Walt and Jordan - Great season for the both of you. We'll be sad when it ends, lol.

Got this traveler in a float yesterday. Was set other side of bridge column in the current. Also caught 6 rats within 15 ft of the float in the past week in small traps to keep it operational.

Lance: Did you hear on your coon yet at the auction? The price they gave you for your bobcat was fantastic! You better take your wife out for a fancy dinner for giving it up .

Walt: All 99 coon sold 100% and averaged $10.72. I was happy with it compared to last years sale. Hopefully it will continue to rebound into next year. I didn't start trapping coon until Oct. 31st, to let them prime up a bit, and also had a very large sized run of coon this year.

I did release a lot of the smaller ones since they were worth so little last year. I ended up with 132 coon total for the season but only have 5 for the next sale.

My wife gets a fancy dinner every night right here at home, lol. We don't go out to eat too often.

Thanks for the info Lance. Good luck,tight chains!

Thanks and same to you.

Thanks Lance. Walt, the boat is in the garage drying out today. We did not go down the river this year so no news to share from there. We went out on the lake yesterday in the snow and set a few traps. We're hoping for 4 more beaver to get us to 80 for the year then we can be done.

I didn't realize it but I had 2 mink at the auction that sold yesterday for $7 and $2.50 and a muskrat for $1 - no fancy dinners at that rate.

I just put up 28 mink that were in the freezer on hope's for better prices. l guess I should have left them there. Guess we'll have to go to that place in Foster that gives free pizza to destitute trappers. Good job on the beaver!

The otters eating the fish from my ponds were successfully evicted today. Thankfully I only set two traps or I would have likely had to turn one in. I guess I left a little seed for next year.

Glad you got em when you did, I've heard rumblings that the fur committee met to discuss the otter harvest and it sounds like the season will get shut down early. I'll make a separate post when I hear something official if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

Shows you the cost of not having the best researcher on the state’s payroll. He would have been pushing to increase the quota up so we were not in this situation. Really no reason not to be at 3000 or 3500 otters.

We harvested over 3000 and the otters aged showing they were surviving. That was back in the early 2000’s. I don’t anyone will argue population has gone down since then.

They need to up it and give everyone 3 tags. My area is loaded with them.

I won't claim to know what the harvest has been over the last 25 years annually, nor what the quotas have been either. Do you have a resource with historical quota and harvest info?

So what's different this year? Better beaver prices and more incidentals? Decreased snow making for easier access to winter trapping spots? Less ice and more open water throughout most of the season? Or are there just that many more otters? If it's the latter, why is this the first year in forever we're hearing about shutting down the season early.

I would say all of the above reasons in combination. Probably incidental catches with higher beaver prices and this year's weather are the bigger contributors.
Since they started the new model when going to two tags per trapper, harvest has been around 2000/year. The reason quotes have not been adjusted. It was viewed there was not need to adjust quotas, year over year, as the harvest cushion hovered around 20 percent of the total quota.

Last time we were exceeded quota, they let it ride…we bumped it up from 2000 to 2500 with little to no opposition. Last year, the signs were there to bump it up again. Had the researcher been in the meeting, he would have pushed to have it bumped up. Didn’t hurt that he was a beaver trapper.

8117 Steve, we are loaded here too. Took me a couple days to catch 2 with 2 traps. Was kinda disappointed I didn’t catch on the first night. Last year, I caught two here in the first night. Sign says I should be able to do it again next year.

What is your beaver/otter ratio catch? here in NY it is approx. 10/1 with some areas closed to otter trapping.

Last time we figured (years back) 8 otter for 100 beaver. I have since revised practices eliminating high potential otter locations.
I would look at the incidental numbers. Perhaps more trappers are turning them in. I doubt short of unlimited quota you will ever get a true harvest. And that’s nothing new.

Closing the season wont stop the catching. Simply because many water sets have the ability to take otter whether you want them or not

Here are the meeting minutes from last years meeting….notice all the talk about what to do if we reach 2500 otters but no talk about just increasing the quota. Why all the talk about hitting quota? They knew it was going up.

https://widnr.widen.net/s/knknczml9q/2023_fac_meetingminutes

I did see the press release come through announcing the closure of otter season early. Funny they didn’t update the hotline first. The hotline hasn’t been updated since 3-22.

Walt, I have beavers in the freezer. If you and Lance come help finish them I will provide the pizza!

Would like to help you out Jordy, but I just remembered I'm headed for Antarctica on a beaver trapping expedition. Heard the fur is good year round. Have to get an extension for my ice chisel. Maybe next year!