Trapping beaver under the ice

[nubbin]

I have trapped other animals in the past and my daughter wants to try beaver. I have watched a lot of youtube videos but was wondering if anybody has a few pointers that would up our odds of getting one. We have a huge beaver lodge on the edge of our land and we saw 5 or 6 while we were deer hunting the swamp.

[Random guy]

First thing is be careful, beaver lodges are a great place for bad ice...and you are looking for the bad ice.

Best advice I can give is make sure you try to cover every single opening and run you can find. Beaver are crafty and smarter then we give them credit for.

[nubbin]

How many runs can a lodge have? I have only 2 330's. What do u use for bait? Fresh cut poplar, potatoe, fake green plant from wifes flowers?

[Kyle]

Potato and fresh cut birch or poplar has worked for me. Bait sets do not work as well as run sets though.I have found it to be much more difficult to find entrances now that the ice is much thicker. I seem to be able to find the general local of the entrance, but have not had great since the beginning of the year actually finding the entrance. At this point, I'm looking forward to spring so I can get in the water, and also set baited sets on slides on the banks.

[kkahmann]

Are you allowed to use snares in MN?

I haven't trapped in a few years but I used to take my beavere quota in Febuary by snarring thru the Ice.

Cut a 10inch hole in ice on outside of feed bed --run rebar wire wrapped on bottom and top of green poplar pole about 3inches in dia. Run snares down wire and use staples to hold in place. snares should be about 12 inches in dia.--number of snares depends on how deep the water is--I have had as many as 10 snares on a pole but it is usually only 4.

I once caught 7 beaver on one pole. This time of year they are craving green bark as thier feed beds are starting to sour. You can clean a house out with this method pretty fast.

[nubbin]

We easily found 2 runs by the lodge. The ice was only an inch thick in the runs. The water by the runs was over 6 feet deep and I didn't have poles that were long enough to sink into the bottom that were attached to the trap so we opted for a "swinging suzie" approach. We baited 1 trap with a pealed potato and the other with a fresh poplar. We didn't catch a beaver in the 3 days that we had to trap but we had fun trying and will definately try again in a few weeks.

After pulling the traps I looked down the hole with my jacket covering my head and hole I could easily see that the food cache was very large and had a few branches with green leaves still attached. I know that there were beavers using the lodge because there was an open vent on the top of the lodge and I could see lots of freshly chewed sticks below the ice.

Thanks for the input guys. Hopefully next time we get out we will get one and I get to post a couple of pictures.