First Beaver Hoop

Our annual District 3 trappers banquet is coming up in a couple of weeks. I thought this might be a good item to donate for our fund raiser besides the usual lure and bait. I have never hooped or laced a beaver before. I hope the folks will like it..




Just put the last touches on it today. I think I need to adjust the feathers a bit. Not sure where they look the best.

I pulled and cut some grape vines from our woods a year and a half ago for some hoops. I selected what I thought would be about the right diameter sizes. Peeled them, then hooped and tied several to different sizes to allow them to age for a year. I haven't seen a Willow tree around these parts for a while or I might have used that for the hoops.



I had several beaver tanned last year to make somethings from them. Thinking hard about a bed spread also.

Looks great Bob! What did you use for your lacing?

Working on one myself right now Bob. Lots of work in getting one done. Yours looks great.

Great job Bob. Ermine pelts look good also.

Looks great Bob. I'd bid on it if I was there.

Very nice.

Looks very nice. My wife did one kind of similar to yours. In our case it was with green vine maple (unpeeled). It didn't make a perfect oval but it was close enough. We sold it for $100 at the 2021 K. Falls OTC sale.

Bob, very nice.

Looks great!
Tried with poplar saplings last summer, kept splitting.

Will try grape.

Or maybe poison ivy vines, have plenty of that!

looks good

I used 1/8th inch raw hide lacing, it came on a 60 ft roll from Amazon. I used the beavers upper and lower incisors also. I used the top incisors to mount the tanned tail to the bottom of the beaver. Look close and you can see the yellow of the teeth. The longer lower incisors I used to mount the two sets of accent feathers.

The grape vine is very durable and workable to bend. It has good memory. It seems to be made of hundreds of small bands. I bent it pretty hard to see how much force it would take, never broke a piece yet. It can be a challenge to get your hoops exact at least in my experience.

Boy that enamel on those beaver incisors is some tough material to drill.re

You sure got a good fit on your hoop beaverpeeler.

I will know better how to match a beaver to the hoop next time around if there is one.

Looks good,you picked a nice pelt to hoop.

Boco, these beavers are all from the big river most caught in March.

Bob I was going to make some joke about if those feathers were from the eagle u shot while u were out here but decided if some feds showed up at my house or urs it wouldn't be too funny.... well a little funny if it was ur house after u got over the anger. Lol

No eagle feathers, just some painted domestic bird feathers that look good. Only native Americans can possess those types of feathers. I guess you can use the real deal when you hoop your beaver.

Looks Awesome