Got this one on a county job today. Anybody care to throw a guess at what happened to the rest of that tail? I have a few guesses, but thats about all. I suppose it could have been born that way. It is a smaller beaver l, probably a 1-1/2 year old.

Could have been pinned by a falling tree.Just a guess.

That is something I’ve never seen and I’ve seen some weird tales.
Does not look like it’s been chewed off. Crazy.

It's pretty symmetrical, I bet it was born that way

Just went out to the truck and got a picture of the end. If its healed, it sure did heal nice. Im leaning towards born that way. But tho tailbone does not taper down, more like a thick stub.

Dang crawdads did it

That's Crazy

Born that way.

Someone cut it off for the bounty, good thinking.

Born that way.

Yep happens

Looks like when I slam one in the tailgate.

It's mother probably bit it straight off, like that, when she was eating the placenta attached to it's navel, by it's umbilical cord.

Keith

I caught one like that this year,first one I have seen like that.
Also a smaller beaver.
Might have froze off.

Nice catch Eric!
Looks too clean of an edge to claim bitten off or injury of some type...my guess is it was born that way. It sure was no tail slapper.
Looks like you are missing a spring on that trap? Possibly a four coil system?

That’s an odd tail for sure. That beaver looks like it’s had some tuff goes stump tail missing tips of toes split webbing the works haha.

Chewed maybe .I have seen that once before but fresh

About that spring - it is intentional. That’ a heavily modified 85, with a CDR (PIT) pan. It is set up for 4 coil like you suggested, but they were a bit too strong for my taste with all 4 so I 3 coil them. Seems to work fine, no downside that I can tell. I guess it could be argued that it might snap a little lopsided, and jump out of the bed weird, but I don’t see that when I test snap them. Loving them. Been using a version of a tray - actually a bottomless box with the trap on a magnebed inside the box. Swamp wolf got me started messing with them, and I am at over 15 back foot catches in a row without a toe hold or miss with that setup. I don’t always use the box though, I have only made a couple and using them here and there to compare results. This tail-less one I did not use use the box because the landowner said he had a local conservation officer catch one, and some teenagers down the road caught a few, but this one kept coming back, so I was in super stealth mode. I pushed the chain slide under the mud, and hid the trap with weeds right from the start. The landowner says he sees 3 beaver there every day. But I see 1 to 3 muskrats there every day, and when I showed him the tail he said “are they normally longer than that?”. So I don’t fully trust his insistence that he can 100% id a muskrat from a beaver at 30 yards. Im not going to explain it to the landowner because this is a county job, but the feed pile was a 1 beaver pile. I still have that trap there though, because sometimes I am wrong.

I caught one like that once. I thought a mud turtle might have got it when small. It was a big beaver.