How late for spring beaver?
 

Wondering how late into spring you generally keep beaver. What are the best indicators for being over prime?

Thin fur around the hind legs...thin as in rubbed right off. We used to go about 5 days of open water when they were big bucks and the big select beavers would go from 90 bucks to 30 bucks or less in a day. If they are in clean deep water up north maybe different but our central beavers went downhill very fast. Shallow river beavers would be rubbed real bad. You can see it.

Like Pikeman said they will get weak/thin from the underside first. You'll start to see bite marks or rubs on the lower back flanks area. If you're trapping them to help someone remove them. If you're doing it for the fur you'll have a small window.

I was told a week to ten days after the ice comes off. That proved to be true this Spring. Today I'm skinning a beaver that was shot three days ago and it is rubbed on the belly the way that has been previously mentioned. I'll see if I can take a decent picture to post up that shows the rubbing.

The ice started to open up about two weeks ago around here. The guard hair on the belly is noticeably thin but it doesn't show up very well in a photo. The rubbing below the tail and on the hind leg are more noticeable. I think that the quality of the fur will depreciate very quickly in this area now.

http://i.imgur.com/Fo8iJ9X.jpg

when I was trapping (Reg trap line) all the old timers went by the old saying any month with the letter R in it
so soon the beaver pelts prime will end

thanks folks. didn't get a chance to give it a go yet this spring, but thought I might give er a quick go next week.

Yep you got it. The one in the picture is a good indication they are generally on the way downhill. Still worth skinning but the next one you get will be worse and so on.