Syracuse.com - Trapping beavers in Central New York is day-to-day adventure

[HuntingNY-News]

State law requires traps be checked every 24 hours in the Southern Zone. Watch video

Les Wedge slipped on a pair of waders; a raincoat and water-proof, rubber gloves. He slung a wicker basket on his back containing a small shovel and an ax. He decided to leave a plastic sled in the back of his truck.

“That’s for a very good day when I catch more than a couple,” he said smiling, when asked about the sled.

Wedge has been trapping for 57 years. Tuesday morning he checked eight beaver traps he put out on two small streams in Cortland County. State law requires trappers to check their traps every 24 hours in the Southern Zone.

“I do it for the enjoyment. It’s another excuse to be outdoors and observe nature,” Wedge said. “Secondly, it’s a kind of game with the animal. You have to be right on a particular spot to trap so that they don’t miss it.

 

“The third thing is every morning when you check your traps, it’s like Christmas morning. What did I get today?”

He also cited wildlife management reasons.

Wedge, 67, is a retired regional fisheries manager for the DEC’s Region 7.

“For me, it’s a way of helping out trout streams. I’ve caught 30 beaver so far this year and 28 of them have been on trout streams,” he said.

Wedge explained that beaver dams warm the streams up by ponding the water, they block migration of fish to spawning areas and they tend to add unhealthy amounts of silt to a stream, messing up trout spawning habitat.

There are other reasons to keep their numbers in check, he said. Their dams flood nearby crop fields and they can wreak havoc on trees.

“I was at a place over in Lansing a few years back with this guy who I was mentoring and there were beavers that had flooded a whole stand of white oak, a pricy timber,” he said. “They killed just about every single tree there. They couldn’t bite the wood, but they took the bark off the trees.”

Wedge takes his trapping seriously and wants others to do the same. He is a certified trapping safety course instructor. To get a license to trap, a beginner has to complete an 8-hour course, followed by a written exam. Trapper ethics, safety practices and information about the life of various animals that one can trap are among the topics covered.

“It’s a highly restricted, regulated sport. I think it’s more restricted than hunting,” he said. The season this year in Central New York began Nov. 10 and ends April 7. There is no daily bag limit.

Tuesday morning Wedge was checking two types of traps he had set —foot-hold and body-gripping (also called conibear) traps. With the foot-hold trap, the way Wedge sets it the beaver dies by drowning. With the body grippers, death is near instantaneous. Neither trap has parts with serrated edges.

“Those are called ‘toothed traps, ’ “ he said. “Those traps haven’t been legal in this state for at least 80 years.”

Wedge attracts beavers to his traps by making use of their “castor mounds,” which are small piles of mud and vegetation that beavers coat with their castor, a substance emitted from a gland in the animal’s groin area. The mounds mark their territory.

“I put some beaver castor on the mound from other beavers I’ve caught and it smells like an intruder is here,” he said. “The beaver then comes back to cover up that smell and put their own back on.”

Wedge said adult beavers in this state average between 35 and 50 pounds, with some 80-pounders caught each year. The biggest one he’s caught to date weighed 63 pounds.

After checking his eight traps Tuesday, Wedge discovered he’d caught a two-year-old male weighing 34 pounds.

He skins the beavers he catches. He dries the pelt, scrapping the meat and fat off it and nails it to a plywood board to stretch it out. He then either sells it at a local fur auction or sends it off, using an agent, to an international auction in Canada.

Beaver pelts, which are much in demand in Russia and China, this year have been selling anywhere from $20 to $56, depending on the quality. Wedge said he isn’t growing rich off trapping the animal.

“When you figure in replacing your waders, gloves and other equipment, along with gas, if you break even you’re doing good,” he said.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog

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This is another animal that can start some pretty spirited arguments. It's for sure that they can mess up some trout streams, crop lands, and other landowner properties. I occasionally have flooding problems in my driveway because of these critters. And yes, I have seen quite a bit of timber impacted by their needs for trees, although seldom are they trees that really have any commercial value. Most of what they go after are softwood, trash-trees. My Mother has lost a few fruit trees out of her yard to these animals.

 

But on the other side of the ledger, I have seen beaver dams and the resulting ponds become some prime habitat for a whole lot of furbearers and other animals and birds. Muskrats, mink, foxes, raccoons, possums, and all other kinds of birds and animals move into these unique environments. A lot of specialized vegetation becomes a part of beaver ponds as well. These ponds become a virtual city of dense animal populations and variety. take a look at the top of a beaver dam and look at the wide variety of tracks that you find there.

 

Beavers are an animal that requires some pretty careful control through trapping. Too little trapping can result in some severe problems. Too much can deprive an area of a unique kind of valuable habitat and ecological benefit.

 

I was lucky enough to have been raised in an area that had these fascinating creatures and still have them as neighbors today. I have the problems and the benefits of having them in the neighborhood, but things sure would be a lot different without these  animals and their weird habits.