Beaver dam tear down - again

[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.