Wisconsin Trappers....

Who’s gearing up to go Spring beaver trapping ?


Richard

rivers raging...pond ice sketchy at best, pulled some Friday kept breaking through...1 day too late.

I’ll be getting a few out this week Richard.

Do you guys have some sort of break between fall/winter beav trapping and the spring season? In SD, it just runs from the first Sat of Nov through April 30, no interlude.

If you're gonna' be dumb, you gotta' be tough!

And trap $10.00 beaver?

says the guy trapping 3 dollar rats.

Nah, Beav has a secret buyer that pays $5 nose count plus he gets paid to set up, check and pull traps. I'm jealous!

NonPCfed, no split season here in Wisconsin. Spring beaver are just beaver we catch in spring. We have a few different zones with different seasons, in the northern 1/3 of the state the season goes to the end of April. Season ends at the end of March where I'm at here, but not many beaver around me to begin with.

I had thought about setting some steel if for no other reason than to kill some time, but I'll have to see with this virus stuff. Probably flesh and dry any beaver I get just for something to do, and freeze the castor to see if prices go back up.

In your dreams buddy. All those rats cost the land owners $10.00 each and I have a market for all those rats at a $4.00 nose count. A $14.00 average sounds pretty good don't you think.

Old age Is getting to me I just remembered there was a $100.00 set up fee at 2 locations. So know the average Is closer to $18.00. I sure do love It when a plan comes together. Then I go back and do It all over again In the fall.


Lets see 3Lb rats versus 50lb beaver $3.00 rats versus $10.00 beaver. Skin and flesh a rat In less the 3 min we won't even talk about beaver put up. Let alone hauling them out. Lets see I could probably haul out 30 some rats In my back pack how many beaver can you haul out at a time? Work smarter not harder. I forgot about the castor that might make a difference then you could leave the beaver behind and just haul out the castor along with the rats. I bet if you concentrated on rats you would come out a head with a lot less work.
But there are some of us that just love trapping beaver. I use to be that person.

if you can only make 10 dollars on the whole beaver right now,shame on you.

and i'm also jealous dont think i'm not.

Of course that sounds good. Too bad 99% of trappers don't get paid that much for rats, let alone $4 nose count. You got a good thing going there, and you're smart to do just good enough of a job to keep the landowner happy but leave enough seed stock so you can male money on it again every 6 months.

Beav wouldnt do that-thats crooked.
If habitat is good rats fill in fast.
And Beav-just the castor avg per beaver is around $8-include a pelt and its closer to $25 per beaver,fully processed.

Going to have to change your name to "The Rat"

All these areas I trap rats In are surrounded by some great rat habitat. But these areas are state and county owned and In 2 cases the shrouding areas can't be trapped. Then the other areas are city owned and I can only trap parts of the locations. So no matter how long or how hard I trap I can only keep the population In check.
The city parks are pretty much One check and done. Stuff every den you can find with a colony trap and pull the next day. Best I ever did was 62 rats out of 34 traps. Most of the time It runs about 30 some rats.

Why is that, too much vandalism and theft of your equipment if you leave them in the parks more than 1 night...?

My guess is all the Madison area cidiot suburban folks that are mostly anti's. Might hurt my dog or child type.

if they all were like this i'd be makin Beav. money.

Fur trap?



How about meat trap!

Those are damaged goods. LOl

In most cases the rats are holed up In their dens and with a colony trap stuffed In the entrance you pretty much have caught what's there. I have run traps for 2 days and In most cases It's not worth the time to come back and just catch a few rats.

I've had some problems with some of the neighbors. One women went looking at my traps and actually pulled the colony trap out of the water In time to release the rats. The law went to her house and that problem went away. I have had some traps pulled up and checked out but so far no one has taken any traps or tossed them out In the ponds.

So.....back to my beaver question....

I was curious because I heard from Wildlife Services the other day that they think they might be catching more beaver this Spring because nobody else will be out.

I also heard from a couple of guys, who are not on Trapperman, that were curious if beaver were worth trapping this Spring.

Richard