These are a few diagrams that hopefully will help explain to some of the viewers how to make some of the most often used sets. Make sure trapping dens is legal in your state, some states it is not. The den sets are used in ADC settings to finish catching the survivors of a colony that are causing trouble.
The channel set is a very simple, yet very effective set to use for beaver. Simply locate a narrow spot in their channels on the bottom, fence this with dead sticks, set a conibear or snare in the middle of the channel under water, and add a dive pole of dead material above it. I stress use dead sticks and dive poles , because if you use green ones the beaver will take them or cut them off.
A trench set is made by digging a channel to a verticle bank and making an artifical slide, adding some lure to an imatation castor mound at top of the slide or add a fresh peeled stick. If you use a 330 conibear add a dive pole, or you can set this with a foothold.
This shows a side view of a castor mound set. The trap is set approximately 8 inches deep for a back foot catch and, no smaller then a #4 or #5 should be used. The trap should be offset to the side of the slide to account for a beavers' body width. The set needs to have 3 - 3 1/2 feet of water for drowning the beaver.
Same set as above except a top view. For a drowner I use 11 ga wire or cable. In recent years I have used bags filled with rock, sand or mud.
I use this set for damage causing beavers to help bring them under control. It is as simple as finding the entrances and guarding them with a 330 conibear or snare.
This picture shows the set using a snare. The problem with this is, many times you have to wrestle the beaver out of the lodge to dispatch.
