Last spring, I was sent by the county drain board to remove whatever beavers were damming a maintained drain. It seemed to be a routine job, with the exception that the dam was under a bridge that was all riprap under the bridge and maybe 30 feet upstream and downstream of the bridge. The dam was right on the riprap, but there was very little sign around the flooded section, and the den was literally in someones mowed backyard. So after considering all of my options, I set snares at every waterline trail that was not in someones yard, and put a foothold at a dambreak (same location, same setup as the riprap setup video). The snares were all undisturbed, but two nights later I had the female in the riprap foothold. The next night there was a half hearted attempt to fix the dambreak, but my foothold was still sitting right were I left it. And that was it. The break flowed free for the next 6 nights (this spot was only a few miles from home so I did not mind dropping by to check it that many days)... After that I pulled everything and stopped by once a week. One of those times a neighbor came out and struck up a conversation. He told me that the two boys and their uncle from a house right along the creek had trapped it last year and taken several beaver. Not unusual at all around here, but good solid confirmation that I was dealing with one that had been through some near misses.

Three months later, mid July - I stopped to look at it quick and there was a little shoddy dam holding back maybe 3 inches of water. Since I was in my car that day, I decided to return the next day with my truck and set it up again. Same setup in the riprap, but no snares this time because there was just so very little land sign. The dam break flowed free for two days, then the third day some sticks were shoved in and one of those sticks was between the jaws and holding them open, trap just a couple feet down the chain slide. And that was the second attempt to catch this one. After a few days I pulled everything and went back to checking once a week or so on my travels through that area.

Mid August, the county calls. There is a new dam a mile north at the next bridge crossing and one a few hundred yards downstream from that one. I chose to set up the downstream one because it was not riprap and it was not right beside the road. I did not think that the spooked one from a mile south would go that far, but I was wrong. I set it up with a double dam break, assuming it was a pair that just moved in. Five days later it still flowed. I knew right then, this was the one from a mile south...

I continued to watch both bridges with no further activity at the bridges or complaints from landowners until a month or so ago, when the county called - there was a new dam at the first location from spring and mid July. I stopped and made a break in the dam but did not set any equipment. It flowed three nights, then it was repaired. So I broke it again and this time it flowed two nights and was repaired the third. So back I went, and that was when I filmed the riprap setup video. It flowed free two nights, and when I showed up to check the day before the third night, there was the road crew getting ready to backhoe the whole area and refresh the riprap. Probably hasn't been done in a decade, but they chose that day, and the beaver was saved by luck of the draw this time.

So all summer I expected that this beaver had some digs I had not yet discovered, and I decided I needed to go find them. I notified the county deputy surveyor and the landowners that I would be accessing the ROW and found a newly maintained but small dam a little ways south of the next road crossing south. I made a few small breaks, nothing more than boot kicks, and those were repaired each time within a few nights. So I snuck in very quiet, and carefully concealed my luckiest trap in front of a fresh little break. I also hung a camera back in the trees a little ways to watch the setup. This was clearly the most used dam location of the three since last spring, with some corn that had been eaten along the creek during summer, and other evidence it had been there a little while. Yet there was not a lot of sign in general. I figure it was most likely roaming those three miles and just building the occasional little dam then maybe returning every few nights as it travelled, but this appeared to be the home den and dam. That was 4 days ago. For the first 3 checks, the small break was repaired only once on the third check, but the trap was undisturbed. A single set of tracks was on the dam. I looked at the camera card, and it showed that the beaver had come right along the shore and plugged the dam in just two visits, and this beaver was identifiable by a torn up tail. I moved my trap to the path the beaver had used, and carefully concealed it and stomped a little break in the same spot, and deer-stalk quiet walked out of there. Today when I arrived, I had a very beat up medium big beaver with a torn up tail.The camera footage showed a family of 5 otters had spent several hours there before midnight, and of course the usual 4 or 5 raccoons had visited, then around 4:15 in the morning the beaver followed that same shore hugging rout. No other beaver visited before or after.

When I have a beaver that evades me this long, I tend to give them names, and this one I had been calling the Phantom of Solomon Creek. How fitting that it was waiting for me on halloween.

Nice, well written story....magazine material. When I was reading this, I was thinking just how many hours beaver like this one cost trappers in just time and stress...lol.
Good work!