I`ve managed to get a few tags, and will be out looking for the next few days. Season ends next weekend. Hopefully I`ll be lucky..

Had to stop when I got married...



Well, someone had to make the joke.

I knew that one was coming... Great, man!

Claret,
I believe the blonde ones are the rarest
regards
griff

Ok I'll be the serious one here.
Next week I'll start hunting spring bear and allways a extra trophy will be a beaver. I don't normally have time to take away from the bear hunt but maybe this year will be differant.
Anders I hope we are both luky this year. I've shot plenty of bears this year I want a beaver

Anders,
please accept my apologies but like Claret couldn't resist.
On a more serious note are beavers edible!
We have just been given a book by Ted Nugent called Kill it and Grill it, and I don't recall seeing beaver in there..

regards
griff

Good luck Akshooter! Please fill us in with details later..

I knew such jokes had to be a part of this kind of post, griff.. My fault..

I have very limited experience with hunting them (the animal that is)..
Just shot one some years ago, and back then I didn`t know they were edible. To my knowledge hunters in Norway normally only eat the backlegs and backstraps, but it`s supposed to be very good.

I`ve actually have beaver as a big part of my education. Finished my master degree in natural management last year, with eurasian beaver as the main, finishing theme.

Can`t to wait to get hunting. I`ll actually meet a couple of landowners today. Maybe I will manage some hunting this afternoon..

Anders, "Eurasian Beaver" sounds too good to be true. I would have thought a Swedish/Thai cross would have been close to perfection .


Griff, Blonde beavers with a dark understory are rather more common than beavers which are blonde upstairs and down.

quote:

Originally posted by Claret_Dabbler:
Had to stop when I got married...



Well, someone had to make the joke.

Isn't this like "canned beaver hunting"?

Hunt them "wild and free"!

Got back from Norway at the start of April. Snowshoe hunting this year - but the usual wonderful scenery, good friends, fine food and wine..... hell, we even scared a couple Beaver!!



These taken after sitting and waiting for them to emerge from the water for an evening feed session. The big one went to 26.1kg!! Just compare that to the weight of a UK Roe Deer!



Have taken them before by slowly floating a river in a small boat. What ever method you use - have a great time.



It's a great 'unknown' hunt outside of Scandinavia - and one I will keep returning to enjoy!

Rgds Ian

rgds Ian

Brian,
The norwegian ones are PERFECT! Mmmmm...
I actually got one this evening.
I know what you guys are thinking now..
Hmmm.. Saturday evening.. This young fellow... Hmmmm...
I`ll try to post some pics tomorrow just for proof.. Now I better start skinning.. Puh..

Glad to hear you, ahem, "scored" Anders. I think you better keep the details to yourself.
Spilling the beans is not the done thing old boy....

claret,
don't be a spoil sport!!
Of course we want details, every last one.
There is one thing for sure that an evening beaver ALWAYS looks better than a morning Beaver.
regards
griff

That IanF is some boy, he had TWO beavers one evening.
I take my hat off to you Ian.

regards
griff

Griff - not to brag....... but it was at the same time!

Nah - I cannot lie - my friend took the big one - while its somewhat fitter and better looking mate fell to my rifle!!

Rgds Ian

Hello guys! I have news for you.. Called a friend and he managed to bag another on the same spot. Wonder what kind of jokes this line will create..
I will fill you guys in with details and photos as soon as I get to download pictures from my camera.

Thanks for sharing photos Ian! Great!

Sunday morning I went to little trip to area which I havent visited for a while. And for my surprise there was new beaver colony settled in. Lot of fresh feeding areas and a new dike.
As the water level was too high we had to open up two of the dikes.

Lovely looking ground Qnn - where are you hunting/located?

Rgds Ian

Thanks. I'm in Estonia, small country south from finland. We have lot of problems with beavers raising the water and flushing forests. There has been even tought about paying hunters to hunt beavers.

In North America, the tail of the beaver is the choicest part. As I understand it, you broil the tail until the skin is scorched then peel it off and have at it. BBQ sauce might be recommended.

Yeah, and I know that "beavertails" will bring on a whole new set of wisecracks.

What exactly do you do with a beaver other than eat its tail? Skin/fur? Edible? Pest species? Thanks.

quote:

Originally posted by NitroX:
What exactly do you do with a beaver other than eat its tail? Skin/fur? Edible? Pest species? Thanks.

For us, beavers are pests. And in fact we have been allowed to shoot quite a few throughout the years for that specific reason. One beaver dam last year was in fact so big that it had to be opened with explosives as the dam was flooding a large forest area.

