Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Sardines? Hmmm... Last I knew beavers only eat vegetation -- as in young, succulent and tasty fruit trees.... ("Beaver are strict herbivores who do not hibernate. They eat the inner bark of trees during winter. During the growing season, they eat a variety of vegetation including various aquatic plants and the leaves and small twigs of many different kinds of trees. While they may ingest a small amount of wood as they eat, they cannot digest it readily and it is not what they are after." Beavers can't climb trees to get at their food, so they lay the tree down and drag the branches [or the whole tree] off for dinner.)

There are two solutions to your beaver problem: Kill them with some kind of gun, or trap them with a large live-trap available from many hardware or farm stores (about $65 the last time I looked). Bait the trap with fruit tree twigs and stems, or raspberry canes. Sardines aren't going to do the trick (unless you want to catch raccoons, opossums, feral cats, and pet dogs/cats).

Beavers can weigh up to 60 lbs (the record largest was 97 lbs). Once you catch one in the trap, what are you going to do with it? In most states, it's illegal for ordinary citizens to relocate wildlife. In some states, it's also illegal to dispatch them with extreme prejudice out of season (or after you live trap them).

Contact your state wildlife conservation department (whatever it's called), and ask them for advice on dealing with your beaver problem. In my state, they will loan you a trap and then relocate the animal when (if) you catch it.

When bears were killing my livestock some years back, the local conservation officer told me I couldn't shoot the bear unless it was open season. They brought a huge trap and baited it. When that didn't work after a couple of weeks (and another dead cow), I dug a deep hole with my backhoe. The bear fell in it dead one day, and I covered him up. I briefly thought about calling the authorities, but didn't. I believe the technique is called the "3-S" procedure (shoot, shovel and shutup). Your mileage may vary....

Good luck! Oh, and sorry I couldn't answer your first question -- I don't know of anything that will "deter" beavers! Beavers do what beavers do until they die or are relocated.

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