MeatEater Hunts Ep. 4: Beaver Trapping with Steven Rinella and Seth Morris

Growing up, my goal was to become a mountain

beaver

hunter like John Colter, wandering the mountains living by the skin of my teeth, life turned out to be more complicated than that, but I continue to practice this ancient discipline as I chase fur hats and mittens and meat for everything from candied

beaver

legs to a simple roast, the best place for this is where beavers are causing problems for landowners by destroying wood and clogging irrigation systems, as is the case on this small ranch near the famous Yellowstone River where me and my friend Seth, we're going to help by helping ourselves with a little bit of the furry hassle, anyone start, yeah, you know, it says that no animal besides man, besides human beings , alters their environment, as many of the beavers are the coolest and baddest Americans in American history. my perspective on the beaver trappers bad of the bad, yeah and they possibly got trapped this is all dude the place yeah Jim Bridger walked this creek that's cool yeah I mean this is his own man , is up and down here the entire time John Coulter was up. and down here all the time, that's amazing, yeah, you're in the heart of real beaver country, so this is where he gets hooked and hooked, so he owns half of this little forest that I they reviewed.

What do you think you learn the most from traffic? How to read the sign. It's a Decker doll in it. of a river like where he bends down and does not bend down and channels himself. There are drag marks in the mud here where they have been dragging brush to the dam. You see this dam they had built. Water is your refuge. I know the safety of water for fevers will be real damn it allows access to food by bringing the water closer to the food, bringing the food closer to the water and they like being in the water all it does is create depth because in the winter when things freeze you know you're going to get two feet of ice, three feet of ice, they need two big deep holes, although sometimes they dig in, make a pond eight feet deep so they can exist for all winter under that ice and have space using three types of devices, traps, snares and Connor bears, maybe we'll let you know, probably less than 20 and if we get a handful of them that would be great, forget less than a handful, I'll accept it, forget zero, that's a pain, this here is classic.

In today's beaver

trapping

we are using a Conibear, these come in different sizes, there is a ten which is like the standard mink and muskrat, there is a 120 which might be a pine marten, then you get like 220 raccoons and otters and 330 is like the beaver. trap, you're going to use a beaver

trapping

tool, that's the one you want. They are all feeding here Morten totaling that island of trees, they are cutting it badly, there are some excavations and dens around here, they will dig and create channels and places that they don't have, don't make channels like this, so deep and wide, wherever they want to go, if they wanted to get to that willow tree, they will dig a canal that will leave everything there and they will be able to use it.

I use it as a marine highway so I can get the willows in and out. Now I like trapping beavers, but I'm not anti-meat at all. They do amazing things for their environment by generating willow growth, improving water quality, and building excellent fish habitat, but sometimes the going gets tough. a little out of control and you're running towards a landowner who desperately wants help and at least reducing the number of this Cosette that was left there, the landowner was telling me that half the time you come here there are beavers lounging in this little cove from here you were making a little thing called a scent mount set, what we are doing is taking advantage of their territoriality here so that the beavers build a little thing like this, they will build a little mound of mud and they secrete they have a gland called castor glands here and not here They secrete an order to mark their territory so this is the entrance to this little cove and we're going to put a different beaver castor, we're going to put their castor bean here and that's it I'm going to make Bjork, territorial resident, say: Who the hell is?

You didn't want to come and check who's been hanging out in his area. We'll have a set here for him, so we'll do it. we lift up our cable and we're going to anchor one end of the cable here and one end of the cable out. This is called a really simple one-way sliding device. You can do this by bending the washer and a half and drilling it or just taking a little piece of angle iron, the beaver goes in and goes in, runs the slide down and runs down. Water kills them, so these are valuable as sometimes beaver pelt prices will be low and wheel prices will be high.

