"Carl's Lounge" (Off-Topic Discussion, Traditional Knife "Tales & Vignettes")

mbkr said:
Yeah, beavers are pretty cool. Dam good engineers 😇
They're also destructive, clearing trees you don't want cleared and flooding things you don't want flooded. I had to build a beaver fence around the primary pipe spillway on one project because they kept damning it up 🦫
On another project a colleague borrowed a live trap from the Conservation Department, hoping to relocate them. Instead of catching the beavers, they were like, "Structural steel!" and promptly incorporated the trap into their dam. I think it took him 3 or 4 hours to dig it out 🤣
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Best story I've heard all week, Mike! 😁:thumbsup:😁
(Only Monday morning, though. ;))

- GT
 
mbkr said:
Yeah, beavers are pretty cool. Dam good engineers 😇
They're also destructive, clearing trees you don't want cleared and flooding things you don't want flooded. I had to build a beaver fence around the primary pipe spillway on one project because they kept damning it up 🦫
On another project a colleague borrowed a live trap from the Conservation Department, hoping to relocate them. Instead of catching the beavers, they were like, "Structural steel!" and promptly incorporated the trap into their dam. I think it took him 3 or 4 hours to dig it out 🤣
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Ya, those live traps aren’t really a successful way to trap beavers.
The beavers dam in our pond is 8’ tall. It’s absolutely ridiculous. We now have a two tier pond system. 🤣😂 Upper and lower.
We have a couple of culverts that go under the dam…but, as you say, they just keep jammin’ it up.
 
From what Ive read the 17/1800s fur trade decimated the Beavers and that changed the landscape of huge areas...maybe more in Canada too.
The tails were used as well...not sure what for...
5K Qs said:
Do you still have that snake?? o_O

- GT
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Oh yeah ..old Boris is still with me...and here is an irony....I lose that City Stock despite being careful not to....Then I go and clean out Boris's house but carelessly leave the sliding glass open just wide enough ....next morning I discover him half out of his house....the tail half...which can only mean he slithered out during the night and decided to turn round and head back in. When I take him out he always puts up a fight....and thats a 7ft snake were talkin bout.
 
meako said:
From what Ive read the 17/1800s fur trade decimated the Beavers and that changed the landscape of huge areas...maybe more in Canada too.
The tails were used as well...not sure what for...

Oh yeah ..old Boris is still with me...and here is an irony....I lose that City Stock despite being careful not to....Then I go and clean out Boris's house but carelessly leave the sliding glass open just wide enough ....next morning I discover him half out of his house....the tail half...which can only mean he slithered out during the night and decided to turn round and head back in. When I take him out he always puts up a fight....and thats a 7ft snake were talkin bout.
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AHA!!!
Methinks Boris needs to be interrogated concerning that missing pocketknife! ;)

- GT
 
Sharp & Fiery said:
Extinction where? :(

I’ve got 5 of them in my one pond…little jerks. Hahahaha! Chewing all my good hardwood trees down. 😂

When we are out tootin’ around in the canoe, they like to get close and warn us with their tail slap…

Very interesting and productive little guys. I like watching them.
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Weird story, I've owned 30 acres of woods for about 20 years. (Southern Illinois) There is a very small pond near the center. After a decade or so of never seeing a beaver, an old beaver showed up one day. He flopped a few trees, hung around a few weeks, and then he died. We found his body within a hundred yards of the pond. Have never seen another one since.
 
Murphy Slaw said:
Weird story, I've owned 30 acres of woods for about 20 years. (Southern Illinois) There is a very small pond near the center. After a decade or so of never seeing a beaver, an old beaver showed up one day. He flopped a few trees, hung around a few weeks, and then he died. We found his body within a hundred yards of the pond. Have never seen another one since.
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Apparently, when a beaver gets old, the family chases him out and he goes and looks for a new waterhole to keep his work going till he croaks. Just an interesting fact. :)
 
When I was living in the woods in Quebec there were several lakes near our house, two of which were the result of beaver dams. One was created by the most incredible beaver dam I had ever seen. The beavers had built the dam around where the creek entered a cave, and the dam was curved and was tall and broad enough to walk on. The other was a very long compound dam. Truly amazing engineers.

