So last night I found this hole in my dam strictly by walking nearby and hearing the water running. Went back out before work this morning and took this video real quick. So far I can not locate the hole in the pond side of the dam
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I went down the backside of the dam last night and the hole is big enough I can fit my fist in it. I am guessing muskrats did this as I killed a pair a couple months ago but in the winter I am home very little during daylight hours and the pond had been down 18 or so due to our extremely dry fall here in IL. So with recent rainfalls the pond had come back up to pool but is really falling now with this. I suspect this hole is around a foot below full level.
So what in the world do I do to fix this?
I have a 2" siphon I can set back up to pull the pond down faster and not thru this hole over the weekend to hopefully stop the leak and possibly find the other end of the hole.
So I got the siphon back going Friday before dark and by saturday morning it had dropped the pond level enough to stop the leak. Less than a foot from full if I had to guess. I made a call to a guy I grew up shooting trap with on a youth team that works for a local excavating company. He pretty much just does pond work for them now as they keep him busy either building or repairing ponds 90% of the time. Any how company owner came out Saturday morning while making his rounds to take a look at it and the problem is bigger than I had hoped. Turns out it is not a muskrat hole that got it. The ticking time bomb of the trees on my dam has finally went off. So pond is going down 4-5' and the dam is getting a makeover in the near future.
Interesting thing about muskrats....I believe that they have some inherent sense that when they dig their dens, they don't allow the water to drain out of the pond, at least intentionally.
gehajake A (colony) or box trap as I call it is different from a live trap that has spring assisted doors that close when the animal steps on a pressure plate. The box traps I am referring to have doors on hinges on both ends without spring and very little resistance to the doors. The doors are set at an angle to allow easy entrance but make it impossible for them to exit and remain in the closed position until something swims through them. Once they pass through the door it shuts behind them (gravity) leaving them trapped. With doors on both ends of the trap, setting in a den entrance means you are catching both muskrats trying to enter and exit the den.
You are correct they can have multiple entrances and even multiple dens. Growing up on our 0.6 acre pond the muskrats had 4 or 5 different dens with each having multiple entrances. We would make the trap ourselves out of odds and ends materials laying around PVC, corrugated pipe, metal barn roofing, or steel hardware cloth. A quick search on Youtube and you can find all kinds of ways to make them in a matter of minutes with little effort.