They use it to make lures, but it used to go into all kinds of homeopathic remedies, perfume, it smells like perfume, yes, in a couple of weeks. I bet if you walked around here this whole river would reek of castor bean as they become more aggressive in the breeding season even though trappers are a dying breed. Man, I remember reading in my home state of Michigan that every year the average age of a trapper increases. What do you think it is? So few people, I think it's just the amount of work, people just don't want to work on it. it's hard, you can see up here, this is one of the areas that is being totally destroyed by the beavers, we are taking down all the trees, this is basically what Daniel Boone traffics, it's called double in the spring because it has two springs right here and they are not coiled for long and you have a rotating trigger the dog presses the springs with the jaws up take the trigger and pull the trigger fairly slowly it will speed up the traps are usually set at beaver runs their trails are at the base of the slides they are composed of a cable with a sliding lock that tightens around the neck or body of the animal in this state the traps need a separation device that will separate if it catches a larger mammal such as a deer or cattle correctly placed the traps even They can be used to keep beaver unharmed and can be used in relocation projects where managers are trying to reestablish beavers and habitats where they have been extirpated or their numbers have been severely reduced.

I made a variety of traps when I lived in Pennsylvania, but this is the first time I trapped wolves with beavers. the main thing you caught was raccoons, foxes and coyotes from time to time, I get permission on the place that had rats, most of the rats, yes, but yes, the majority, they were all raccoons, foxes and coyotes, you know, he wins a lot of money when Doing It was also the purpose, there were two years when I was in high school doing it and I was getting like 40 or 50 dollars for a cute raccoon, yeah, getting like 50 or 60 for a gray fox, really yeah, but then it was only like two years and it fell off right away bill man it's just amazing how many things depended on beavers we are super important yeah how many actually capture at least for at least four that's what I guess it's a high number. but I guess zero, really, yeah, why not ruin all the work?

Say zero and then catch more. I'm about 40, one of those Castor Milan games over there came loose, nothing caught, no, oh, something that emptied you, yes, without seeing. flat tail traffic had to be by the toe yeah that's awesome first one okay after my own set man come on man special okay there's one that has a junk beaver , no, that's a beer, and you see how this set works instead of being outside. fast current beavers tend to choose crews in the side order, you know there are barriers along the shore, making the current slow, so instead of fighting it's a cruise line, yeah here you have like this little island that forms a little pinch point and then it's deep so it's too clean to really do anything good but here are some of the bank collapse then a shallow spot formed so it's Sailing, the edge is trapped between the island and the bank, if you swim underwater, this piece pushes you up. collapse the bank and go straight through this little place here and make it 330 small beavers, although like beaver pelt sizes, if you're selling if you're like commercial traffic to sell beavers, it's like a blanket small, medium, large, super manta or you get in like axes, super manta, being huge beavers, so you're talking like sixty pound beavers, you know, and there's a big one that's a good size beaver, I knew we'd have a bunch of them, you know, here's these radish beavers.

In Michigan you see that in the younger ones they get big, they become shiny and chocolate, what is the market like? they are good they are valuable they like it when the markets are yes, the chalk ones are good but most beaver pelts go to the wolf pelt the same way in the old days, yes, and me doing the man's area of mountain, that's what they were doing, they're doing, they're making it fall out of that skin, interesting, yes, it's my stuff. I have never skinned a beaver by singeing it. the legs as if he had used them to wash them, yes, he is, I just threw a lot, the boys would bring him, they would bring him to the cell and the green, yes, he never lasted, they were in the round, no, you used those terms, yes, in the round. like nothing was done to it, you know, green, being skinned, but that's it, yeah, and then up, yeah, yeah, beavers, the only thing is a skin like this, yeah, everything else, yeah, most fur wearers are called tube, beaver fur, just skin them, questions like a small circle.

That's beaver, he's very small, I can't do half of it with him, yeah, here we go, he's cute. What I used to do is take them like this, fold the leather over the leather, roll it up, freeze it, and then thaw them before the fur. auction and bring all those like that and I don't do that yeah, I regret it a little now I'm not learning how to do it better by washing them the beavers are hard oh I think that's the hardest, yeah a lot of hard cartilage especially on that back , that's a nice big beaver, hide those that are a nice piece of meat, oh yeah, it's like your taste.

We start, in the morning we put in the crock pot with carrots and potatoes and we just roast, man, let's get back from hunting. or traps or whatever and just eat them.