OneWelder
Senior Member
Must be a state thing or maybe its all the New England colleges- LOLYour beaver must be dumber than the ones around here, becuase around here they just follow the flow of water and block it.
Must be a state thing or maybe its all the New England colleges- LOLYour beaver must be dumber than the ones around here, becuase around here they just follow the flow of water and block it.
I am by no means an expert, but after fighting beavers for 7 years on the farm I have learned some important lessons. Number one-caliber size, after trying .22 long rifle, .22 magnum, .357 magnum, .45 acp, 12 gauge double 00 buckshot, the best is at least .270 Remington or 30-30. My brother uses the .270 to wound them and I finish them off with 30-30. I know it seems like overkill but one evening the beaver took 2 shots of the .270 then a headshot with the 30-30 finished him off. The cool thing was the women watched my ever so lucky headshot and were impressed. Second, the beaver dam is fifty foot long and three foot high across the valley floor before the creek feeds my three acre pond, I had a problem with the dingy brown water in the pond, after the dam was built and the beaver turned the valley into a wetlands the water quality picked up in the pond. It acts as a buffer on runoff,etc. It took us five years to kill them off and after looking at the construction of the dam and the constant cleaning of the spillway of the pond I am impressed with their engineering skills. I left the dam in the valley because as stated before they do leak and require constant maintenance. The wetlands have dried up some but the good news is they attract ducks into the valley. Third lesson learned, the beavers come out around 5:00pm and will swim around the area first to make sure everything is ok, they work at night, so the best chance is to kill them in the evenings, and also they can see and sense extremely well. I let our beavers get used to seeing me for a couple of weeks before I nailed them. Not sure how that last statement can be taken
One more thing I forgot, I have this huge birch tree(?) that the beaver started chewing on one night, looked like JAWS had taken a bite, don't tell the EPA, but took a bucket of used motor oil(out of a diesel) and a paint brush and painted around the tree with the oil. Was so frustrated I was hoping it would get cancer and die, .[/QUOTE shoulda left him a dozen crispy kremes and tried to give him diabetes.:usa
those beaver dams are a lot stronger then you might think...with a lot larger logs/trees then you might imagine are in there....your mini-ex might take a good while to get it done...i vote for dynamite
My experience is you halve to get rid of the matirial or get rid of the beaver.Explosives dont work well,If you just break the dam and leave the matirial beside the creek ,the dam will be back the next morning,beaver's work 24/7 and are good enginier's.Well today I was asked if I wanted to remove a beaver dam that is daming up a creek up upstream from where I'm working.
I was told the dam is about 5' tall, 5' wide, and is backing up about 3 acres of water which is killing all the trees and making a flipping mess. We need the water to fill up a lake up we just finished up working on. Seems like a good way to do so.
I was pondering on how to bust the dam though. It's a long way through the woods and I would have to go stump jumping with the mini excavator to get back there and would absolutly hate to get bogged down and stuck in the middle of the swamp.
My next option is letting one of the neighbors blow it up with the little beaver dam bombs he makes.
The fellow I'm working for would reather me go in and break it with the mini, But I sure would like to see it get blown up! The fellow works for the rock quarry and is very good with blowing things up from what I'm told.
any other suggestions besides getting down and dirt by removing it by hand?