Hello all! advise how to determine the beaver run on the ice? I put the traps on a small river about 8m wide. the ice is about 10 cm, on the ice 1-2 cm of snow. found on the river 5 feeding areas.
between the feeding pile and the bank it is impossible to put traps, because there are many branches.

When I’m looking for beaver runs/trails under the ice, I tap the tip of my ice chipping bar about every half meter. The sound of hollow ice tells me there is a thinner spot there. Then I cut the ice there to check for trough in the bottom which tells me this is the trail the beavers are following. At this point you can set the ‘run’ with body grip traps or snares.


Similar to you, I try to place my body grip trap between the pile of branches frozen in the ice and the bank. Sometimes it takes some chopping and probing to find the tunnel under the pile the beavers are using to go between their feeding hole up in the bank and the food pile. Long rubber gloves make this chore a little easier. I also open up a big enough hole in the ice to to probe with my ice chopper to “feel” for that opening or tunnel. Since I use body gripping traps, it’s just a matter of placing the trap in that trail, stabilizing it so it doesn’t fall over, and checking it in a day or two to see if I have a catch.

After I find the tunnel/run by the sound of the ice, the whole process takes 15-20 minutes to get each trap in place.

Make sure you wire the trap off to a big stick above the ice just in case the beaver struggles a bit. Otherwise, you could lose a trap and beaver.

Thank you very much.

I don't trap where we have ice...but I'm glad to see you posting again Koisoi. Welcome back!

And I second that. Welcome back.

KOSOI,
Teacher gives a good methodology- even with thicker ice that run can have the ice thinned out from the beaver travel from the bank den/lodge to the feed pile- be careful. Here's the view of that runway with snow off- often your spud will drop right through as your inching closer to it.
Good Luck

Welcome back Kosoi!

Thank you very much to everyone who responded. I was on that river again today. shoveled off the snow with a broom, and found that there were air bubbles everywhere around the food pile. started chopping holes in different places, finally I was lucky enough to find a channel that beavers use to move around. but I could not squeeze the trap through there, very many branches up to the ice.

Every thing works on paper. In real life, murphy rules. It's hard to find channels here too in west Russia.

One other thing. Here, in a river or stream with decent current, the beavers have to pretty much put the feed pile next to shore butting up to their bank dens. Hard to anchor a feed pile in the current. Many of them will still wash away if the streams or rivers rise too much. Tough living for a river beaver here.

Study the dry houses when you drain the pond after removing nuisance beaver.
By studying these dry houses you can easily see the entrances and runs and their general orientation to the dam and feed pile,and you will be able to picture what and where to look when trapping under the ice.

Often the main entrance is wide enough for two or three traps set side by side and is closest to the dam.
It is most often the entrance used by all the beaver when returning to the house regardless of which entrance they use to exit.



An entrance run like this would be set with 3 traps side by side to take several beaver at a time.