The big river near home produces some if the nicest castor around in my opinion...






This last shot shows some Willamette river castors (left) next to some coastal Oregon castors.

The 387 gram shot is semi-dry castor...just as I sell it. (454 grams to the lb) Takes about 5-6 days in my drying room and done.

Oh wow those are really good size. Do you sell or make lures with them.

Sell 'em all. In some years I've made more off the castor than the pelts.

They sure look nice. I ground castor today. I ended up with two 5 gallon buckets full of ground castor. After washing up, I still smell castor on my hands. Love that odor.

Does ten gallons of ground castor fulfill your needs for a year Paul?

...I'm thinking that was likely a silly question...LOL

Lol, not even close. Last year I used 538 pounds of castor.

That’s full blown castor porn! Never have I seen that nice of a batch.

Pelts were much sexier….but good job!!!

Our's are the ugly shriveled up black looking things. Pine sap makes them smell EXTRA strong like turpentine, lol.

All I can say is WOW! I can't get my head around that much castor.

That much castor Paul can fill up his grandkids wading pool, get a rubber duckie and swim in the stuff.

So do I.

That’s some darn sexy castor…

Holy Donna! Wicked!

Thats great looking castor mine look like the last 5 on the wire as far as color goes.

Dang,,, you make some good cash selling lure.

bp: That is some nice looking castor!

Paul: Love the smell too!

In the 1988/89 season, fresh out of the Army, I got back into trapping in a big way. I had a hiatus during my hitch. Not much trapping around Schofield Barracks. Fur prices were terrible. No one was trapping much at all in my area. A game warden asked me if I wanted to trap a section of a local river. Lots of beaver and all private ground. He introduced me to all the landowners and I got permission from all of them. The beaver sign was everywhere and I ended up taking 88 beaver that spring. I sold about 40 of them in mid February and kept going until the end of season. I was saving all the castors and hanging them over a closet dowel I’d hung up in my fur shed.

When the season ended and I got the last hide off the boards, I headed up to one of the fur buyers in the area. Actually a couple hour drive away. As a last minute thought I grabbed 60 of the castors. I kept the remaining 28 for myself to make lure. At the buyer I presented my fur and he made his offer. It was disappointing but in line with what I had gotten previously. I asked him if he wanted to buy any castor. His eyes lit up. I brought in the box and set it on the table and his eyes got really big. Some how I had accidentally handled them perfectly. I forget what the box weighed or how much he paid me but it was more than double the fur check. I’ve saved every castor since then. Sold a lot of them and used a lot of them in lures.

Was that in Idaho Marty?

When castor was going for $90-$110 a lb I was making about $15-$20 per beaver on castor.

That was in Eastern Washington.

That knife is a beauty Carl

Paul, I would guess that it takes close to 1500 beaver to get that much castor. Does that sound right?

Keith

Keith, probably closer to 4000 beavers

Absolutely

I figure it would take between 4 and 5 thousand.

Wow!

Keith

I wonder which state produces most of Paul's castor. N. Carolina? 4-5000 beaver is about 4 times the total beaver harvest for my state.

Wow

In NY state annual havest is usually between 10,000-15000+

Probably North Carolina followed closely by Mississippi.

This is a cool thread. Super informative.

Oregon used to produce those numbers. Low prices and the dying off of the old hands at it are probably the main issue. Beaver are a lot of work and newer trappers would need more incentive to learn the craft.

I got curious about the annual harvest numbers of beaver in my own state and so I looked it up. The numbers vary greatly in Pennsylvania from a high in 2020 of 18,841 to a low in 2024, the last year records are available, of 6,929. The numbers year-to-year are all over the place, interesting.

Those are impressive numbers Lug. I'm impressed.

I weighed the dried Castor from 20 beavers this weekend and it was 2.85 pounds.

That's 0.1425 pounds per beaver

So 538 pounds would be 3,775 beaver.

That's a pile of them!!

I get a lot of #2 castors. I think some cull out the #1 castors and send them to auction in hopes of a higher price. That's why my estimate is higher.

I would hope that folks don't do that Paul. If you're buying field run castor all-in @$40/lb you should be getting the best of it too. I would never do that to a country buyer.

Paul, Is there any particular area or state that produces particularly odiferous castor (in a good way)?

Seems to me that Paul is always wanting southern castor where sweet gum is the main forage.

All of the southeast produces the castor I want. It tends to smell the same from East Texas to the coast of Virgina. Good stuff!

Big difference between castor odors from east to west. I've smelled several lures made from eastern castor, and they don't even smell like castor to me. More like something that came out of the spice cabinet! Not sure if the beaver care or not, but I prefer to use castor that smells like that of the area I'm trapping. So for western beaver I'll use western castor, if I was to go back east to trap them, I'd want to use eastern castor.

I know several lure makers (the boss is one) only want castor from one area or the other.

Paul's Backbreaker works good on beaver in my area. I'm about as west as you can get for beaver in mainland N.A.

Here’s a shout out to Paul’s Woodchipper from years ago. The set I came to check was still set, the mound I made was messed up, but there was a beaver swimming around watching me. I had all evening so I reset, sat there still with my phone and within a minute or two of cracking the lid on that jar I got em……..wammo!

I don’t see much information on how to handle castor after its removed. I have been hanging it up for the season and then freezing it. At the earlier sale sounded like I was way over drying them. I did a little better at the last sale and thought that it was going to be way to wet. BP, care to give us run down of what you do when you say ‘done’? I heard some say they do a quick squeeze to get the majority of the juice out and then freeze.
I sold about 7 lbs and thought I was king! I broke it into batches of the way overdried and what I thought was too wet and the wet batch went for quite a bit more.

Minz, I think it depends on your market or end user. I sell to a country buyer. Some send to auction to have it sold. Others bring it directly or send it to local/state association auctions. Depending on your buyer, they may be using it rather quickly for lure or it may be stored and sold over seas months from now. Your market likely dictates how dry your castor needs to be or how much an auction house is going to dry and deduct a weight percentage if your castor is not dry enough.

My buyer tells me to freeze my castor as soon as I take it out of the beaver. It can be frozen for quite a long time. Around 10 days before I sell it to him, I take it out of the freezer and hang it up or lay it out on a screen. Flip it a time or two over that 10 day stretch. Then I box it up in a cardboard box and bring it to him. He claims that this method gets me the most money (dry enough for his needs but not too dry that I'm losing a large weight percentage). Now if I was sending this castor to an auction house, it may be too wet and thus start to mold or be dripping wet when it got there.

Minz, atrapper covered it pretty well. I like to hang mine for a few days and get it somewhat dry before freezing. I believe it tends to be lighter colored that way.

For kicks weigh some fresh out of the beaver and then weigh it again when you're ready to sell. You should only be losing about 20-25% of the wet weight. In fact, I've sold a lot that only lost about 15-20%

At the OTC sales most buyers like to see castor that is dry to the touch but not bone dry. Should be tacky inside the pods. And for sure never take to auction in plastic!

Paul, did you ever try a batch w/northern castor?

Yes I did. Back when I didn't have enough southern castor, USDA from NY asked if I could make a batch of Backbreaker with castor they provided . I made them a 4 gallon batch for them.
I also made a small batch years ago to test. I compared it to the Backbreaker with southern castor. They both attracted beaver, but the Backbreaker with southern castor out performed the northern batch.
When you smell the two side by side, there's a world of difference in the two odors.

Minz, there’s a video up above on castor…….never mind, that’s in a different castor thread……lol.
Here ya go.