I’m looking for an instructor that specializes in longline beaver trapping on large rivers . Who do you guys recommend ?

Open water or ice? If open water, get a bunch of snares and catch them on their slides back into the river. A canoe is great. If it is ice covered, that is not my cup of tea.

Clint Locklear and I made two DVD's on big rivers
OTTERLY SIMPLE
RIVER'N

I also have a School.

Newt as much as I give my left arm to go, jersey is a minimum 30 hr drive from me and I don’t know if they’d let a Canadian across the border with all this Covid garbage going on. Now if it was in the fall that might be a different story .

I don't know if he still traps but we had a trapper from western MN do demos a few years at our WTA. His name is Dusty Hough. I don't have any contact information but he trapped a lot of beaver on the Red River of the North.

Bryce

YOTEBOY, I knew that.Its a different world now. We have had Canadian Trappers/Snaremen attend,in the past years.

I would say Dusty knows his stuff.But again to get to MN you have to cross the border. My guess it would still be a 18 hour drive.

You know what Newt , I’ll wait for a year & see what happens. If I can get across the border I’ll make the drive and come for a visit if you’re planning a class next year .

What does your local mentor suggest?
Have ya joined your Assn and asked the officers for one?

I’m VP of our association, if I knew of anyone that could provide what I’m looking for I’d ask them. That’s why I’m looking elsewhere .

What kind of laws do you have to deal with? If you can run snares on the slides, theyre pathetically simple to catch. Almost to the point depending on the populations youre dealing with you gotta limit how many snares you set to keep from overwhelming your skinning/freezer capacity and your boat.

No snares unless they’re under ice. Conibears & footholds.

You can do the same with 330s on the slides, especially if you can run dry or partially submerged 330s. Big thing is to stake em as far up the bank as you can in case unexpected floods.

Springbeaver trapping?

No not necessarily, more interested on the whole package than just a seasonal thing.

Dont think there really is a seasonal thing for river beaver trapping. Its mostly the same thing all fur season long as long as you dont have ice. Its more about, at least down here, dealing with floods and trying not to drown in the river while your at it.

Newt and Clint have the videos he mentioned, i own both, and both are good.


Clint Locklear has what I consider to be a very good book on beaver. A lot of talk on running long lines.
Clint has a couple of very good DVDs on snaring and trapping beaver.

Dale Billingsly has a beaver trapping DVD that I think is good.

All of the above is open water trapping.

It would be foolish to say open water trapping for beaver is not an art,
and a ton of work. Having said that, Under ice beaver trapping is really a different game, and I feel more difficult. Physically it is just plain brutal,
many timesit is harder to find locations. You end up chopping or cutting holes that do not pan out. Just tougher work.

There are a few good books on snaring beaver under the ice but non that really focus on long lining.
Trapper Art's is probably my favorite under ice snaring book.


I believe it is 330 Mainac (spelling) that has a long of decent under ice information on Youtube. A lot does not apply to my country as the we have a lot stricter regulations etc. Hope this helps.

You might need to get instruction from more than 1 source..

And than piece together a system..