He will also bring at least 2 relatives. You don’t want that. They eat your food and shoot your ammo. At least they do that to him.
He can bring all the help he wants Brad, as long as they can skin and flesh beaver!
Brought my last three beaver home yesterday, they are getting bit up pretty bad and shedding too. I'm pulling three locations tomorrow, and setting 3 new ones. Around 13 locations set now, didn't get home last night until 9:05, and the wife wasn't impressed because I didn't have cell service for a few hours where I was at. Phone lit up like a Xmas tree when I came out, all calls from the wife, so I knew she was worrying.
Last Thursday, I went to check a trap at a culvert along a county road. I had three traps at the location and one was missing, trap, ten foot drowning rod and 30" T-bar stake. The bank was tore up some so I knew I'd caught a beaver, and there was some beaver fur on a nearby patch of brush. I'm thinking maybe the beaver had pulled the whole rig up because there is a bunch of rip rap there on the bottom. The DNR calls it a spawning structure, with rip rap all through the cement culvert, shoulders of the road almost to the adjacent lake. Because of the rip rap on the bottom it's hard to get the deep end of the drowning rod into the bottom, but I'd thought I'd wiggled it through the rocks enough to anchor the bottom end , with a T-bar at the top to hold it in place. Well it didn't work as planned, because the beaver got the bottom of the rod pulled out and was now on a ten foot stiff leash! Paved road, hard gravel shoulder with short dead grass. I'm looking for foot prints different than mine thinking somebody stole my trap. Couldn't find any foot prints but a different set of tire tracks on the shoulder mixed with mine. So I'm thinking it could have been somebody pulled over to look at the lake or make a call or ETC. Spend a half hour walking downstream looking for a beaver or evidence it drug the whole rig downstream, to no avail. Upstream is a lake with some weeds, but no obvious trails through that either. Decided to bring my drag hook and culvert hook next trip through, which is two days later, which I do. Drag the bottom and hook nothing but rocks, weeds, and a few dead beaver sticks. Hard to believe anybody would steal a beaver in this market, but the trap, drowning rod and T-bar sell for about $50, and I'm getting pissed just thinking about the loss and not knowing where the beaver is or it's fate dragging around that 10 foot rod, it's going to get hung up somewhere sooner or later. Decided I may have to bring a canoe down here and take a trip around the lake next trip, which would be Tuesday.
Monday I'm in my shop putting up beaver and get a call from the Game Warden down there. She asks me if I had a trap at that location and I said I had three, but one went missing! She informed me she had the trap and beaver, which she had to shoot several times to dispatch it!!! She then inquired as to how those drowning rods work, which I explained. Her line of questioning was to confirm the set was set to drown the beaver, which Mn. law states has to be capable of drowning, to allow for a legal 72 hour check. We made arrangements to meet at the location on Tuesday afternoon while I was checking down there. I've only seen this Warden in their district office, from a distance, and not had any dealings with her, and most often deal with the senior warden in the district for beaver work assignments.
So, I called her when I got close to the area as we agreed, but get her answering machine, called her again after I got there, checked my remaining two traps and loaded up another big beaver from one of those traps in my truck. Get back in my truck and she's called twice while I was checking those traps, and left a message saying she's just a couple minutes away. Ten minutes later up pulls a pick up with a 4wheeler in the back dragging a 17' boat with 90 Hp Outboard, and out of the trucks comes two female wardens, either of which could have been on the cover of Vogue magazine! One blonde, one dark black hair and deffinately of Italian decent, neither weighed over 130 lbs! We did our introductions and some small talk and I hopped up in her truck and got the huge beaver out of her truck bed from under the wheeler, where it had been laying, black plastic bedliner and all, for three days!! I have no idea how she got it in her truck. She had been informed by her supervisor when she looked at my trap tag, that she shouldn't have removed the beaver from the location, and that it was a legal set. I gave her a card but she said her supervisor had already given her one, but the blonde didn't have one so she took it, for future nuisance beaver work. That should work in my favor some day in the future.
I skun the beaver when I got home and it was a mess! First bullet (.40 Cal) went in low behind the shoulder and came back out cutting a three inch path across the ribs, second was a head shot. Wouldn't have been too bad if it hadn't laid in that truck for three days. She had every right to shoot the live beaver, but not to remove it from the location. I'm pretty sure her supervisor informed her what she should have done and now she's got my number.