Lol
Top contender

My Finn buddy from WI calls it the separator season

Whatever you say know it all . And this is why I stopped posting. You sir have no clue who I am or what I do.

I was wondering what biology and map reading had to do with anything myself.

We all base what we think and say on life’s experiences. My answer was based on others that have given the same answer that Was posted purtaining to catching beaver. The answer I gave speaks for itself. Weather, Biology, and map reading.

Kirk de, sorry, but the "You don't have a clue" addendum to your post was insulting. Those of us that are fortunate enough to know eedup know that indeed, he actually does have a clue.

I want to see all the beaver, who"wins" I don't care. I busted my butt in the 70's and caught 25 beaver, thought that was a good catch, caught 23 in one day in the 90's thought I should of done better!?

Thanks Carl, I didn't realize I was gonna upset the bvr numbers gods. I do run maps avenza, landglide. Kirk has mentioned before about looking at maps and finding where the bvr producing ponds are. The part I have trouble with is how does a trapper get into those bvr maternity areas that you avoid in Oregon to manage your line and wipe out those maternity areas year after year and still catch Big numbers in the same area. In my experience in South ark if I start a new timber property after 3-4 years I have the numbers down to maintenence levels. I start at the road culverts and work my way up. After ten years on some properties there's just maintenance left. Quite a few of my drainages dump into 65000 acres of wma. I don't get paid to Trap the wma. If I'm not getting hourly wage and mileage I'm not taking bvr.

I'll say it again tho. If I catch a hundred bvr on property x and I leave with culverts still plugged I won't keep my job long. This will be my 29th season in the south and my 15th with timber contacts.

I always would go into the drainage easement and look at maps to see where the different choke points were. The access to the properties. There might be 15 or 20 different landowners are more over a 15 mile stretch. I would estimate the number of the beaver on the drainage and give that to the county or the landowners that I was trapping I would shoot for those goals . What I have found is that I would need to trap at least 65 to 70% of what was there each year to get a reduction to almost none the end of four or five years in the large swamps. I would always go back to the different locations to three times during the season to catch any stragglers. The choke points at roads and bridges would always be the biggest concern. Landowners would not say anything to me as long as I was meeting the goals that I set before I started. after it got in the warm Months I relied on the landowners to call me if there was any new activity. Where I lived the water temperatures outside of the winter months was very warm. It affected the activity something fierce. So it might be 2 to 3 weeks before there was any more activity.I relied on my background know about the weather affecting beavers, how many there were in the basic facts about biology of the beaver.
It was frustrating in that I only had one county, the county I lived in they would allocate enough money to take care of the problem. After several years County administrators change. Sometimes the money wouldn’t be allocated for two or three years till They had a problem again. Some whole drainages Will take 10 years before there was a problem again. There were a lot of places they couldn’t catch all of the beavers on the run because of landowners were animal rights types. This would allow the beavers to move into the areas that where I had trapped within a year or two. It sounds like Eedup We have had several similar instances. How we describe what took place and how we did our business must be different. We all had the same goals. We both relied on weather biology and map reading.
I had permission over the years to trap on over 1000 landowners. Over 26 plantations, lumber companies, and large landowners that owned and controlled over 20,000 acres each. One owner had 32,000 acres but few beaver problems. eight counties. It encompassed approximately from the Florida line north 80 miles ,west 40 miles and east 40 or more miles.

Heckuva difference in nuisance beaver work and fur trapping beaver.
No doubt in my mind which mentality will catch the most numbers.

This is a good post.
Here when I was working as a nuisance beaver agent for the railroad we aeriel surveyed the drainages along the entire 600 mile rail line that I was responsible for and marked the priority spots on maps which also included beaver estimates and water flow numbers.(the flowage rates came from documents the railroad already had)

We also use aerial surveys of our traplines to make beaver trapping more efficient when trapping in winter,and to count beaver.

Idaho, definitely Idaho : )

I saw the post about Jedediah Smith, does anyone know the source of that reference to that many beaver in a season? I'm guessing that was in Utah, good marshy areas in the SL valley, but dang that is a lot of beaver. -edit: I see just saw the reference further down : )

They fly the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest up here every year and mark all the active beaver ponds. Anyone can stop and get a map and go trapping, most have no access other than walking and some with no road or trail. You ain’t going to catch big numbers when it takes all day to set up a pond, and skin in the woods.

Cant run the creeks in winter with your snowmachine?
That is how winter beaver trappers harvested big numbers here back in the day when premiums were paid for winter beaver.Do the spring runs in late feb to late march
Snowmachine is the only way to acess a lot of the beaver here.
You can clean out the entire drainage running the creeks in winter.

Yes sir. He likely knows more about what he is saying than most everyone on this thread. I doubt he gets the apology he deserves though.

X2 Kirk lost me when he decided to insult eedup . He is accomplished , hard working trapper with great integrity. He has caught and handled a pile of fur over the years along with a ton of damage control.No need for that BS.

Cant run the creeks in winter with your snowmachine?
That is how winter beaver trappers harvested big numbers here back in the day when premiums were paid for winter beaver.Do the spring runs in late feb to late march
Snowmachine is the only way to acess a lot of the beaver here.
You can clean out the entire drainage running the creeks in winter.



Snowmobiles on official trails only in the National Forest

They tried to close off a bunch of land here like that but our provincial trapping organization nipped that in the bud.
Some older provincial parks are protected,and some crown game preserves are also protected.but those places arent worth trapping since lack of management has left them very poor to non existent for harvestable fur numbers.
Natives trap and hunt some of these areas which helps a bit.

I have read just about everything ever published on Jedediah and the only place I ever saw that was in the "The Old West" series by Times Life Books. It was the Mountain Man edition.

But I can say this; Jedediah was one of the early ones to scout new territories (his forte) and traveled multiple all through the Rockies and upper Missouri valley. So his trapping season would have encompassed may current day states. At the time it would have encompassed Spanish (Mexican) and dual British-American claimed territories as well.

Wont be from Minnesota. Not enough time to trap open water. Last spring we didnt get much time at all, we might get a week or two in the fall.