Last two beavers I caught were dragging lily pads with them, presumably to eat. Anyone tried using them on a baited set? Or are they just too hard to retreive any mid winter so you haven't tried? Or maybe someone was tried it with some other type of greens? I know apples and potatoes can work, but I haven't heard anything about greens.

When I lived in Cameron, Wisconsin

There was a family of beavers in Cranberry creek that had Deep narrow channels ,They had rush and lillys in their center of lake House. They only ate Lilly roots in winter, catching them was challenging

Are you trying to see how many different ways you can catch them for a book you’re writing?

Down here in the deep South beavers have lily pads to eat 365 days/year.

They don't eat the lily pad itself...they eat the stems and roots.

I have found a few ponds where they eat exclusively Lily roots in the winter. The outside of the root looks like a Pineapple. They will not touch a tender young aspen or Birch pole though so snaring them is challenging to say the least.

Lily pad roots are massive if youve ever come across them during low water periods. Seen places where beaver havent cut trees in a long time but youll see where they've been eating lily pads

I saw in a video that potatoes can catch a beaver that's eating roots, especially if you open it up a bit so they see the white inside. Haven't tried it yet but it worked in their under ice sets.

Just personal edification mostly, but I guess I could write a book."Trapping for the unintelligent Mook: even you can do it!"

I never learned how. Maybe I’ll give it a read.

Unrelated to ice trapping, but I have seen beavers in the middle of a patch of lily pads steathfully snipping off the flower heads. I was bass fishing at the time and thought that the commotion caused by the hidden beaver was caused by a huge bass. That beaver ate a bunch of flowers while I was there.

They seem to be a preferred for for snapping turtles too.

Throw a piece of potato on a 330 trigger, they'll hit it. Just be careful using too big/heavy of a potato piece, I had the potato set off a 330 I was holding (fortunately not on my hand)

The pineapple looking rhizome is the main thing that beavers are after in the winter months. In our coastal lakes it is by far the most consumed item in a beaver's diet. I have used pieces of rhizome for bait and it works fine.

Some of the "dead ponds" without fresh beaver chewings, the beaver are living on the lily pad roots.

Same thing here Mike. One would swear that there are no beaver in many of our coastal lakes based on no peeled sticks.

Caught some pure black beavers one time in a runoff pond. solid jet black. One weighed 72 pounds on a scale. came from church camp run by the methodists. They had eaten some of the trees but were mainly living on the lilly pads. Think that had anything to do with their color? Caught beaver in ND back in the 90's that were living on cat tails like muskrats.

Same in WA ,,,,if it freezes it is only for a short time. No feed piles.

Goggle earth BIA and go to the east,,,,, I took 56 beaver out of that drainage,,,,,,all eating roots.
The nice thing was they kept the water open.

Had an old male in a shallow lake on a contract property with a zero tolerance policy on beavers. It was super spooky, avoided everything visible snares and body grips and exposed footholds. I left it alone couple weeks and snuck back with carefully concealed footholds. He got lucky and left a toenail in one. After that he just disappeared. No more trees chewed, no sign that he was exiting the water anywhere. After a few days I decided that he must have left. But then a couple weeks later I noticed “islands” of mud and pineapple roots getting bigger, with fresh pineapple roots floating around the islands and chewed up on the islands. I took a canoe out and sure enough, he was building islands and had completely stopped coming to shore. I kept watching another couple weeks thinking he would eventually start coming back to shore, but he never did. Rather than take another chance spooking him with a trap, I sat with buckshot on a full moon and that was the end of that saga.

Cliff notes please….l

Smart beaver wouldn't even come to shore after getting spooked. Ended with gun in moonlight.

Thanks fishinghole. What can I say, I like to tell stories.

I though it was a good read, though might get less confusing with some paragraph breaks.

Not a thing wrong with that narrative loosan...I liked it and wasn't inconvenienced with the sentence structure at all. Keep on truckin'!

I thought I would be cool and find one of Vinke’s long posts to gripe about.

I gave up after 3 pages of one and two sentence posts - at least he practices what he preaches.

I had that same experience Danny. A pond out in the tundra with no trees or bushes around it. They were eating the lily pad roots from the bottom of the pond. Not only was the fur black but the meat looked peculiar also.

I got 13 beaver out of a lilly pad loaded pond last year, one blonde and s mix of reds, browns and blacks. Ate most every set of back straps too I never noticed a difference.

Now that I think about it a bit more I suspect the color was due to the water and not the diet.
Almost all of the water in the tundra looks like strong tea.. Most of the beavers I had caught before those had come from a glacial river that was fairly clear.

Wood chipper and Beaver Plus used together
There also will always be a castor mound somewhere and a house….
A small boat is your friend….

If ya can’t say it in a few words…. Ain’t worth saying…..

Not their preferred food here.
They eat lily pad roots if there main feed,aspen birch or willow has been depleted or if they are living in swampy muskeg where their preferred food is unavailable or too far from water..

I have seen beaver feed on a lot more then bark. From what I have seen I think they eat what is there. Cattail roots, bull rush roots, corn, sunflowers, alfalfa. I saw a drag mark going across a dirt road and stopped to check it out. Once I got off the atv and was stopped I could see it was a beaver. He was going about 75 yards across land to cut alfalfa and take a mouth full back to the creek. I could see where he hauled it up stream and sat feeding. I was trapping a coon and skunk rabies survey at the time so he got a pass.

Lots of blackberries plants also
Trapped for a raspberry farmer that they were taking the plants

The feed heavily on lily pad roots on a couple of the marshes I trap. It's hard to get roots for bait when there's ice. The ones that are in the ice are, well, froze. They don't want them. An old timer showed me that Parsnips work well on beaver eating lily roots and they're a lot easier to get.

Blackberry roots and stems are a favorite for beaver where I trap.

Ka-BOOM!

I've seen muskrats swimming with lily pads too. I assume they must eat them as well.