As a young guy I remember well setting hundreds of 10 inch Conibears for beaver in wide channels, from the 60’s right through the 90’s, from Alabama to N.Y. If the bottom was hard or rocky it was always difficult or impossible to make a set. Where the bottom would accept a stake in a wide run, traps required either a great deal of time consuming fence construction or solid staking so that two or three traps could be set side by side in order to fill the run. If a trap got uprooted by a large beaver after the catch was made, the beaver could fire the others, leaving a lot of work to put the sets back together. Looking for suitable stakes and fencing was always a time consuming chore, while close attention had to be payed to the surroundings so that debris did not interfere with a trap when it fired.
Two days ago I set a 40 inch wide bank den in little more time that it took to set the two of the 18 inch wide beaver cage traps. A new colony with a lodge in the middle of the pond, instinctively my eyes went directly to the steep bank on the far side. Beaver love to put in bank dens when they can and will go right to the steep side of a pond conducive for dens. As expected there was a den, but this one was very wide. Even though there was a lodge in the middle of the pond, beaver will spend most of their time in the bank den. Frequently dens are just a bit wider than a beaver, 10 or 12 inches, but not always. With two 18 inch wide cages I could cover the wide expanse of a bit more than 3 feet. In these cases where channels are very wide, I will center the two cages, while leaving a few inches between them.
The “shined” up sandy bottom gave up the location from quite a distance. Nothing unusual, I set the traps and dropped them in, done! There was no wiring, no staking, no fencing and no concern about the make up of the bottom as the traps work in anything from muck to bedrock. Yes, the cages are larger and heavier, but I carried two across a fast moving stream and had them set in a blink, with no worries.
Yesterday morning both of the big ones were in the den sets side by side as expected. Having placed two other castor sets closer to the house, I did pick up a very small yearling in sets made on large basketball sized cobblestone. Young beaver will often have smaller litters, so I believe this was it, 4 traps, 1 night, 3 beaver. This was the second time in two days I had set 4 cages and took all three beaver in a single night.