But the reason I am talking about this is that for some reason, there came a point where all the other beavers except for one lone male were gone from the lake with amazing dam. That lonely beaver seemed to go a little crazy, and for a couple years started climbing the hills around the lake much farther than he could ever drop the logs into the lake, and started attacking the largest trees. He girdled all the big trees and fell several of them before a lady beaver finally showed up. But in those two lonely years, he killed quite a number of big trees. Once the lady was around he calmed down and got back to working on the lodge and dam.

Edit to add: Unfortunately I don't have any digitized photos of the dam from when I lived there. But the dam is still there, and you can see it and the lake on Google Maps. The dam is at the southern end of the lake in this image.
Capturea.JPG
 
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abbydaddy said:
When I was living in the woods in Quebec there were several lakes near our house, two of which were the result of beaver dams. One was created by the most incredible beaver dam I had ever seen. The beavers had built the dam around where the creek entered a cave, and the dam was curved and was tall and broad enough to walk on. The other was a very long compound dam. Truly amazing engineers.

But the reason I am talking about this is that for some reason, there came a point where all the other beavers except for one lone male were gone from the lake with amazing dam. That lonely beaver seemed to go a little crazy, and for a couple years started climbing the hills around the lake much farther than he could ever drop the logs into the lake, and started attacking the largest trees. He girdled all the big trees and fell several of them before a lady beaver finally showed up. But in those two lonely years, he killed quite a number of big trees. Once the lady was around he calmed down and got back to working on the lodge and dam.

Edit to add: Unfortunately I don't have any digitized photos of the dam from when I lived there. But the dam is still there, and you can see it and the lake on Google Maps. The dam is at the southern end of the lake in this image.
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I imagine the lady beaver assigned him other tasks to keep the lodge neat and tidy. At least it works that way in other species.
 
Murphy Slaw said:
There were rumors that Illinois released large cats a few years back. The State denied it, then people started hitting them with their cars. I've never seen any yet and I own 30 acres of deer hunting land, but then again, I'd rather not bump into one in the woods.
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Not a large cat per se but saw a Bobcat in Illinois recently.
 
We have a small number of cougars in Missouri. The Conservation Department denied it for years. Then tried to claim they were domesticated ones released by irresponsible owners. Then claimed they were lone males migrated from other places. Science and evidence and stuff finally forced them to admit we have a small breeding population. I know two highly reputable people who have seen one. One in southwest Missouri, and one here in mid-MO. If I ever see one, I hope it's a good distance away.
 
mbkr said:
We have a small number of cougars in Missouri. The Conservation Department denied it for years. Then tried to claim they were domesticated ones released by irresponsible owners. Then claimed they were lone males migrated from other places. Science and evidence and stuff finally forced them to admit we have a small breeding population. I know two highly reputable people who have seen one. One in southwest Missouri, and one here in mid-MO. If I ever see one, I hope it's a good distance away.
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Same for Pennsylvania. Publicly the PA Game Commission had all the same responses that you listed when asked about it. Privately it came out that they released 14 sets of mating pairs at various points around the state to hopefully start to help control the deer population.
 
Rookie82 said:
Same for Pennsylvania. Publicly the PA Game Commission had all the same responses that you listed when asked about it. Privately it came out that they released 14 sets of mating pairs at various points around the state to hopefully start to help control the deer population.
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My Dad, R.I.P. used to hunt deer in Pennsylvania!! A Mohawk friend of ours even made a Fringed Jacket for me, out of one, when I was a kid!!
Hopefully he wasn't as scary as privately-released Cougars!! 🤔
 
I live on the edge of a regional park which is mostly given over to hiking trails and chaparral. I saw a bobcat some years ago while riding one of the upper trails on a bike. He was sitting in the middle of the trail, saw me approaching, and moved off to the side to let me pass by. Neither of us was overly concerned by the other.

The upper reaches of the park connect with the local mountains, and there are known to be cougar there. But in the lower park areas we mostly just have coyotes.
 
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