Beaver Under Foot-Thick Ice

"There was no open water to be found, even the creeks and rivers were frozen over. That in itself was not a huge problem because we had trapped under ice before, but we were not prepared for the thickness of the ice we would encounter."

- Pat Donnelly

I was enjoying a cup of coffee with my chair close to the fire on a Saturday morning in January. The hot coffee was Our 150-year-old house has more than a few leaks here and there, and the frigid air has a way of sneaking in through the smallest of openings. The house is heated by an outdoor wood furnace, and on mornings like this one, it works pretty hard to keep us warm.

Following multiple days below zero, winter was finally settling in. Just the week before, we had been trapping beavers in open water and enjoying unseasonably warm weather.

As I sat there sipping my early morning coffee, I was thinking ahead two weeks to our annual trip north to trap beavers. A friend up that way had filled us in on the local weather, and it had been colder up there for some time. There was no open water to be found, even the creeks and rivers were frozen over.

 That in itself was not a huge problem because we had trapped under ice before, but we were not prepared for the thickness of the ice we would encounter.

The next two weeks stayed cold even here below the Mason-Dixon line. Hopping in the truck not long after midnight on the appointed day, I finally headed north with a full load of traps, wire, baits, and everything else we would need to put out a line. I made a stop 5 hours later to pick up my friend, Karl, and we arrived at the unheated camp cabin early in the afternoon.