Finally, after one last blizzard the first week in April, the weather broke. Temperatures well above freezing resulted in rapidly melting snow and ice, and the dry soil soaked up the runoff. The river still had ice along the slow-water sides, but I couldn’t wait any longer to get traps out and set.
When the water is high and cold, there are a few things on the checklist for beaver set locations. The most important are outside bends. The swift water causes the ice to leave more quickly on the outside bends than on the inside, where the water slows. I also look for points of land that stick out into the current. On an otherwise featureless shoreline, the points are magnets to a beaver’s curiosity.
It was spitting snow and rain when I made the first sets of the year. My car had broken down earlier in the day so I was using an
