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Hello all, been a while since I've been on the site.
So I've had an interesting year with my pond. The last couple of years I know there was a beaver on my property as I saw a couple of trees get whacked every now and then. Never saw a beaver but know he was around, and there was an old beaver hut at the end of my pond. Never really cared, because he wasn't causing an issue as I saw it. Well 219, I started to really see a change. .I have a far number of cattails around 25% of my pond. One day mid 2019, it dawned on me they were gone. In retrospect I think they were diminishing at a rate that I never really noticed it, as I usually don;t get to that end of the pond, no trails there yet. Then I started noticing more trees down, and many more started but not finished. I kind of marveled at which trees were hit and where. Although random to my eyes, it seemed as though he had a plan to clear small areas to let underbrush grows. ( I may just be imagining this though ) He did help me a lot, with wind-downed trees, he cleanup up all the branches so I could easily cut up trunks.
Any how, my image of the beaver changed one day walking the edge of a tree line when I realized he had moved to the outside edge of trees where the tall grasses met the woods, up and away from the pond. I stopped, and realized I was in a killing field he had set up for me. All sorts of 12 to 18 inch spikes all around me, formally trees, waiting for me to trip and be impaled in the tall grass. Perhaps never to found, working in conjunction with the coyotes. That beaver was now out to kill me. I slowly walked out. This was fall 2019.
Game on. Pond froze over, and my son and I developed a plan to trap. We are not trappers. We tried this and that, to no avail. We then realized why late winter early Spring made it easy. We finally found his tunneled holes into the bank and 10 yards into the woods. I found one, by falling into it, and nearly twisting my knee in a position is was not meant to travel.. We also realized in this time frame for certain, there was more than one. We trapped five beavers this spring. I had no idea, I thought maybe two. I guess I should know what happens when you have two beavers.
Two weekends ago, I just saw another swimming the pond. For sure one more to go.
I had read previously the damage they can do to a shoreline with tunneling. It can be a mess and treacherous, but had no idea until I saw it. The trees taken and their position on forty acres is sure interesting. Nature is an interesting thing to watch.
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