I hadn't done one of these ride-alongs in awhile, and thought I'd show some of the new folks what my line is like. I'm trapping for a timber company and cover quite a large area. You'll notice this in the number of miles I drove today.
The first site I went to was 81 miles from my home. I caught one beaver at this site. They had replaced two large culverts here and beavers had started plugging it up. I caught a two year old Friday and today I caught it's mate. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture here. I'm not use to taking pictures, but I made up for it later.
The second site was only 2 miles from the first one. Here I have pine eating beavers. I had caught the old female and two pair of yearlings. The old male was being difficult. He wouldn't come to any lures, so yesterday I made a mud mark beside the riser and positioned a #5 for a front foot catch and put a dab of sac oil on the mud mark. I was fortunate to have the old boy today. Usually it's the old female that is the last to go, but not in this case. When I had caught the old female last week, I thought this site was going to be easy - lol.
Where they were eating the pines.
Here's the old boy. Note I put some sticks behind where the set was to discourage otters from crossing there.
The third site was 5 miles from the second one. These first three sites were on the same tract of land. I just set this one yesterday and picked up this male today. I used a dab of food lure up on the slide.
The fourth site was 25 miles from the third one. I set this trap on Monday and used castor lure. There was no action here yesterday, so I put a dab of food lure down and I had success today. I had another set here, but it was empty and ignored. I used a curiosity lure there. I'm thinking the rest may give me a problem.
Another adult male.
The fifth site was 31 miles from the fourth one. I have caught four beavers here so far in two sets. Today I only had success in one of the sets. There were castor mounds all over the place, so I made a castor mound and lured it with a castor lure.
Another adult male
The sixth site was only one mile from the fifth site and on the same tract. I have removed one adult pair and two pairs of two year old beavers here in three sets. I thought I was done until I saw a fresh scent mound in there today. I will probably have to resort to a footholds to finish up this site.
This was my last set of the day - empty
Then I drove 111 miles back home. The total miles driven today was around 256, which is about normal, or a bit below normal. Sometimes folks ask why I don't have more traps out. When I'm spending 5 - 6 hours driving each day, there's not so much time left for setting.
Here's the result of the day's work.
I got to wondering if a beaver eating pines would taste different than one eating sweet gum. So I took some meat from the pine eater and some from a sweet gum eater. It'll probably be next week when I cook them up to see if there's a difference.
I hope you enjoyed the ride-along.