Beavers

[Anonymous Poster]

Del, In reference to your mole problem I read in a magazine where a fella would pour urine down mole holes to rid his property of them.

 

[jimmoore]

I can just see this picture in my mind> A beautiful lawn, a house in the background, the sun just coming over the horizon and Del PEEING IN A MOLE HOLE. JIM

 

[JohnS]

Just wodering if you ever found a "magic" solution? Since, I now have a similar problem /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif.

I first saw signs of beavers, what was left of the small trees anyway, this spring. It took awhile but found that they had dammed a small feeder creek, to the main creek. The small feeder creek is on my neighbors property, and was not causing any problems.

During the low creek flow, this summer, the beavers took to damming the main creek. Not a problem at first, since it was still contained to the creek bed. Well, now they are causing the water to go over the banks, and a portion of my tractor access trails are submerged. /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif Even this wouldn't be too bad, if the new beaver pond had any chance of surviving the spring runoff. The dam will either washout, or be filled in with allot of gravel, and the creek will find a new route.

My son and I spent a couple hours dismantling part of the dam (built much better than you would think). It lowered the level a foot or two, but within 2 days that had it repaired and water level back. They are very industrious!

I can get a nuccence permit that allows for trapping or shooting them for a year. If this was neccesary, I hope to find someone that would do it for the exchange of the pelts. I really don't want to get into live trapping, ie handling beavers and transporting them (rabies), etc.

Current plan, is to do nothing and wait to see how it makes it through spring, but figure there will be a mess, and will require a dozer to make new access trails.

 

[dmccarty]

JohnS,

Whew, Beavers. I don't like beavers. The first rural land
I owned had a beaver problem that the home owner
associations agreed to remove before I bought my land. It
turned into a big battle between the beaver lovers, aka, the
people whose land was not impacted by the beavers vs those
of us who where impacted. Very ugly. Sold the lot and
moved on after a few years. The lot was to small... /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Yes, the dams are impressive. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif Very Impressive. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

You might get someone to trap the beavers for free or you
can do it. I "followed" the beavers and they are active about
an hour or so around dusk and dawn. They are also up for a
few hours at night as well. This is a good time of the year
to shoot them at night with the full moon if it is safe to shoot
them.

They flooded a good 30-50% of my lot and killed hundreds of
trees with the water. They killed many more by girding them
for food. I ended up wrapping chicken wire around the big
trees for protection and that seemed to work.

The only real solution that I dug up was a series of pipes
pushed through the beaver dam. I think Clemson or Auburn
had a website on how to do this. Basically it was a long
section of PVC pipe pushed through the dam. The upstream
part of the pipe had many holes drilled into the PVC. An 90
degree elbow was put on the below dam end of the pipe and
another pipe was run vertically. The vertical pipe was used
to control the level of the pond. I supposed you sould do
away with the vertical pipe to just drain the pond.

This did work for my problem. The beavers think the dam has
a leak when it does not. They know how to handle a leak at
the dam face but they never figure out that the leak is
really behind the dam 10 or so feet. The pond drains and they
leave. The nice thing about this solution is that it prevents
other beavers from moving into the the pond. If you remove
the origional beavers others are sure to move in behind them.

Hope this helps,
Dan McCarty

 

[JohnS]

The area I am having problems with, is low lying land, that doesn't have many trees of value. Most is thick brush, 1-3" diameter. Too big for my KK rotary cutter, but prime beaver building material. I like the drain pipe idea, but with current creek flow, would need a 24" diameter or larger, just to keep up /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif. Four to six 4" PVC might work, in the mid-summer months. The spot they have choosen, is also beyond tractor/backhoe reach. Maybe a few sticks of TNT /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif.

Talking to one of my neighbors, he indicated about 15-20 years ago, they (DEC?) trapped 30+ beavers out of there. WOW! I've been there 10 years, and this year was the first I saw any signs of them.

 

[riptides]

Ok,
My beaver story. I'll come out and tell you the true cost.
Go see this link.
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=safety&Number=137590&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1#Post137590/>Roll Over</A>

I was collecting those logs because of Beavers.
I tried soap in the water...
I tried pokin holes in dams...
I tried .357, .30 and ahhh..... rounds....

We used chain link to help save selected trees....
then we got Beaver traps. Real ones. Not have-a-heart either.
ConiBear maybe the name? Anyway, the Beavers are still around. One is a permanent addition to the study. He weighed in at 45 pounds.
Only cost me about 350.00 dollars for the taxidermist and about untold sums of money for the new
plastic eye.

/w3tcompact/icons/grin.gif

Oh, the dam..... still there, more of them, but the one that stretches across my property, about 300 feet long, 4 feet wide. Deer use it to move across the pond! /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

-Mike Z.

 

[JohnS]

"Oh, the dam..... still there, more of them, but the one that stretches across my property,
about 300 feet long, 4 feet wide."

WOW!!!, 300' !!!! Can't say I've ever seen a beaver dam that large. Most I've seen would be less than 50'. From my experience, they seem to pick areas that are ideal to make as short of dam as possible. Most I've seen are no more than 4' high. Has anyone seen taller ones?

 

[looch]

There's 2 I know of that are over my head - I'm 5'10". There's something bizarre about walking up to a lake with the water at eye level.

 

[Trev]

<font color=blue>Speaking of moles, I hate killing them too, but they find the island of topsoil I made to have a lawn an ideal place. I like to least keep the area around the house intact. Are there any old "wives" tales (or farmer's knowledge) that works to deter them.</font color=blue>

I think the conventional wisdom about moles is that they only show up when there are grubs for them to eat.. so, get rid of the grubs and voila.

We are experimenting with ways to do this on our own propery. The grubs also turn into beetles of some kind that eat our veggie garden, so they are a double whammy. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Most of the really good grub killer that isn't toxic to other critters is very expensive ... stuff like "Milky Spores" ... but is supposed to last almost forever. We used that in the garden itself, and tried a cheaper brand for the rest of the yard (spread with a 3pt hitch spreader.)

I'll let you know next year if this method works! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Good luck,
Bob

p.s. No idea what you "mystery animal" is. If you ever find out, please let us know!

 

[Argee]

<font color=blue>Most I've seen are no more than 4' high. Has anyone seen taller ones?</font color=blue>

I've got one on the back end of my property that runs a good 300 to 400 feet and in places is over 6' tall.