Reported by Matt Taylor, submitted by Bryan Hollingworth.
Early winter ice conditions made it very difficult to set traps up to the end of December. There was no beaver activity in: Mary's Lake, behind Blachfords', Wood's Bay.
In Wood's Bay, the beaver dam let go sometime in the fall. If you look at the dam location from the lake, you will notice a large flat rock on the right side. It is believed that water gets under the dam, then freezes, raising the rock, which causes the dam to fail. This has been the cause of previous dam failures and was once again this fall.
Beavers were located in the McDougall bog, but no new construction, dens or dam improvements were noticed. A large female and two smaller beavers were taken from this area.
Beavers were also located in the creek running from Dey's (Thompson's) Lake, which crosses the Gustave Road about 1 km from Mr. Joe Road on the west side. The Township of Wentworth is responsible for this dam, and I (BH) called them several times this past summer/fall to let them know that Wentworth North had put in two 24-inch culverts last year and that the outlet at the dam is one 24-inch Morency* drain, which is not adequate to handle the water flow, especially when the beavers have it blocked. The situation was checked by Wentworth's beaver guy in the fall, but the drainage pipe was entirely blocked again by December. Matt cleared out the debris, but this has to be done regularly if the drainage is to be effective and to prevent either a dam burst or the flooding of the Gustave Road. I will advise the Wentworth people of this. From this area, Matt was able to remove one large female and two smaller beavers.
Matt's contract calls for us to pay him $100 per beaver, so we are sending him a cheque for $600.
In addition:
Bob Gaudreau has seen large wolf tracks on Anne est road, so be careful when walking pets. Contact Bob for further information.
*A Morency drain is a pipe put through a dam wall with a wire cage at the inlet end to prevent the beavers from blocking it and the bog's outflow. Matt says we have clever beavers as they were able to figure out where the leak was and block off the cage.
We have known for several years, if not longer, that there are wolves in our region. They have not caused any problems as far as the hunters are aware, nor as far as others, with whom I am in contact in Mille-Isles and Gore, are aware.
ReplyDeleteThe wolves have only been seen by locals in the winter, as far as I know. Pansy and I have seen one wolf (live) trying to bring down a deer. And we have seen tracks on occasion, again only in winter. I do not believe that they are a problem. And especially when the lake population increases in the months outside of winter. Their existence in the region (They cover a large territory in the dozens of square miles) shows that the eco-system below them is, more or less, healthy. IE to support the wolves habitat!