Been awhile and I've been running crazy keeping up. Back at the contract and been in there about two weeks now. I've taken 69 beaver out of there so far and may take that many again before I'm done. The weather has been a nightmare, rain, snow, warm day, rain, snow again, freezes some nights etc. I am getting around by canoe at some series of ponds and have a canoe stashed mid contract which I get to via the wheeler. It's 78 miles from home to the contract where I get on the wheeler, but I am storing the wheeler at a friends cabin, where I'm trapping his ground also. His cabin is only three miles from where I get on the wheeler, so saves me a bunch of dragging the trailer around, and I can have a canoe on my truck to use at other locations. I'm trapping 9 locations now and got three more county and one township job to add today, so will have 13 spots working. I'm putting up my beaver now, at least until they start shedding out, which won't be much longer now. It doesn't make any sense to tan poor quality beaver and there really isn't a fur market currently for fur.
This ^^ pic was taken about ten days ago, and is the far NE end of the forestry road on the contract. The beaver have used the road for a base for their dam and completely flooded it.
This ^^ is the same road four days ago, after removing 7 beaver, opening the dam, and cutting the top out of the Popular tree the beaver had dropped on the road. I drove my wheeler through there two days ago to access a pond behind/ attached to this one. Most of the water had drained two days ago. There is no culvert here, but will be when the road project is done.
These next couple pics are a few dams I removed yesterday from a county ditch, which the beaver have water backed up for over four miles, and drains a well populated lake, with many nice lake homes.
This ^^ is the same ditch, different dam. Note the pieces of floating bog in it's construction!
This ^^ is a piece of that bog (right center) floating downstream, which I was standing next to as it broke loose!! It literally started pushing on me while I was standing in the water next to it crotch deep in a pair of chest waders.
This ^^ is the same dam when I was done working on it. Dramatic increase in water flow.
This ^^ is a cedar log I had to cut out to get the depth I wanted. I dug under the log to get the water washing away the sand under it the first trip in, then cut the log out with a chainsaw second trip in. Worked out quite well and didn't ruin a chain cutting sand, like it when a plan works out.
This ^^ is the last dam on the same ditch, actually part of the original river. It's hard to see in the picture, but the dam was V shaped and quite porous. It consisted of large chucks of water logged bog and small rotten sticks. I flooded it by removing the dams upstream from it, then just started picking at the point of the V. Only took about 15 minutes and the chunks of bog started washing out.
Had to make three posts to get all the pictures in.