Mountain Beaver?

[Mudman]

So I caught this critter today.  Driving roads doing a little scouting/exploring out of ashford and this brown thing walks across the road.  My cousin asks what the h-ll was that?  I stop and walk up to see this ft long furball chewing on a shrub.  It cant see very well.  I reached down and picked it up by the back of its neck.  Very docile and kinda cute.  No tail beady eyes and teeth, it weighs about 1 or 2 ilbs.  Kinda like a big guinee pig!  I let it go and off it went rather slowly.  You never know what you will find out there.  Almost as cool as the native rubber boa I found few years back!

[wraithen]

Nutria?

[Skyvalhunter]

The experience I have had with mountain beaver are they are very mean and aggressive. One chased my buddy up a cut bank.

[CamoDup]

rock chuck? 

[huntnphool]

 They are cute

[Mudman]

  Funny stuff.  Nice pic, similar but looks bigger than what I seen.  Google em, interesting read.  Not always aggressive and need to drink a ton water due to bad kidney function.  I think my beaver was young adult/juvenile.

[Idabooner]

Sky and Phool thanks for the pictures, I have spent a lot of my life in the hills and never seen one.

[headshot5]

This was my encounter with mountain beavers.

I was blackberry picking one time at the edge of a clearcut, and a couple elk wandered out just before dark, so I crawled up on an old slash pile and was looking at them with my bino's. About then I felt the slash pile under my leg sag a little bit then one leg broke through the slash and crap and I did a one legger down into the pile.  Anyways, the branches grabbed my pants as I went through so my leg was dangling down in there with my pantleg up over my knee, and my tennis shoes and socks on my leg down inside.  I was swearing and trying to pull myself out when something furry rubbed up against my leg then moved away and then moved back and rubbed up against my leg again.

Talk about disturbing.  I had visions of a giant possum about to start feasting on my leg.  I really didn't have anything to grab on to pull myself out but by then my heart was jack hammering away in my chest.  My leg was down there for all of about 10 seconds overall.  I did the dolphin swim to get out of the hole flopping all over and bouncing to get my leg out.  Afterwards bleeding from about a million scratches from the briars and the sticks I crawled out.  Adding insult to injury, when I was flailing around knocked my coffee can of berries over.

Afterwards, I checked with my flashilight down where my leg went through, and there was a couple little mountain beavers cruising around in the bottom of the pile.  I must of put a skylight in their summer home.  That is the second closest I have come to $%itting my pants in the last 5 years or so.  I felt quite a bit better after I saw it was mountain beavers down there.  I was bleeding up and down my leg from dragging it against the broken branches pulling my leg so it was reassuring to see it wasn't a possum or raccoon den.   

   

[Houndhunter]

Funny, I always thought mnt beavers were those lil critters that live in the high country in rock slides and they whistle. They do have a tail though, look kinda like a oversized pika. Now im going to have to figure out what they are lol.

How was the snow level up by Ashford?

[PolarBear]

My cousin and I use to trap mt. beavers for Simpson.  They gave us $5 each for the left front paw. 

[Elkrunner]

I saw this thread and was thinking an entirely different thought. 


Those little guys are kind of neat looking.

[Mudman]

Ya they got tails.  Short and stubby things.  Tried copper creek and made it 4miles.  Snow stops you quickly.  I would guess about 3500-4000ft.  Sorry I had my camera but I seem to forget it when I need to use it! Saw a real nice bull as well.  Amazing how quickly antlers grow.

[runamuk]

They look like oversized sort of homely guinea pigs  damn things were everywhere in the woods growing up, rarely saw them but stepped in their darn holes more times than I can count

[Kain]

I have not seen very many but the one I did get close to was pretty aggressive.  I was walking down a logging road and saw some tall grass moving up ahead.  Didnt know what it was but I put a stalk on it.  Figured it was a porcupine or skunk.  when I got close i saw very clear little trails running through the tall grass but could not see what had made the movement.  I looked for a couple of minutes and just when I was about to turn around this brown fur ball ran out from the cover and hit my boot and then disappeared again.  I nearly jumped out of boots and I might have let out a squeak.     Little *censored*s.

[washelkhunter]

The google write up on these critters is very interesting. I didnt even know they existed. Thanks