Got a call from one of property owners saying that beavers were damming the spillway on his small lake and causing the pool level of the lake to rise. I have hunted here the previous couple of years. Beaver are a challenging target in open water, low profile, often moving, usually just exposing their heads. The problem in open water is a lack of recovery of bodies. If you shoot a beaver, it may thrash about on the surface before going submarine, it may float, it my dive and die in the depths, or it may just get away because you didn't actually hit it. From previous experience, I have shot beaver that disappeared, but had the bodies surface the next day after they bloated, but that was on a very small pond where a floating carcass was readily noticeable.

I made shots on at least 7, two of which appeared to have been missed with the first shots at which I attempted to shoot them again. In all, I had three confirmed kills as determined by seeing bodies and/or ballistic destruction of the beaver.

The last beaver was very interesting. It was up on the bank with me, but behind a bunch of vegetation. I was able to identify it with my handheld thermal scope, but it was inside the focal range of my rifle scope, so when combined with the vegetation, it just looked like a blob. However, it feel into the water when I could visually identify it.

This is but a sample of the beaver present on this lake...

In my experience they will always float to the surface if you hit them.....but wind, vegetation, etc. can make them a challenge to recover. If I have one go under, I always check back 1-2 hours later and have recovered everyone that I know I shot. I wish I had thermal. I hit them with the spotlight and let the AR go to town.

They should come up, eventually. However, in a 10 acre lake with all sorts of snags and lilly pads (not there now) and other submerged vegetation, I am not hanging around to see if something looks different 120 yards out in the water, LOL. At my folks place, I have shot them and lost them, only to recover them the next morning. Then again, I have shot them and watching them go belly up, then sink, found pieces of flesh floating in the water, and not found them the next morning.

More than once at my folks' place, the only way that I knew I had taken care of the beaver issue is that the beavers stopped repairing the dam that I would break open.

That's a lot of beavers! Good work

Cool! Thanks for posting!

Got a call from another landowner about the same problem. He says he has a big problem with the beavers. So that is where I will be tonight...