Masked Bandit Gets Trapped

   We’ve been waking up in the morning to find the trash from the trashcans all over the yard.  Benjamin setup a trap outside near the trash cans to catch the culprit which was most likely a masked bandit.  This morning we (or actually Lydia) found this raccoon in the trap:

6/30/11

Another Beaver!

Benjamin caught another beaver in one of his traps today!

  We drove to the house of a very experienced who helped Benjamin skin the beaver without flawing the pelt.

   After saying goodbye we saw about 8 deer along the sides of the driveway and they were only about 20 feet away.  By the time we had the camera out we only took this one picture before they had run away.

Benjamin Catches a Beaver!

 

When Ben checked his trap this morning he found to his delight that he had caught a beaver!

His beaver trap is very powerful and it had broken the beaver’s back, so he died instantaneously and painlessly.

 

Beavers can be very destructive to farm land because each year their dams flood hundreds of acres of crops.

A friend/neighbor who is also a VERY experienced trapper and hunter showed Benjamin how to skin the beaver so that he could keep the fur.  Our friend was very helpful and did a great job of explaining the process to Ben and to the rest of us who were watching.  Later in March Benjamin will send his beaver skin in a package with a couple of other trapper’s skins to a tanning facility where they’ll be properly tanned and sent back.

Removing Benjamin’s Traps-Video

Trapping Opossums

     Benjamin has been trapping again this year, but hadn’t caught anything until today when he found the two opossums in the barn. Today is also the last day of the trapping season here in Missouri until next winter.

   Sometimes Benjamin kills the animals he traps and skins them, but he decided to go ahead and let these two marsupials go.

A Fall Through the Ice

   This morning Benjamin went to the creek to retrieve one of his beaver traps.  While he was trying to get it the ice broke and he fell into the water that was well over his head. He had on his waders, which made it worse because they were filled up with water and added a lot of weight. He was able to climb back up on the ice, but now he was soaking wet and close to a mile away from home. Thankfully before he had fallen in he had taken off his coat because he had gotten too warm. Therefore he was able to  wear something dry for his torso, but is was still a long and cold walk back to the house!

   Later this afternoon the three of us went back to the creek to help Benjamin get the beaver trap.  It had “caught” a log and we weren’t able to pull out the log without a saw.

  I wanted Benjamin to reenact his incident of the week on camera, but he said he’d only do it for money and named a price that’s well over this filmmaker’s Dramatization Budget.

 

 

This is a dam that the beavers made in the creek-it keeps this portion of the creek a couple of feet deeper than it would normally be.

 

You can kind of see here how the trap has engaged on the branch.

Checking Beaver Traps-Pictures

This morning I (Andrew) joined Benjamin on his daily trip to his beaver traps. It snowed during the night and left about 4 inches. The reason why I joined Ben was to get some good photographs of the creek. You'll see them below:

Trapping Beaver-Photos

Benjamin's been trapping just about anything from oppossums to raccoons to squirrels. When the trapping season ended in January Benjamin began researching beaver trapping. After finding what he needed he purchased a few Beaver traps and then place them in the creek nearby. He also received permission to trap on 120 acres of farmland.

Missouri law dictates that you have to place Beaver traps in water and you must check them every 24 hours. Every morning Benjamin treks through the fields to check his traps. It's 1/2 of a mile each way. On Feburary 3 all of his hard work paid off.

The beaver's teeth are dyed yellow from the trees it continually chews through.

Here are the beaver's webbed feet.

Young Raccoon with Mother

Young Raccoon with Mother from J. Andrew Wong on Vimeo.

We caught this raccoon in a small squirrel trap on Sunday. I experimented with some dramatic editing, but I should probably be practicing holding the camera still.

First Day of Squirrel Season: Success & Failure

This morning, the opening day of squirrel season, Benjamin set his traps and caught a squirrel. As seen in the above video, the squirrel escaped through one of the holes!