yep. 100%

I’m guessing I’ve caught a thousand beavers in. Bridger 5 coils and longs each. Your assessment of the trap sliding down the foot is 100% on and it’s true with nearly any trap of caught below the ankle.

This may have been mentioned with 4 pages but ensure you’re also Setting the trap sideways so the beaver steps over the pivot point - not over a jaw. This will help get higher.

I need some more beaver traps now that I’m thinking about it. Beavers have been off the chain here.

Thin regular jaws or teeth traps and get the beaver in deep water. Used some 750s this year for first time and they were lights out. 14s are killers too. Blind sets mostly or if using lure usually punch a hole in the bank or wherever with eye appeal and put lure in there. Centers the beaver and slows down the lure drying out.

ust to add I bought some CDR's of Matt about 15 years ago and they were all laminated come to think of it..

Doesn't matter on CDR's as strong as they are. Those old CDR's are the good one's, quality control went to crap after Carl quit making them.

Here's a couple interesting catches in big foot grabbers

This was a first for me. Good sized beaver caught in a Bridger 5 cs clamped only on the pad of the rear foot. I dislike these traps. They seem to be hard to set and that bump on the dog may as well not be there if it's intended to be a night latch, but I have had some good grabs with them this year.



Here's a Beaver Extreme 4 coiled. The tail catch impressed me. I had one of these on a rod the other day that left only a toenail, then the next day I had one 58 lbs by 2 toes that showed signs of the trap slipping down the foot.


This thread got me thinking maybe I should consider some kind of teeth in beaver traps again.......

Sometimes beaver just don't do what they are supposed too. Sometimes the water goes up and down, a trap gets silted in..it can happen with any trap.. I started making my sets to where the beaver has to walk in the trap and that helped a lot.... Ive seen beaver caught by the tail in mb 750's before... I held a 65 pound beaver alive all night in a mb750 and the trap never moved from where it caught it right across the flipper.. I thought that was kinda cool
.

750's fine for shallow water, im always elbow deep going for a back foot so my needs in a foot trap are different. Starting out all i had was 1.5 victor coils, lol. Dryland trail sets in their slides, now im lucky if i catch one in a bear trap!

This thread got me thinking maybe I should consider some kind of teeth in beaver traps again.....


Good idea-all mine have teeth and I wouldn't set a foothold without them!

I have some old traps that I either purchased or "modified" myself with nails or fence staples welded under the jaws. I came to feel like something that aggressive did more harm than good, especially with a front leg catch in marginally deep water where you can't get them under the surface for good quickly. I have a few traps that I purchased that have something riveted to the loose jaw. It looks similar to a hacksaw blade but it was made for this purpose. Something like that would be an easy add on if I could find them.

I think homemade modifications using nails on traps will eventually cause the factory toothed jaws like the 14s to be outlawed in WI. The 14s are very effective traps, even better with PIT pans.