We are living in the world that beavers created.

~Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter

Melissa has a knack for finding interesting dispersed camping sites so when we left the Tetons she suggested a trip along the Hoback River drainage in Wyoming. She said the satellite view showed a place with a nice open meadow with beaver ponds. She thought the road looked pretty good though we would be driving several miles on a section that looked…”okay”. As we entered the Forest Service road off the main highway, there were several trucks pulling ORV trailers exiting. It was Sunday, so we figured many of the hunters were headed home. Driving further on the road, we finally ran out of spots with RV’s when the road took a sudden turn and steep dive. I was starting to second guess this but we continued and after a couple of creek crossings (small with good rock bottoms) we came out into an open area with the hoped-for beaver pond complex.

We set up camp an began exploring. There were several dams with the one upstream having a water level a few feet above the next downstream pond. We could see only one lodge and it was partially hidden by tall grasses and willows.

Around 3 p.m we saw the first beaver. It swam out from the lodge and started going to each section of dam as if inspecting to make sure everything was as it should be. The beaver went back into the lodge and returned after about 20 minutes. I had gone down to the shoreline near one dam hoping for some better photos. The beaver soon swam by and crawled over the dam and disappeared. After about 15 minutes it came back dragging an aspen sapling and swam back to the lodge. I could see it manipulating the sapling and positioning it underwater as part of its food cache. Beavers bring fresh branches and logs to a spot near their lodge and push the ends deep into the mud to anchor them. Larger and heavier branches are placed on top to keep everything underwater. They can then come out from the lodge under the ice in winter to get food. Beavers eat the inner bark of various tree species like aspen and willow and this is what sustains them through the long winter.

After seeing the path the beaver took, I moved down closer to the spot where it went over the dam and tried to conceal myself behind some willow shrubs. On its next trip, the beaver must have noticed and swam over to check me out. I thought it might slap its tail as a warning but it kept getting closer.

The beaver swam right to the shore (about 3 feet from me) and slowly turned and went to that same spot and crossed the dam. I guess it figured I was okay.

Twenty minutes went by and I saw movement at that gap in the vegetation. The beaver struggled to pull up the butt end of an aspen sapling. These critters must be incredibly strong as it dragged the tree up a few feet in elevation over the dam. It would stand and lunge forward pulling the tree with its teeth. It finally got the tree over and swam back to the food cache area.

It once again disappeared into the lodge. I went up excited to talk about what had just happened with Melissa who was sitting in camp doing some sketches. I had hoped she had seen some of the beaver activity but she was bummed she had missed it. Soon we saw a beaver swimming upstream toward the large elevated pond. We crept over and started to move down toward the shoreline in case the beaver came around to our side. I noted where there was an obvious path they were using and just then a beaver appeared out of the willows. We froze as it swam over and crawled on shore on that path. We just stood there and watched it crawl by us up the hill. It stopped a few times and lifted its head as if sniffing the air, but it then continued up and grabbed an aspen branch that had previously been cut, turned and walked back down the path.

After the beaver left, I walked up the path and saw it had other cut branches discarded along the way. The path led to a grove of small aspens where several had been cut.

Studies show that an individual beaver will cut down approximately 200 trees per year. Most are small such as these aspens, but beavers do occasionally take down larger trees. One online source says the largest tree reportedly felled by a beaver was about 3.5 feet in diameter. Beavers can take down a tree about 5 inches in diameter in about 8 minutes.

When cutting, a beaver will sit upright and use its paws and tail for balance as it uses its sharp incisors to chip away flakes of the tree with side to side motions of its jaws. A beaver’s front incisors have hard, orange, iron-rich enamel on the front and softer dentin on the back. As they chew, the soft dentin wears down faster than the front enamel. This keeps their teeth chisel-sharp.

After the large beaver disappeared, a much smaller young beaver appeared on the scene and swam over to shore and grabbed a branch. Beavers typically have2 to 4 young (called kits) per year. The young ones stay with the family until the spring of their second year. I think the young ones we saw were probably from the previous year as they looked to be roughly half the size of the larger adults.

I continued to hang out by the upper pond and was soon rewarded by the presence of a large adult beaver. It caught me looking the other way as I was standing up so it made me. Again, I froze as it slowly swam in a circle. As it headed away from me it made the classic tail slap used as a warning to other beavers that danger is near. It probably also startles any potential predator with the fast action and loud noise…it certainly startled me but I was lucky to get some quick shots of the whole scene.

I thought that would be it for beaver sightings for the day but about 30 minutes later more beavers arrived on the scene and began feeding. We set up the scope and used my iPhone to get some footage of this behavior (best viewed full screen).

—A beaver feeding on grass shoots

–Huge beaver on the shore eating grass (video by Melissa Dowland)

–Quick clip of beaver swimming underwater (video by Melissa Dowland)

After the two adult beavers moved back toward the lodge, I went up the hill and dragged the aspen sapling that had been left behind down to the water’s edge, sort of a gift to the beavers for sharing their world with us. A young beaver soon swam over and took that sapling over to the willows where they had been feeding. The young ones had a couple of favorite feeding stations hidden in the willows where they would chew on branches for several minutes at a time.

–Young beaver hauls off an aspen sapling

Our time with the beaver family was an amazing experience – getting to watch their behaviors and appreciating the tremendous amount of work that goes int making such a wetlands complex. We did see several mule deer come down to the wetlands late in the day showing these wetlands benefit any other creatures besides the beaver. And then, one evening while watching the beavers, we got very lucky and saw a critter we are always excited to see…more on that in the next post.