Calling beaver

Was talking to our local Fish & Game biologist today and he was telling me that he has learned to mew like a beaver and that it seems to excite quite a response form them. Mewing in and around bank dens and they often swim out to his boat.

Anybody done this? I'm thinking maybe Foxpro can add a beaver recording to their menu. LOL

I've done it in the spring in Alaska. Beaver swimming in the river and I called them up onto the bank.

The kits reply to a Sitka Black-tail deer call, I know. Ha!

Seen a article years a back a guy said if he dumped large rocks in a creek the beaver would think another beaver was slapping it’s tail and come out to see what was going on. Never tried it for hunting them to busy trapping.

They answer nicely to a stick of black cherry wood..wotha strip of bark removed

There was a nice little book out there written by Martin Hunter and published by Harding called "Canadian Wilds".
It tells of his life working for the Hudson Bay Company from the 1860's to 1900 or so in Canada. There are many chapters
in there describing how natives hunted and trapped beaver and other critters, along with his perspective of life then.
Nice read, 270 pages or so.

Zim

I wonder if it would work for calling coyotes? To use it on beaver I dont think it would be real good unless you were down to the last one otherwise you would educate them pretty quick.

Is it legal to shoot beaver anywhere? It is not in Nebraska. Where I fish in Wyoming on the Platte River the beaver will come up to me just out of curiosity and because I'm invading their territory.

I was a government trapper in my earlier life and started in the Mississippi. The dozen or so trappers did quite a bit of shooting as a control technique for removing beaver. Some where very effective with it. I personally used it much more as a secondary method during the summer. One fellow, named Chris, was a very proficient "beaver shooter" and I had occasion to work with him. He could make the "mew" call with his voice and used it to call beaver within shotgun range.

Yep here in SD it’s common in the spring thaw on some rivers and for ADC.

I might try beaverpeeler's "mewing" (may have to google for the proper sound). Walking in with a 10/22 and o traps or snares sounds like even less work. But I wonder what the success rate is...?

Thanks for the reference Zim. I'm going to have to see if I can find that book.

Shooting beavers that you don't like having around is the method Colorado Parks and Wildlife recommends to landowners since 1996 when trapping was banned. No requirement to try to salvage anything from them. Kill them and waste them is what the anti's/environmentalist types accomplished in Colorado, that runs contrary to the North American Model of wildlife management that suggests a proactive trapping season where the animal is at least utilised in some manner. Kind of like killing elk or deer to reduce the populations and not being legal to eat them.

Beaverpeeler,
I wasn't kidding, about the black- tail deer call working on beavers. The calls are simple to make, adjustable pitch, just blow for a shorter "mew" sound, instead of a doe or fawn bleat. If you aren't sure of the type of call I'm talking about, PM me, and I can send a picture.

Speaker in the water with waterfall sounds. Sound carries quite a distance under water for them to hear. They will come and try to plug up the speakers. Just don't hit the glass jar when they have it in their front feet.

I've never tried it for beaver, but it works for nutria. They make a sound very similar to what moose hunters make to call bulls. Its a mew with vibrato added in.
I had a nutria come out of a hole in the bank, swim 30 yards across the ditch, and climb up on my side of the ditch. I had to shoot it before climbed into the truck with me.

52Carl- I take it you probably live in the tidewater part of VA. Just wondering how far north in Virginia the nutes have gone...?