Beaver food?

Matt Tyson

Matt Tyson

Member
Hunted geese with my oldest son yesterday. Had a dead Canada goose on the water, and it suddenly started swimming steady straight toward a beaver dam. Took the dog and carefully searched the area and no sign of the bird. Would a beaver take a bird?
 
Hmm... there's a beaver dam on the pond, but maybe otters have made it home? The possibility of them being otters hadn't occurred to me...
 
That was exactly what I thought as I read the OP. One of my favorite otter sets was to notch a beaver dam and set that outflow slide with a conibear 330 with a dive stick on top...
 
Early one cold a m I had a few black duck decoys in a small pocket of open water in a tidal pond. I was well hidden under some burlap and branches. An otter stalked my decoys from a hundred yards or so; when the otter got 20 feet away it figured things out and left the scene. The happy ending was that a little later a pair of black ducks set their wings and I got a double on them. This was many years ago when 2 were legal, as they are now. I clearly remember having a woman who could see me from her house flipping me off as I got into my truck--I guess she didn't appreciate the ending as much as I did!
 
Otter. They live in abandoned beaver houses all the time and they sometimes help getting rid of the previous tenants. LOL

When beaver were worth $$ and we trapped under the ice, it was common to connect with otter anywhere around a beaver house and the slide below a dam is the number 1 otter set in my book.
 
Thanks all, for the insights! I was a little torked too, about leaving one in the field. Glad to know it probably was nature doing her thing.
 
Certainly hope not. My big blind on river is about 10' from a very large beaver hutch build on a tump. Same tump has a hollow going under it from topside that prior to hutch build we would occasionaly loose a cripple in that dog couldn,t get to. Once beavers built the hutch over it the cripple looseing stopped. Beavers routinely swim thru the decoys at first light and we can actually here them making cooing sounds inside hutch when everything gets still. have had them swim up to dog platform , look at dog and then dive under blind legs to get to hutch entrance. This winter on a morning when there was about 1/2" thick ice covering cove one curious beaver was swimming under ice pokeing his head thru it to look around. Amazing what can be seen from a duck blind that the average joe non hunter would never know existed!
 
Matt Tyson said:
Thanks all, for the insights! I was a little torked too, about leaving one in the field. Glad to know it probably was nature doing her thing.
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Everything else: mink, raccoon, fisher would be visible as they approached the dead goose.

Karen and I were scouting a river section for jump shooting that flowed through State land when I noticed an otter rump and tail, as one dived ahead of us as we rounded a bend. I whispered to signal Karen to stop paddling. Crockett was sitting between us in the canoe. Five otters popped-up next to us and the adults started chipping. Crockett had head and nose extended well-out from the canoe as two kits did a vertical "track stand" in the current half out of the water within inches of her nose as they swept past. That was a good day on the water!
 
Man those Geese can be some tough birds and when you think they are dead they come back to life.

Three times this season I doubled up birds that hit the water 'dead'. I usually wait for a minute or so to make sure they didn't need a finishing off shot. One popped up after a minute and started swimming off as the tide was taking it back into the marsh. We dropped the blind hauled our anchors, turned around and it was gone. We drove up and down the marsh for a few minutes looking for it and then I spied a boil on the surface of the water. It was the goose swimming under the water towards the bank. Another one stayed 'dead', so again drop blind etc..look up... and no goose on the water. motored up and down the channel a bit and then I saw a goose bill sticking out of the water along the reeds. In the short time we needed to get the boat going, It had managed to get itself to shore and tuck itself up against the bank under water. Had another one that stayed 'dead', but was gone when we got the boat going. We were along the bank on a largish river. We were completely confounded until we saw it pop up out of the water about 50 yards downstream.

My guess would be it lodged itself under some the branches and stuff that stick out from beaver dams. Or maybe it even found the entrance. Somehow, these birds do their best magical disappearing act the second you take your eyes off them.

Heading out tomorrow for one of the last days before our special winter goose season ends on the 15th. Hopefully, won't have to sleuth for any tomorrow. Three wanna-be-Houdinis in a season is enough. Actually, come to think of it, this is the first season that I had Canadas go under on me and make it a challenge to find them... weird.
 
tod osier said:
Given their diet, I think beavers would be more likely to take a wood duck.
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Tod--I once met a fellow angler on a river who was all upset about a bank beaver that had moved into one of the better pools. And the beaver was a PITA. It would come out at dusk just as the fish were starting to feed, and if anyone was fishing the pool he'd run around and make a nuisance of himself with tail splashes and hissing.

The beaver came out when this guy and I were sharing the pool one evening, and of course shut down the fishing. As we walked back to our vehicles, he explained how big a problem the beaver was because the week before he'd seen the gravel bar below the pool "covered in dead trout" from which the greedy beaver had only eaten the eyes and brains. I tried to explain that beavers ate bark and point out the chewed alder stems all over the bank, but he was not about to believe any natural history from a "smart ass college kid".

On a more serious note, I have a buddy who leaves decoys out on a small beaver flowage on his property for early morning pre-work hunts. No need to set up. He can get up in the dark, walk in to the blind, take a wood duck or two out of the dawn flight, and be back for a shower before work. The beavers routinely clip the decoy lines and incorporate the decoys into the dam at the outlet. LOL.
 
Jeff Reardon said:
Tod--I once met a fellow angler on a river who was all upset about a bank beaver that had moved into one of the better pools. And the beaver was a PITA. It would come out at dusk just as the fish were starting to feed, and if anyone was fishing the pool he'd run around and make a nuisance of himself with tail splashes and hissing.

The beaver came out when this guy and I were sharing the pool one evening, and of course shut down the fishing. As we walked back to our vehicles, he explained how big a problem the beaver was because the week before he'd seen the gravel bar below the pool "covered in dead trout" from which the greedy beaver had only eaten the eyes and brains. I tried to explain that beavers ate bark and point out the chewed alder stems all over the bank, but he was not about to believe any natural history from a "smart ass college kid".
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No on trout, but maybe Hickory Shad?
 
No, this was way too many dams upstream for hickory shad.

I think he'd just read too many "jaguars ripped my flesh" articles in Outdoor Life and wished Massachusetts had a predator that could be "red in tooth and claw".
 
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