Personally, I'm not very fond of beaver meat, as I find it often tastes like birch trees.

It's fur is nice and soft, but I've found that skinning the back can be a pain in the ass sometimes as the hide doesn't come off very easily.

I was after beavers for the last two weekends, but didn't even see one. There is one spesific specimen, that tends to build dams, which we need to break every now and then. Otherwise our summer cottage would be under water.

I have taken pelts from the beavers I've shot, but also some meat. We have both spring and autumn season for beavers and I've heard that the meat of a beaver shot in fall is much better tasting than of those which have been shot in spring. This would be because of the better food consumed in the summertime. I can't tell if it's true or not.

Finally I managed to download and post photos.
The first two photos are the male I shot. It weighed in at about 21kg.
The other pictures are my friend who shot a smaller one..









Qnn,
Thanks for posting some nice pics from Estonia!

Oh boy.. I`m really a good friend of lady luck theese days. Went out for a short evening hunt. After half an hour a young beaver shows up on the scene. One hour later I get my chance.. It stays on the spot because of a 120 grain Nosler BT..

quote:

Originally posted by ErikD:

quote:

Originally posted by NitroX:
What exactly do you do with a beaver other than eat its tail? Skin/fur? Edible? Pest species? Thanks.

For us, beavers are pests. ...................

Thanks Erik.

quote:

Originally posted by Akshooter:
Ok I'll be the serious one here.
Next week I'll start hunting spring bear and allways a extra trophy will be a beaver. I don't normally have time to take away from the bear hunt but maybe this year will be differant.
Anders I hope we are both luky this year. I've shot plenty of bears this year I want a beaver

Me, I like hunting for bare beavers.

For us, beavers are such darned nuisance (at least around where I live) that I wish more people would hunt them!

The State of Texas has men on the payroll who do nothing but travel around and trap nuisance beavers. They've been working the slough on my deer lease for the last three years and still haven't gotten them all. ...Our tax dollars at work...

As I stated in my previos post, and laso sent pictures of area, which seemed very promising. Here is the result of saturday evening.






This male beaver weighted 28kg.

I find it quite interesting that you guys hunt beavers. Now do you need to draw a tag for them or can you buy them over the counter.

Here in Minnesota northern part of the US we have a huge population of beavers and we can trap them. I mostly trap them for the fur and the tail skin which some folks make into wallets.

Just curious how many you guys can kill a year with a permit. We have an unlimited limit with a season running from the middle of Oct to the Middle of May

Thanks

At the moment there is no limit and hunt goes on all year.

Here in Sweden the season for beaverhunting starts in october and continues until May 15th. We do not have a "tag system" here except for moose and bear. If you have the hunting rights for a certain area, you can basicly shoot as much as you want. At farm where i live we had the goal of shooting at least four beavers this year, as they are really messing up the area along the river and dambuilding material is clogging up the turbine in our power station that delivers electricity to the farm.

Sadly we have shot none so far, but I´m working on it...

We have two species of beavers in Finland. In the western part there are European beavers, originating from Norway, introduced here 1937 I think. You need a licence to hunt them, since they are the original beaver species of Finland and they are not so common. I believe there are some 3000-4000 of them around.

In the eastern part of the country there are Canadian beavers from the USA (brought here 1936). You used to need a licence to hunt them, but not anymore. They are more common, some 13-14 000 lives here.

I've hunted the Canadian ones and taken the pelts normally, sometimes some meat also. The season for both species is from August 20th to the end of April.

In Norway there`s a licensing system.. You`ll also need a go from the landowner. The landowners doesn`t actually owe the game, just the area and the possibillity of hunting them.

Earlier the licenses was given according to shoreline, but these days it`s the hole area the landowner owes who count, just like other "big game" species.. To make it a bit easier for the officials, I guess.

quote:

Originally posted by mntrapper:
I find it quite interesting that you guys hunt beavers. Now do you need to draw a tag for them or can you buy them over the counter.

Here in Minnesota northern part of the US we have a huge population of beavers and we can trap them. I mostly trap them for the fur and the tail skin which some folks make into wallets.

Just curious how many you guys can kill a year with a permit. We have an unlimited limit with a season running from the middle of Oct to the Middle of May

Thanks

My brother John trapped 68 this spring in Northern Minnesota. He sells them to the Auction Houses. Back when I trapped I had them garment tanned and had a very nice full lenght coat made for my wife by a company named USA FOXX which is located in Duluth Minnesota.

Make sure you know which beaver you're hunting !! www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195129,00.html

A shaved beaver is the softest.