Chasing Beaver

[Kevin Stenberg]

I agree Ian. There aren't many men anymore that would do as hard of a job as what Rally does. Under the adverse conditions that he works in. Cold in the winter. Mosquitoes, Deer flies, Hoarse flies, Gnats in the summers. No one has even said anything about equipment he has to have (on his dime) and maintain
It's just my humble opinion. As much as the money he makes. Rally does it for his love and respect for the outdoors.
I will get off of my soap box now. Kevin

 

[KeithB]

I always figured that the tougher the job the more you have to love it to do it. It would seem to me that Rally loves his job. We should all be so lucky, I've had jobs I loved and jobs I didn't and the former beats the latter no matter what the job is.

 

[Rally]

Jon,
We are already doing that and more. All trappers are required in the state of Mn. to complete a trappers training course to get their first permit/License. The course is even online now for part of it but requires some actually field training days. Through the Mn. Trappers Association, which set up the program, and spends a great deal of time and money doing so. We certify instructors and give classes to anyone willing to take it, for a $12.00 fee to cover the cost of printing material. The association also gives the graduates token traps, snares, packbaskets, wire, tools, etc to get them started. The free traps come from supply dealers or retiring trappers will them to the association, whom distributes them. We also have programs to make Mink and Marten boxes built and given to kids. Also, at the annual convention (usually first weekend in August) simple games are set up for the kids and their "prizes" are small traps or snares. Once the kids have completed the online course a certified instructor can take them on their trapline to count towards their field days requirement. The association has a raffle every year and all proceeds go to the education program. There is a list of certified instructors on the associations website so the kids can find out dates times and possible mentors.
I could get into how and why this program started, but would be violating the no politics policy in about two sentences.

Ian,
Some folks think I'm pretty good at what I do, but it's taken a long time to get here. There are reasons the state, county, and township governments are reluctant to hire independent contract trappers. They have been burned by some contractors doing shoddy work, or hiring relatives that did what they could with what they had. The government has also made it so restrictive at times it isn't worth pursuing. Lots of inter agency conflicts also amongst enforcement and wildlife/ fisheries depts. Throw CITES species into the mix, protectionism of program species, local trapper concerns, and divided budgets and it can get "interesting". Also consider I trap on state, federal, county, and private land, some times in the same day, and some times as a joint venture between at least two of those landowners. In fact the picture pond above, just over that hill to the west is a piece of county property with a beaver pond on it. This is a combined contract between the county and state Forestry. I bid a lump sum for the state, and a per head/ mileage contract for the county, and have to keep records for both! Two different checks, same job. I need a secretary. LOL

Bret,
I start at the bottom of most dams and remove the majority of the sticks I can pull out by hand. Once the "tailpiece" has been cleaned out, I start knocking the mud/ ice off the top. If you start at the top, the sticks will catch any large debris coming through the hole I tear out if you don't clean the "tailpiece" out first. The water will carry most mud and small debris with it and that way doesn't require lifting all that weight. With my "beaver forks" I can dig/ pry to a depth of about four feet before the water pressure going through the notch makes it impossible to stay in the notch. Big dams I remove in pieces to get to the natural depth of the waterway. Usually two trips into a large dam, or several days as I trap it and canoe through. Bog ponds are the worse case scenario most often. Most have large sedge mats floating loose throughout the waterway, and when I start moving water they often float into the notches I've torn out. Quite often my brother and I end up cutting long poles to pin the mats to the bank until they settle on the bottom once the water recedes. In a real bad bog we open notches on both ends of the dams to eliminate the odds of both getting plugged the same night while draining. Some contracts also require cleaning all obstructions from the waterway, to facilitate bringing their base back to a sand bottom after years of silting once the beaver have stopped or nearly stopped waterflow.

 

[Rally]

Kevin,
I love this stuff, for sure. I get to see a bunch of neat stuff out there that most folks never will. Kind of nice they pay me for it, so the wife only looks sideways at me once in awhile! Most of my equipment I have to build, because there isn't much made anymore that will take the beating it gets most every day. The last commercial boat trailer I had, for my trapping boat, had 11 patches on the frame when I retired it. I've offered to "field test" plenty of stuff for manufactures at trade shows, but no takers yet. On the other hand, "need is the mother of invention", so my being out there has also helped me develop products I make and market with my line of snares. The bugs can be bad, and some days the deer flies make a guy want to go home and cast bullets, or that's the excuse I give the wife. LOL

Keith,
Couldn't agree more. I don't know how people can go to an office every day and look at a computer. I'd be pretty tough to live with if I had to. I'm sure you'll never see my picture in GQ or Fortune magazines, but I can live with that.

 

[Bret4207]

The few dams I've torn out tended to have very little, if any, floating debris. My good luck it sounds like. What usually screws us up is rocks pushed into the area around the holes after they've laid some bigger sticks, say 4-5 inches, in there. Unless I get lucky with a pickeroon those sticks usually end up staying there until after the water drops and I can get back in, but by then the flow is lost and I'm not doing much good. I can see where your method would work better. Hopefully any more dams I ever have to tear out I can get to with a backhoe or excavator!

