Sold 17 beavers (hides frozen not stretched) and 33 oz of castor. Beavers were $5 across the board. Castor was $5 an ounce or $80 a pound. If it wasn’t for the castor value, it wouldn’t have been any fun catching the beavers.

The experience of catching them in snares on drowning rods made it all worthwhile. We’re having a blast.

Do you happen to know the price on put up beaver? I'm debating putting one up, but the plywood prices are outrages.

If you don’t mind,where did you sell them.

Cumberlands NW Trappers Supply in Owatonna. I got the impression scraped and dried are not worth the time or effort if you’re not doing the auctions.

The comment was “no smalls in this collection”. I suspect smalls are worth less. But from this pile, everything was treated the same. I’m just happy with the castor price.

My understanding is $80.00 per pound for properly dried castors is.just o.k.
Have heard pushing $100.00, recently.

$80 seems to be the average now that the lure makers are offering.

Teacher would you tell us a little about your snare and drowning rod setup?

How many ounces of castor per beaver?

Let see,17 gazinta 33 almost 2 times.Let’s call it 2 ounces per beaver.

Mully, possibly from this discussion recently. This is taught is some Trapper Ed classes, and they can also be run into a culvert, under a rd, to hide a catch. ALso, did ya ever join the bait/lure makers FREE book club? as suggested on your Oils thread? Just wondering, since that will shorten your learning curve immensely.

https://trapperman.com/forum/ubbthr...rtical-drowning-rod-feedback#Post7186377

AV,
I've heard that $100 per pound figure bandied about also, but I've not actually seen it. $80 is the going rate around here and one of the biggest castor buyers in the state lives right down the road from me. That's what he is paying. Now at the last ITA sale I was there and another guy bought the castor (about 40 lbs) that was there, paying $90 for the good stuff. Jerry told me he didn't figure on getting it before the bids even came out, because he knew this other guy needed it to finish filling an order and he would buy it even at a loss just so he could fill the order and not lose the order. Granted he is a furbuyer so take everything he tells you with a grain of salt, but he claimed he is selling it for around $90 and he sells to the perfume trade which generally pays better than lure makers.

The rods are 5/8 or 1/2 inch rebar. They’re about 9 ft long. At the top is a big washer welded on. At about a ft from the bottom is another large washer welded to keep the slide with the snare attached, from coming off.

The bottom end is pushed into the mud mid-stream. A Tbar is pushed thru the top washer. The #9 wire snare holder is either tightly wrapped between the snare slider and Tbar or is pushed into the bottom at the set location. If pushed in at the set location, the last 4-inches of #9 is U-shaped so it won’t spin. My partner made them after seeing a similar make here on Tman.

We had about a pound and a half of castor from these 17 and some left over from previous years. So it looks like 2 oz per beaver but it wasn’t. If I were to guess, I’d say about 1.5 ounces per beaver.

Teacher, I use drowning rods for footholds. I'm interested in your snare length and lock choice, and if the rods work consistently with snares.

Our snares are either 1/16 1x19 or 3/32 7x7. The difference is my partner uses Roadrunner snares and I make my own. Next year we’ll split the difference and both will use 5/64 1x19.

The snares are 40 inches long. We attach the snare end loop to the slider with a quick link.

My partner’s snares have mini-cam locks and they work fine. I use lo-pros and they work fine. Next year, we’ll use the Lo-Pros.

The slider attached to the snare is a 1 1/2-inch (length) piece of square tubing. A short piece has been welded onto it that attaches to the snare.

Almost all beavers go down the drowning rod. However, some beavers manage to pull the deep end of the rod out of the bottom muck and are very much alive when we get there. It really helps to have a .22 handy...just in case.

Thanks Teacher.

Saw Groeny pay $6 straight across for raw frozen large and up. Saw $12 and down paid for dried beaver. Saw $80/lb paid for good, properly dried castor. Average dried all included at $70/lb.

This was all Georgia beaver.

Castor size varies. The one we skinned today was 29 pounds but had some of the biggest castors we’ve seen this spring. This one went down the rod but managed to pull it out of the mud. It was body caught with the lo-pro lock. But it skinned out fine and the castors are always appreciated.