I went back to the ditch where the guys had been shooting and trapping this morning. I had not caught any beaver and had a sprung trap the beaver sprung while rebuilding the dam. The guy who had been shooting at them, and was on the township board, followed me in on his side by side. We talked while I checked my traps and tore a 3' hole in the dam. He liked that! LOL I set three more snares and a trap, I'm beginning to take this personal! During our conversation, I pinned him down on the size of the beaver the other trapper had caught, which he said were all three pups. Then said he shot one big one and a pup. So I'm guessing that dam is being rebuilt by one adult beaver now, but honestly, all bets are off as to what remains. The worst part about this deal for me is I have finished all the other contracts except that one, and it's 51.5 miles one way. Back there in a couple days.
This ^^ is the second dam on the ditch going under the state highway, I tore the lower dam out here about a week ago. Not a trap touched here and the dam wasn't repaired so I decided to open this dam and get out of here. This was a tough dam and took 2.5 hours to get it roaring. Top and back were well woven sticks with plenty of big ones mixed in. About four feet of solid clay N-S and about four feet deep. The face was a sand clay mixture but came out in chunks and the water moved most of that weight for me. If you look close at the water in the spillway, you will see a log that runs from about where my fork is leaning to three feet out in the water above the dam. I just kept digging out clay on both sides of the log and the water washed the chunks away. Didn't take too much digging and prying and it just washed right out of the spillway!
This ^^ is looking downstream as the log washed out. If you look center right, where the sand bar covered in snow protrudes into the ditch, That is the log laying in the water after hitting the sandbar, it just wrapped around behind it and stopped in the dead water behind it. Took me a while to get my gloves off and camera out.
This ^^ is the spillway just before I left, she's roaring for sure, and should drop about another three plus feet. Note the stump I dug out of the dam on top right by my chainsaw. Hard telling how old that one is. If you look downstream just below the point on that stump I dug out and above my chainsaw, you can see that log I dug out starting to float downstream. The water was really filling up downstream and I'm sure overflowing the dam downstream also, because this notch is larger than the one I dug downstream.
This is about a mile North of the dam I just tore out, looking North while standing on the shoulder of the state Highway. All this was frozen when I started, note the drop in water level already. This ditch runs 2 miles North, then 1.25 miles West, then 1.5 miles North again, then three miles West again. Then to the left (West) there is also a ditch running for 2 miles adjacent to the highway, and a short ditch about 1/4 mile to the right (East) also. Should be interesting to see what it looks like in a couple days.
This ^^ pic was taken from the same spot, just looking a little NE, to show the flooded area East of the main ditch going North. All that real white looking area is suspended ice that was flooded.
I left there and went to check out the ditch and lake where I fished at. This ^^ is where I parked at next to the 7' culvert and where I left about twelve beaver carcasses. It just snowed two days ago, and that is all wolf tracks. Five piles of wolf crap in the road on the way in. I pissed there at least three times I can remember! Yea, there real afraid of human activity. Only in Disney's world.