A nice observation, Gary.

I am a bee keeper. One thing I have learned is that people who are unsuccessful at keeping bees alive usually blame pesticides. It's RARELY the case of their colonies crashing. Not that pesticides don't contribute to muskrat decline in areas, but I'm far more skeptical than I used to be. It just seems it's easy to point the pesticides finger for most instead of looking at the bigger picture.

Low water is always the biggest killer of muskrats, It seems .

One year during a major drought I was trapping a large flowage, I found a dead rat next to another rat I had in a body grip and another dead one next to a pocket set, my son picked one out with a landing net floating next to the pier. When I skinned all 3 they had incisor marks on the back of their necks- I believe they were fighting like New York Subway rats once every ditch was bone dry and the flowage was the late fall last resort.