line to eat sweet gum, let alone prefer it. I have trapped them year round for 20 years here and all I have ever seen them do to a sweet gum is girdle them, seemingly to just take them out of the gene pool in favor of the other species you have listed. I'd like to hear from other trappers in southeast Virginia about their observations with beaver and sweet gum trees. I have trapped from Virginia Beach to Greensville County.

Privet hedge crap is their main diet here in winter, rest of the year it's grass/weeds.

This is making sense most of the beaver here eat grains but as for trees its ash and popular mainly, the only thing is the ones I’ve removed are bright gray to silver and the size is comparable to a 400 pound steers testicles, and doesn’t really change according to the size of the beaver. Danny it seems here the beaver work outside in on cornfields, but the ones I’ve personally seen have a 50 foot grass strip for the ditch bank and maybe they are just running out and getting what they can as fast as they can to get back to the water.

Bob_Iowa, around here all the creeks and rivers have heavy timber along the banks. The row crops are right against the timber. Beaver don't need to cross but a few feet of open ground. lots of times its to narrow for even a pickup.

Ok the rivers here are that way but the creeks we drive along them most of the time, until you have a year like the last one and its a half mile walk in and a half mile out and then go around the section and do it again. That’s part of the reason I still use blocks and chains vs. rebar for droweners.

Great post! I love all castor. Just watching Thorpe's lure making DVD again. His opinion was that Northern Castor is the best. He said that Washington and Oregon has the best castor. And Canada is the best of all. I bought some from Wisconsin that I like real good a few years back. His opinion not mine. I like anything Mr. Dobbins makes and respect his opinion.

I can confirm that Backbreaker does work jim dandy on Oregon beaver.

Agree with lureintheanimal on Northern castor does have draw in colder temps compared to southern lazy bvr castor......LOL...

Years ago Edwin Hawbaker looked at me as if I offered him a turd when I tried to sell him our castors here....he wanted nothing but far northern castors where they ate "sweet stuff". Not these pine eating turpentine smelling castors.

If northern castor was superior to sothern castor, wouldn't it command a higher price like northern beaver do? Perhaps I should offer less for the substandard southern castor.

I prefer southern castor it comes in a nice jar

Good point. It seems to all grade the same at the Canadian auctions. You would think that the Perfumers would be more concerned about what the beaver were eating since it effects the smell of the castors. But it may not be an issue with them. Or maybe they do like to buy from certain parts of the country for various or regional castor.

Maybe with this we could get a price break.