Howdy all,
I am interested in snaring beaver. After searching the archives etc. I found nothing about snare sets on a slide wire to drown the beaver as I had thought to do. Everything I have read on this site and others call for fairly long snares and show pictures of live beavers in the snares. I had thought to use a 10" loop with about a 12" tail, swivel, slide lock attached to a #11 slide wire into 4' of water. I forget the type of lock I bought. Is this a bad idea?
Thanks,
Dan

(Edit: Title edited for clarity. -- Hal)

Nope, not at all. But you will need all four feet of water to drown the critter. From your description you're going to be using a 45" snare. Also, bear in mind the beaver will have all four feet active, not like a foothold trap where it would be running on three wheels. They are powerful animals, and you'll need a lot of weight to hold them on the bottom in a snare.

-- Hal

Do you favor having them alive in the snare when you check your set? Is there less fur damage?
Do you dispatch them with a .22 short? So many questions and so little time left. LOL
Dan

No I don’t prefer to have them alive, but as I said it is more trouble to drown a beaver in a snare than in a foothold trap, so if I’m going to catch the beaver in that situation, I’m going to use a foothold trap.

-- Hal

I follow what you are saying. I'm slow sometimes.
Thank you for the info!
Dan

actually Its quite easy to drown a snared beaver and it only takes two foot of water.

You will have to modify your snares a little but its not hard......attach a "L" shaped drowning lock onto the snare between the swivel and the lock, you want the drowning lock to be facing downward towards the lock. Attach some weight( I use old break rotors) to the lock and let the beaver swim once captured.The weight will slide down the cable and butt up to the snared beaver.......its all over then.

It took me a minute to figure that out, but… excellent idea!

Let me get this straight. The snare is pre configured with an extra lock, a "slider lock" on the cable. Except this "slider" lock doesn't have any thing fastened on the leading end of it. When you make the set, you use a typically slide wire system, and attach the snare swivel to the slide wire. You attach the weight to the slider lock, and move this lock back towards the swivel end of the snare. You then position and stabilize the snare.

When the beaver is caught, it starts wrestling around in the snare. When the beaver stretches the snare cable tight, the weight starts working its way down the snare cable, towards the beaver, and the lock keeps it from back up, away from the beaver.

Buy the time the beaver works the snare down the slide wire, into deep water, it is wearing a brake rotor for a necklace.

-- Hal

correct .........it works most all the time.

So this will drown a beaver in two feet of water? What about them tail caught beaver, they'd just stand on that rotor and wait for you huh? LOL

...MM...

Dipstick.........lol

10 inch loop vs 6 inch loop..........lol

Thanks tho.......ya made my day !