Beaver dam tear down - again

[kebo]

First, I have to apologize for only having three pic's to show you all cause I know how everyone likes to see pic's of tractors at work! What happened was I took three pics before I started working, then the camera wouldn't take anymore - error message on screen said "no available memory". I had no way to offload any pic files amd make room, but later on I thought maybe I could have deleted some but it was too late then. So, I didn't get any of the "after" pic's.

Anyway, my seat time today was at my hunt club. It's like 70 miles from where I live but only 8 miles from where my folks live (which is where I keep my tractor at). I had left my boxblade down at the cabin last month to grade the dirtroad off the main paved road, and the dirt driveway down to the cabin as well. So I went down there today to finally move it back to my parent's house.

My hunt club is fortunate to have a 3+ acre pond about 200 yards down the hill from the cabin at our club lease. A couple weeks ago I had talked with my hunt club president and he said when I go down there to see if I could work on the spillway at the pond. We've had trouble with beavers in the pond past few years who keep damming up the spillway. Boy, he wasn't kidding this time!

This first pic below is looking at where we usually cross the spillway. The trail goes underneath where the BB is sitting up in the air, and then more to the right and then up a pretty steep hill. Look close and you can see the path the atv tires have made right under the BB. Ordinarily, this crossing is very shallow and narrow enough you can walk across it and hardly even get your shoes wet. In the summer, it's usually just a trickle, or bonedry if we're having a drought. I estimate the deepest part now is probably about 2.5ft in the middle of it.

Here is the first problem. This is looking downstream slightly, I was standing up on the tractor when I made this pic. If you closely, you can see the spillway is dammed up on the far side of it. I think it was dammed up on the left (near) side too but it looked to me like maybe recent heavy rains had pushed that part of it downstream. Anyway, that little "diversion canal" to the left where the big rotten pine is laying at WAS NOT THERE last summer. When they dammed up the far side, it diverted the water around to the left side. But, there is still enough of a dam left to really flood the crossing area as you see can. The big rotten pine tree isn't all there now, I was able to push on it enough to break off a 6ft section and then shove it downstream about 10 ft.

Here is the last picture I was able to take. This is just where the spillway actually starts at. The water on the right hand side of the dam (in the very middle) is actually in the pond itself. If you look real close, you can see the beaver dam as it snakes through the small willows and saplings to the far side. We need to cut down all those saplings and get them out of the way!!

Anyway, I then proceeded to clean up the lower part of the spillway first. I was able to clean out that little "diversion canal" on the near side pretty good. I was also able to break off a big section of that pine and push it downstream to the very far end of the spillway where it has a 4-5 ft drop and it then becomes a creek.

Next I tried to ford the crossing to see if could push that dam down on the far side of the spillway. No go!! As I got half way across it, the right front tire dropped off in a hole and completely disappeared!! Had to back off and save that for later. So next I got the tractor turned around facing up stream and got the FEL blade just over the dam (on the side of the big water) and put it in reverse and drug out a 4ft section of the dam. Boy, it was on then!!! A huge torrent of water starting coming down the spillway and it went up a good foot or more almost instantly!! Before the water got any deeper, I was able to go back up and get another 2-3 ft section of it and drag that down to where it was in the current. I figured the swift water would take care of most of that smaller debris I had pulled out.

So by now the water was REALLY flowing down the spillway. This was really all I could do for today. I'm going to try and get back up there next weekend with a couple of my club members and see if we can do a better job of cleaning it out. Hopefully, the pond will have come down enough and I'll be able to get across the spillway and work on the other side too. When I left out of there, it sounded like little Niagra falls. There's a 6 ft watefall in the creek just a few yards down from the spillway where the water drops into a pool. It gets pretty noisy when there's a lot water flowing into it, like today lol!! I'll get a pic of the waterfall too on my next trip up there. Again, sorry for no "after" pics. I'll offload a bunch of pic's before my next trip up to make sure I have enough memory!

 

[buck12]

I have dealt with beavers at our hunting lease for years and likely the dams were rebuild within a few hours after you left. By the way there is one less beaver at our place as of earlier this week. He surfaced at the wrong time and met a bullet. Beavers are a pain and can essentially ruin land. Good luck with your efforts.

 

[CurlyDave]

How long does that beaver dam have to stay there to convert the extra pond into protected wetlands?

 

[RickB]

Until the next aerial photo flyover.

 

[masscity]

I read this in an old Farm Show mag, but my memory is shot. Somebody here might remember it better than me.

I guy had a beaver problem. He cooked garlic (I think) and strained it to get the juice. Then he mixed that with hot pepper juice and some other things that beavers don't like.

He sprayed it on the trees around the pond and the beavers left.

 

[HCJtractor]

Hi Kebo. We have the same problem that you had. Beavers blocked our road on our hunting land. We tore out about 15 dams over a 300 yard stretch of creek. Some were quite large and solid. I make a grappling hook and where we could get the tractor close, we would pull the dam apart. Other inaccessible dams required using shovels or steel "toothpicks" to tear apart. Man, they are well built and hard to breach. Takes a lot of work and the beavers can build them back quickly.

