It's still hard for me to imagine that many beaver in an area.
I looked at western Tennessee and Kentucky on Google Earth, miles and miles of crop land. I assume that many of those grain fields are corn. And I guess every ditch, drain or pond has it's own colony of beaver.
I'm still getting local reports. I found out that a man caught 5 beaver, across the river from one of my farms. My landowner planted soy beans, they had corn on the other side. No damage on my side, so I didn't mess with them.
Last evening a man gave me permission to trap their property (2 farms) north of town, it's over 700 acres, it has 3 different creeks. He said that there were 2 beaver in the lower stream. Just as well say that's 10 miles down the road, one way.
I'll tell you this real quick: I had both of those farms years ago, the property was condemned and purchased by the power company, for big money! After all of their studies and this and that, the property was ruled a "wetland", after about 10 years the property was for sale again. About 6 months ago, one of the landowners bought the whole works. For 25 cents on the dollar of what they were originally paid. So, the farms are mine again.
It might cost me $50 to snuff out those 2 beaver, but I'm glad to have the property back.