[Annual Wildlife Control Issue] The Big ‘Fore’
FEATURES – ANNUAL WILDLIFE CONTROL ISSUE
Managing golf course wildlife — including whitetail deer, beavers, muskrats and Canada geese — is a tall order. Here are some tips from a nuisance wildlife control operator who is also a golf course grounds employee.
PCT tackles the big FORE. You know what PCT stands for don’t you? I’ll give you a hint. The first word is “PEST”. Can you guess the second? And the third is just to make it sound like there’s some kind of science to their killing pastime. Pest Control Technology. You know where there based, fight?
Ohio.
Beaver. The largest North American rodent possesses one of the most prized fur coats and, as a result, is highly regulated by the DNR. As with deer, nuisance beaver can be trapped during the regular trapping seasons, which are also in the fall/winter. But they also can be trapped outside those seasons with an additional DNR-issued permit. Beaver damage is usually very obvious even to the untrained eye. Flooding the fairway from a plugged drainage culvert is just the tip of the iceberg because they can chew through trees — which can cause fallen trees and flooding. Beaver are nocturnal with the ability to raise the water level 6 to 7 feet from blocking a single water source. I have stood up to my shoulders in water on a 2-foot diameter culvert pipe trying to pull out debris to bring the water level down to a level conducive for setting traps. Beaver lodges and dams generally will not occur in isolated ponds in the middle of the course because they are too wide open.
There are several methods for getting rid of nuisance beaver. Please note that in almost all cases nuisance beaver will have to be destroyed either by the trapper or the trap itself because there is really no where they can be taken where they won’t cause the same problem (and they are by no means endangered).
The first is shooting but the window of opportunity on any given day is about a half hour since they are nocturnal and you may only see them for about a hour before sunset. Trapping is the best method for removal. The first and probably the most popular beaver trap is the 330 Conibear. These traps are lethal, designed to break the neck and vertebrae for a very quick ending and are placed in the water in the main runways where beaver can swim through them. As you can imagine, these traps also can be dangerous to the user so if you have no experience with them, let a professional trapper handle a nuisance beaver situation.
Foot hold traps also can be used but the newest beaver trap is a cable restraint, which is simply a loop of airline cable placed in runways similar to the Conibear and then anchored to a nearby tree. Both the foothold and cable restraint are live traps so the captured beaver will have to be dispatched with a firearm. Make sure then the traps are checked early enough to be able to use a firearm.
Behold the nuanced stewardship mindset of the golf course trapper. Who with his “untrained eyes” can kill a path for you to put across the green. He has so many lethal options to chose from! And not one of them is humane. No mention of flow devices although installation requires the same willingness to get wet and watch beaver behavior. Still, putting in a flow device has the gruesome drawback of actually FIXING the problem. Whereas trapping will need to be paid for again and again. They’re no fools.
Of course they chose trapping. They have boat payments and mouths to feed.
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And maybe I was too hard on Illinois yesterday. Check out this throwaway line from the activities at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
“Animal Secrets” at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum is a new exhibit that attempts to bring children and nature together, with 5,000 square feet of Illinois animal habitats for kids to explore — indoors. The exhibit re-creates the natural environments of a stream, a cave, the woods and a meadow. So while the- children are building a beaver dam in the stream, parents gain ideas and messages they can apply in their daily lives, especially the idea that we all need to connect with nature more.
Building a beaver dam in the stream? How much fun would THAT be at a beaver festival?