I would advise trying to trap them. I caught 9 last summer and this has greatly reduced their activity. Trapping them is kinda fun also. SCDNR will give you a permit free over the phone to make it legal if that is a concern. If you want to try it, I can give you a resource for traps and give you a few tips. Traps cost about $25 and you need up to 6 of them. I just reset my traps and will try to catch what beavers are left.

 

[studor]

He sprayed it on the trees around the pond and the beavers left

.
I tried various concoctions and wire cages around trees --
Now I just spray the beavers themselves with BB 12 guage loads

 

[Trails2004]

....... Then he mixed that with hot pepper juice and some other things that beavers don't like......

How does one know- that a beaver doesnt like garlic and pepper juice

 

[HCJ]

Checked my traps this morning. Caught two beavers. I had my traps out a week, but because of heavy rain and flooding, I was not able to check them until today. I saw lots of fresh beaver activity, so I still have some work to do. If you don't eliminate or at least reduce their numbers, tearing down their dams if a waste of time. They can rebuild faster than you can tear down!

 

[jinman]

Checked my traps this morning. Caught two beavers. I had my traps out a week, but because of heavy rain and flooding, I was not able to check them until today. I saw lots of fresh beaver activity, so I still have some work to do. If you don't eliminate or at least reduce their numbers, tearing down their dams if a waste of time. They can rebuild faster than you can tear down!

That's true if there is continuous running water in the area or if there is a heavy rainstorm to produce flow. My experience with beavers is that if you can drain off all the water, they will not rebuild. It's running water that triggers their dam building response. At least that has been my experience. Once, I cut the dam on a pond that had been in existence for over 40 years. The two beavers that made the pond their home were in such stess that they tried to dam up the large opening I had cut with a backhoe. They were oblivious to me standing only 10' away. It was truly a "beaver 911" going on right before my eyes as they hauled in logs in a futile attemp to rebuild the pond dam. After all the water was drained, the beavers left the area and never attempted a rebuild.

 

[beenthere]

Had a similar problem years back, with beaver putting in a dam where there once was an old 3' diam culvert on an old right-of-way. First they dammed up the culvert, then used the road berm to heighten their dam.
With two sticks of dynamite pushed down about 8' in their dam in front of the culvert, we caused a huge eruption that blew the culvert out, making the end look like a trombone. Hole was so big we had to build a 20' bridge to get across. But for the last 35 years, have had no beaver back there trying to re-build.

Before that dynamite trick, we pulled that dam apart many, many times only to find it repaired the following day. They do work fast.

Anxious to see your after-pics. Wish we would have had the handy Deere and FEL to work on our hunting land. Our hunting was all on foot.
We stopped hunting there when the ATV's became like so many knats buzzing around all day long. Not a good hunting experience at all.

 

[PILOON]

We solved beaver damming using stove pipes!
You breech the dam, lay a length of pipe in the break.
Then install a 'T' in pond floor, 2 lengths of pipe left and right and again 'T's at the ends.

Our lake is just under a mile and the 6" pipe trick was all it took.

Beavers will remake the dam but the water flows out via the pipe and because you have created 4 entries they don't find the entrance or 'leaks'.

This is not my brain wave as it is shown in many 'beaver' sites!

It works!

 

[kebo]

Hi Kebo. We have the same problem that you had. Beavers blocked our road on our hunting land. We tore out about 15 dams over a 300 yard stretch of creek. Some were quite large and solid. I make a grappling hook and where we could get the tractor close, we would pull the dam apart. Other inaccessible dams required using shovels or steel "toothpicks" to tear apart. Man, they are well built and hard to breach. Takes a lot of work and the beavers can build them back quickly.

I would advise trying to trap them. I caught 9 last summer and this has greatly reduced their activity. Trapping them is kinda fun also. SCDNR will give you a permit free over the phone to make it legal if that is a concern. If you want to try it, I can give you a resource for traps and give you a few tips. Traps cost about $25 and you need up to 6 of them. I just reset my traps and will try to catch what beavers are left.

We've actually set traps once and only caught 1 big female. I think the club president is planning to set them back out again soon.

Btw, I spoke with another club member yesterday evening. He had been down to the pond to look at what I had done. Would any of you guess that the dams have been repaired already?? I didn't think so. So now I think we're just going to wait till the water warms up in May or so and wade in there and tear both of them up. Once we get the water in the spillway back down, I can get in there with the tractor and clean it up so it will be harder for them to dam it again.

Someone else in this thread had questioned what might the conservation people think about tearing up something that might be considered a "wetlands" type habitat. My opinion (and it's just an opinion) is that no conservation engineer would ever condone beavers damming up a spillway on a pond. That water has to go somewhere in a real heavy rainfall period. Beaver dams are good, and often can withstand some pretty torrential downpours. But, if you have a pond backed up higher than it's designed level due to a beaver dam, and then you have the beaver dam to fail very quickly during a torrential downpour, that sudden & huge release of water could lead to further damage downstream, such as a manmade dam failing on another pond.

But again, that's just my laymans thinking since I'm not a civil engineer.

 

[Deerlope]

In my own battle with the Beavers I found that gun powder was the best solution. I had the time and the ammo. If you killed enough of them and harass them enough they will all leave. I killed 25 and they left, 2 years later two returned and I shot both of them. Its been 8 years now and no more have returned. It will be just my luck to go there in the spring and they will be back.