SGT C, if you had them cleaned up the new trapper will surely lose money getting paid by the beaver. End of problem, he won't be back. By the beaver works ok on large colonies that haven't been trapped in awhile, not so much on new beaver moving in.

That’s what I was thinking. Land owners usually dont tell you they’ve hade someone else in there before ya. Or that the farm hands have shot a couple after work etc. They usually say “it loaded”. Per critter doesn’t work at all going behind someone.

[quote=Swamp Wolf]Sgt. C,
If you cleaned that place up then that next trapper is gonna be hurting in the wallet in a few days.

I still charge by the beaver for a large timber company (been trapping for this company for more than 2 decades.) I also charge by the beaver for locals within 15 minutes of my residence.

I charge $100/beaver. No setup fee.

Most of my beaver jobs are a flat rate per job with 10 day minimum of trapping (I may have to stay a few more days if spooky beaver, but no extra charge. Works out to +/- $200 per day.

Beaver jobs that are more than an hour from my residence are flat rate plus $1/mile sboth ways....same time frame.

Dam breaching is free. Dam removal is extra, if I can even do it per site.

Swamp, your pricing and mine are similar except for per beaver.
This was a 3 lake set up, 110 mile round trip. Plus they also wanted a 6 month maintenace agreement. Guess they forgot about that.
Basically, they wanted it done for nothing.
I also cut my rates for the local jobs. But we both know, here in the south. One must travel to make it at times.
I have an inside guy, i will know how well or not he does and the numbers from each lake.
Keeping a level head and not burning any bridges. My gut tells me it will work out in a year or two. Just cant please everyone all the time. Sarge

I've never liked a per beaver schedule.

Most of my work has either been trapped before or is spillover from from offsite "greenbelts" in urban areas, read subdivision lakes. So it's new mated pair or one year colonies. The most from one job in the past decade was six. Average over that time, three.

I stress labor not catch when talking to potential clients.

Now if I could ever convince these counties to they need to clean out these swamps they call protected floodplain I might consider a per tail on top of my labor fee. But if I'm sweating I'm getting paid.

I want folks to know what I charge...if someone can do it cheaper.....I say watch out for the cottonmouths and gators....and have fun.

When I was trapping for a timber company, I charged a flat fee per contract period. There was enough work to keep me busy full time 9 months a year. Using this pricing structure, they knew to the penny what to budget for beaver control, and I knew to the penny what I was going to be paid. It was an annual contract paid monthly. This worked well for the whole 30 years I contracted with them. I do the same for the city that I still have a contract with. I've had this contract for 31 years.

That's exactly how how I would like to set these jobs up. But between just solve my now problem and only having new pairs I can't get them on longterm contracts even though I have annual clients that call every spring.

Working as an agent for a company like that is a good gig.

My experience has been that some customers will only hire using a certain type of pricing. Some will only hire per beaver. Some will only hire per hour. Some will only hire when they know exactly how much the total will be. Some are flexible. Some aren’t. Some just want the job done, and some don’t think they should have to pay anything no matter how much work is done. Some will try to solve it themselves before calling you. Some will have family or locals catch all the easy ones while contaminating the area with jars of castor then expect you to catch the last, wise, and possibly injured beaver on the first trip. Some will be patient and understanding. Some may interfere with your work. There’s just such a broad range of customer types.


If they would like it priced a certain way, they should say so. I’ve had some good customers call me and ask me if I would be interested in catching some beavers for a per beaver price. Well.... yeah! I would have done it for less. I would have done it for more. What matters is they made me an offer that allowed me to justify my efforts, and we both knew what to expect.


Some people have no choice how it’s priced for a number of reasons. I’ll work with anyone, depending on what they have, where they have it, and what their expectations are.


If customers and trappers are upfront and open about what their situations and expectations are, just about everything can be worked out in some kind of way.




To answer your question though... While I am open to by the beaver pricing, I usually charge by the trip, multiplied by a reasonable number of trips. Obviously single locations cost more. They have to—customers have seen how expensive everything has become.


These are answers for specific nuisance beaver locations.

Bounty beavers are an entirely different subject.