 

[Rally]

Ric,
This was a new system to me also. The Det. cord pictured in the water have a powder compound in them as does the cord between the det. cord. The det. cord was larger in diameter and the explosive inside was suspended in some type of caulk (?) and waterproof. The forester doing the instruction said it didn't hurt to put it in the water and evidently didn't matter as it took a couple hours for them to set up the large dam. The explosives described above were in plastic bottles that had a recessed grooves, the full length of the bottles, on opposite sides, sized correctly for the det. cord to just lay tight along the length of the bottles, in the grooves. Around the top and bottom of the bottles were plastic bands to hold the det. cord tight to the bottle. To rig the bottles you just push the det. cord into the groove, under the plastic band, the full length of the bottle and under the top plastic band, then about 6" longer than the bottle and then take that extra length of det. cord and under the plastic band on the opposite side, to keep it tight to the bottle and secure the loose end. They put two charges/ bottles in each hole bored in the dam so just aligned the grooves on the bottles, ran the det. cord the length of both bottles , in the grooves and under the plastic bands and tucked the extra length under the plastic band and into the groove on the opposite side. Then they used electrical tape to tape the bottles together at the joint and to a stick to push them to the bottom of each hole, then back filled the holes with loose debris. They cut the det. cord with what looked like a pair of hand pruning shears.
If you look close at the pictures , you will see on the ground, between the guys standing, there is a coil of cord. In that coil is a plastic coupling, sort of like a wire connector, when snapped together holds the det. cord to the lead cord. The det. cord coupling has a igniter (small metal tube with ignition compound/ explosive in it, and has a tailpiece of det. cord about 6' long. The main trunk line det. cord lays along side of the igniter, in the coupling, for approximately two inches, inside the plastic coupler. Then the plastic coupler is closed. The length of det. cord that is then run from the plastic coupling to the farthest charge and is called a main trunk line(His terminology) . Then all the det. cords coming from each charge are coupled to the trunk line. To determine actual sequence of detonation can be determined by length of det. cord, or in short, closest to igniter first to explode.
After the rigging was all done, a smaller diameter "lead" line, on a reel, was spooled out away from the dam for approximately 250'. This "lead" line was just the right size to fit into the tail end piece of det. cord coming from the igniter. I believe he also taped that, but can't recall for sure. This lead line has a small nipple cap on it and the instructor stated this is where most miss fires result from. He cut off about a foot of the lead line before installing it. The lead line is just a hollow plastic line with a white powdered priming compound in it. He stated if it gets wet before detonation the line can draw water and the priming compound can get wet. He hung it in a bush off the ground while we cleared the area.
Once we were clear of the dam, the lead line is installed in a small device that looks like a letter T with a short leg , and collar on one end that holds a die, that looks roughly like a shell holder. This shell holder is the appropriate size to accept a 409 size primer, and like a shell holder has a hole all the way through it, and sized to accept the lead line. The primer is inserted into the shell holder, inserted back into the collar. The actual striker retainer looks like a drift pin with notch cut in the center and retains the T shaped firing pin. The end of the drift pin is a retained coil spring that acts on one end of the spring. The firing pin is cocked and held in that position when placed in the notch. There is a hole through the drift pin for a hitch pin clip to work as a safety device, or block the firing pin. There is an appropriate sized hole on the side of the shell holder to allow the lead line to be ran through it in a generous loop, then the end placed in the inline hole of the shell holder. In short, it looks like a Zip Gun with a shell holder on one end with a yellow tube coming off it!
They advise yelling fire in the hole or blowing beaver dam etc, then listening for a reply. After the second warning ,the hitch pin clip is removed. A third warning then the short leg of the T is moved out of the notch and the spring sends the firing pin forward striking the primer. The priming compound ignites the igniter, which ignites the det. cord to charges. I watched his thumb and there was a very short lag time from strike of primer to boom.
They wound up the lead line and there weren't any traces of det. cord remaining. That kind of surprised me as I've pulled lots of the old style lines out of dams over the years.

 

[RicinYakima]

Very interesting. All of the military stuff I worked with was electric. Never got to use, just watched, the bomb squad use the two part stuff. We had C4, Comp B and block TNT for heavy lifting. The old cord that you found may just be timing cord or prima cord used for changing effect and staging multiple shots. Thank you very much for the new insights.

 

[Rally]

Ric,
I found it interesting the det, cord was all gone, not a trace left anywhere. Inquired about that and the instructor stated it can be wrapped around small trees and cuts them right down. He said during his training they put one of those igniters inside a leather glove with a pork chop, to simulate a human hand, then detonated it, as a "visual aid". Guess it blew up the glove and pork chop was nowhere to be found.

 

[RicinYakima]

Oh yes, cut down many trees with det cord making LZ's in Viet Nam for the Infantry guys to land. And you can put a charge on the side to make the tree fall in the direction you wish. IIRC, the pressure wave from det cord is about four miles a second. You wrap two loops around the tree, side by side and add a third over the top between the two to make a pyramid. You fuse the top one to compress the bottom two to increase the cutting effect.

 

[Bret4207]

I used to drink ( a LONG time ago) with a blaster that worked on the Mt Van Hovenberg project for the 80 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. He was also ex-Air Force and sat there one night figuring how much det cord it would take to run from where we were sitting in northern NY to someplace on the west coast and to take down a structure that was in the news at the time. He did it on a bar napkin in about 5 minutes. I'm fairly sure he was nuts, but he sure seemed to know what he was talking about and the time required was amazingly short.