Nice catch, the one otter looks real good size.

Ha! Youse guys. Those are them MB750 setters. I only use them to remove beaver feet out of the dang things. I still set them by hand after foot removal.

Haven't caught many beaver yet, the weather has not been favorable with either water too low or too high. I'm in to the Goldilocks water conditions right now though.

Nothing terrible big. A female and a male. Male looks to be year and a half old. I'm hoping to catch some young of the year that stretch around 36-37". I've got an order for six of 'em (feet-on) at that size for a guy in California that home tans and makes traditional arrow quivers.

Nic haul. How fast can you skin a beaver? 19 beaver would take me all day and then some.

Hard water? What's that? I was picking blueberries up until Christmas for my oatmeal!

Me too! But that's 'cuz I'm lazy. LOL

I clean skin one and take care of the castors, oil sacs tail and head removal in 20-25 minutes. Put up three per hour. I have slowed down a bit since my prime and take more breaks.

I gotta admit, peeler has acquired a greater skill in peeling beaver over the years than the feller (me) that learned him how to skin flat tails round about 45 years ago. While I was dealing with unit limits of 20-30 in Alaska, he was whacking 3-500 a season.

Ummm....so without those unit limits you too would have been whacking 3-500 a year up there?

Not likely, them hard water beaver are too much work!

Western Oregon is beaver paradise. When growing up in Bend back in the 70s, we had enough beaver around to keep me occupied, but when I first went over the pass and to the Long Tom River area with the notion to trap some critters that were not on the menu in Central Oregon, (think coons, nutria, fox), I couldn't believe the beaver sign and activity.
And there were a lot of nutria. We would set traps early in the morning, then find a large canal with a meadow nearby and just sit. Before long we would see a nute either swimming the canal or simply appear in the meadow/field. After a late lunch we would skin what we shot, then check traps again. It was a grand time for 2 teenagers. We would make a 3-day weekend out of it, and by the time we got back home we had more misc. fur than we would catch in a month around home.

Back in those same days Chuck and I both ran road lines for nutria, coon and beaver within a 40 mile radius of Corvallis (often cutting classes at OSU to do so). Nutria being the main target. I can remember averaging about $12-13 for nutria and filling up my car for less than the price of one nute!

Nice haul alot of work tomorrow in the fur shed.

The unit limit went away here about 30 years ago. Still hard to catch the old limit of 40 in adult size. The limit had a purpose. Beaver here never seem to shine . Too many ways for beaver to die.

Just about the same time I left Alaska!

I think they opened a fall season maybe around 2006. Only open water trapping I did before that was the year we ran boats up until Christmas. That screwed all the land trapping that year.