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No, a set up fee covers your travel expense and time to inspect the area and then set traps.

Thank you

Definitely not...beaver work hard enough as it is...you will put more time on one of those jobs than many others...set up plus per beaver or a total cost on job and dont go cheap

It depends on how you present it to the client. If your setup fee is $25, then I'd say it probably isn't in your best interest but if your setup fee is $500 then it may or may not include one or two catches. I've done it both ways based on my client and how I needed to sale the job to them so they'd hire me.

On another note, I personally don't do setup fees but rather service fees as it is easier for clients to understand. For example, most plumbers or electricians don't have an inspection/setup fee, they have a service fee that covers inspections and any necessary prep work so they can then do the job. So with a service fee, you can say it is a $150 service fee to assess the problem and then X dollars per beaver/catch/trap or day or you can say the service fee is $500 which includes the first one or two beaver and then X dollars per beaver/catch/trap or day.

I usually don't bother with inspections as beaver are beaver generally. Don't want to waste my time or a clients money. It helps to ask as many questions upfront, is it a natural pond, a stream, river, man made pond, where it is located in relation to people etc. If there is something weird to deal with you can explain it and charge for it. I do a set up fee and a per beaver charge most of the time, but of course there are many ways it can work. I have some that are per trip minimum. A lot has to do with the area, what the competition is charging.

With that said, there has to be something figured in somewhere for a per trip fee if beaver are wised up from what you inherit from other trappers. Some beaver just do not respond, but avoid from day one, from nothing you did incorrectly, can be maddening. A colony a few miles from home may take a little extra time, but a job 40 miles away can be a big loser. Can't say every job over the years has gone well for sure.

If a job does goes as it should with an evening set up with a new pair of beaver, the job will be done in 12 hours with both beaver caught the first night, easy to price and a money maker. Always helps to have multiple locations close to each other if possible so that there is profit from the good ones to absorb some extra time with a bad one. Your mention of one beaver is important for two reasons, obviously only one beaver to get payed for if you are doing a per beaver charge. Almost have to have a two beaver minimum figured in somewhere, or the per trip fee. One beaver takes more time and work than two most of the time. If you catch a matched pair, M and F, it's easy, done. If you catch one, you never know for sure if there is a second, so it requires another trip at least, sometimes two or three depending on how educated the second is.

Don't forget to ask if they want the water lowered-you can charge for returning water to natural flow too(not just taking the top off).
I charge $50 for each dam cause I like hard work,but $100 per dam would be fair for larger ones or plugged culverts

Some guys make money with those but they need to be monitored and maintained or else they become a nightmare.In my opinion they are dangerous,as it causes the beavers to build inland where large impoundments of water are not noticed until a dam upstream fails and leads to a costly wash out.

Here ya go mr comstock...another beaver in your cage

Sure looks like a beaver. Hope to have a few today myself. Beginning to rain again so the jobs are picking up. Very dry slow summer.

Boco makes a number of good points. I like the hard work too and have taken out hundreds of dams over the years, not completely of course, but breeched them to bring the water back to normal. Did a 6 footer in a culvert last year, took several days. Didn't want to get washed downriver. Had to brace myself against the the roof of the culvert to keep pressure on my feet when the current is hip boot depth. As I began taking the dam down the beaver was removing 200+ pound chunks of the bank and floating them down to the dam. Never had seen one do it exactly like that before. He won some battles, several, but I won the war.

What I have seen of tubes is what Boco says, they require maintenance, fill up with junk on their own and rot out. Usually no one takes care of them like they should and they are expensive. Seems like every one gets plugged in a couple of years. Plugged highway tubes are only part of the problem as noted. Beaver dams back in the woods are a real problem, the biggest problem actually because no one sees them until they blow and take out the roads. One highway dept. has me catch beaver prophylactically, back off the beaten path and lower the water before the dam blows since they have lost the roads a couple of times. Not only did they lose the county road a couple of years ago, a big dam took out the Interstate north of us. Cost 200k to fix the county road. Told them I would have trapped the beaver for half of that. No idea what the Interstate cost. Took a lot of fill to get that one fixed.