On judging potential beaver size.....is there any relation to how high off the ground a beaver is chewing on trees as to how big they are? Do they always sit on their haunches to work on the tree?

A better guage is the size of the tooth marks.Wider the tooth mark bigger the beaver.

Put em on the board is a sure fire way to tell, lol

Boco - That makes sense to me, will pay a little more attention to the cuttings and chew marks.
Will more than one beaver work on a tree at the same time? Or is the tree ‘claimed’ by whichever beaver starts on it?
Newfox - that’s the surest way to tell how big they are!

I have never really paid much attention to that.In my experience each beaver has his own spot where he hauls out to cut.Once a big tree is down more than one beaver will cut the tops I believe.

It does seem like the tops can get cut up or eaten up pretty fast. Most of the trees along our river are Russian Olives. Multiple trunks 3”-6” diameter can get cut pretty fast and the tops are fairly bushy so there’s quite a bit of feed when they are down. The beavers seem to clean them up!

Its a decent indicator if a tree is started on fairly high up, assuming of course the tree wasnt surrounded by flood water. Ive see some floods that would make people think godzilla beavers were running around after a good rain.

This also makes sense that a higher mark would be above where a smaller one could reach.
Two more questions : do bigger beaver generally cut bigger trees or is it just a random thing? Is there any superiority being shown when they cut?

Not really. The seem to cut what they feel like, where they feel like, when they feel like it. Details never seem to be in the mind of a beaver as they don't seem to plan well. They just improv everything. They either make it work or they give up and try something else.

Around here many of the big cottonwoods are part chewed through and never finished. Beaver have to chew to keep their teeth from growing too long. There once was a beaver that set up house in a shallow pond surrounded by a thick young forest of cottonwood. For every tree he cut only maybe one out of ten ever made it to the ground. The rest just hung up. I really felt sorry for it before I killed it.

Thanks for the input folks! Gives me more think about when out looking at beaver sign!