Bridge Hopping for Spring Beaver

Bridge Hopping for Spring Beaver

By JD Rogge

Late January brings an end of season for the majority of Iowa’s fur bearers; the lone outlier is beaver. Beaver provide opportunities for the motivated trapper to take fur well into April. Spring beaver trapping not only provides trappers with more outdoor opportunities, but helps secure permission for the next fall by helping farmers with problem beaver.

Beavers are the farmers’ nemesis, and very seldom will you be denied permission to trap them; more frequently farmers will seek out your services, and often times repay your help with permission in the fall.

In the spring beaver are on the move expanding territories and seeking out new territories, new food sources, and mates. Beaver are extremely territorial in the spring and will aggressively defend their territories against wandering beaver. Beaver mark their territories with a gland called castor which they secrete onto a mound of grass/mud known as a castor mound. This aggressive reaction to the odor/sign of an intruder is just the advantage a beaver trapper should be looking to exploit.

When I set up my spring beaver line I use a tactic usually used by coon trappers in the fall known as bridge hopping. Bridge hopping is basically stopping at all the bridges along a stretch of road line, and in the spring I set every bridge with a sizable enough body of water underneath to hold beaver. Even if I don’t see beaver sign under a particular bridge, if the creek under it ties into a larger creek/river that I know holds beaver I set it knowing that during the spring dispersal beaver will move down it.

The equipment I use on my spring beaver line is very snare heavy. I do use some footholds, and conibears, but snares are my go to piece of equipment. I prefer a short (40”) heavily loaded snare made from 1×19 5/64 cable, with either a slim lock or a cam lock. With a snare setup such as this, I use a 10” loop set 3” high off the ground-this setup and loop size gives me a lot of neck and high shoulder catches. When I’m using footholds I use #4 Duke 4 coils or some old #4 victor double long springs. Another fine beaver trap is the MB 750 which is an excellent, although expensive trap. When I use conibears/bodygrips I use 280’s and 330’s of various manufacture.

When you’re beaver trapping one thing that you absolutely can’t skimp on is staking. Beaver are an incredibly powerful animal, which can reach 60-70lbs. They have some serious horsepower, especially when they’re snared and have all 4 feet to pull with. When I’m snaring beaver on dry land high bank trails, I use 24” cable stakes (pogo’s, berkshires, EZ’s), or a 30”x1/2 rebar stake. I generally lean toward the cable stake due to their tremendous holding power. When I’m running drowners on beaver, which I prefer to do, I use one of three different drowning systems. The first is a standard cable drowner, 8’ of 7×7 3/32 cable with a loop at the top end for a rebar stake, and a Berkshire disposable at the bottom end. The lock on the cable drowner is a standard L shaped drowner lock with a small Sleep EZ spring hook to make switching snares easy. The second type is a re-rod drowner I make which has a cross stake unit on the top side, and a large washer at the bottom end which can be shoved deeply into the mud as an anchor. I weld the #9 support wire on the top side near the cross stake and uses a square conduit lock. The third type of drowner, and probably my favorite, is chain drowners. I make my chain drowners 8’ long from short link #2 machine chain, with swiveling points on the top and bottom sides, with the same conduit lock I use on my rod drowners. The chains are very durable, they lock up extremely tight, and are easily portable.

I run my spring beaver line by mapping out bridges along creeks and rivers that I know hold beaver. This is where the bridge hopping comes into play, I run the line and set the bridges whether they have beaver sign or not, knowing that the beaver will move down these bodies of water when either dispersing or defending home. My go to set in the spring is the fake slide set. The fake slide set is made by using a tile spade to cut a fake beaver slide/crawl out into the bank. I slick the slide up with my boot to make it appear well used, and place a scoop of mud as a castor mound at the top of the slide. I then put a snare at the bottom of the slide just out of the water with a 10” loop 3” high. At the mound at the top of the slide I dip a stick in a good castor base lure and place it in the mound. Castor lures I’ve used with good success include Sweetwater Flattail, Dobbins Backbreaker, and my own blend Little Sioux Special. This set creates the illusion of a territorial marker that any passing beaver will check out. When I stop at a bridge I will put at least one of these sets on each side of the bridge to take advantage of whatever wind direction I have. Beavers have an exceptional nose, and will check on a foreign castor smell from a great distance, but if you only have one set in and the wind is blowing the wrong direction they’ll never smell it. Do yourself a favor and set both sides, and while doing so put different castor lures on each side.

Another observation I have made about spring beaver working the fake slide set is that it pays to gangset. A few years back I put a trail camera on a slide set to get some video of beaver being caught in snares. The results taught me a lot, not only my catches, but also my misses. One night in particular I set the camera on a fake slide. Around midnight that night a beaver came up the slide, got caught in the snare, and dove down the drowner. Sounds like a successful story, right?? What happened next taught me much more. From midnight until 5:30AM four more beaver came up that slide to check the mound, had I gangset the slide I would have had multiple catches. I now set two snares on drowners at each slide and doubles are common.

The beaver’s aggressive attitude in the spring time creates great opportunities and just a lot of good fun for the trapper willing to put in the work. This simple set, and bridge hopping technique will put beaver in the back of the truck this spring. Good luck and get after those flat tails!