MikeKy
03-01-2008, 10:02 PM
Couldn't believe my eyes today. Found two hackberry trees on the same stump. I guess the smaller one is a sucker off the big one. The big one is probably 14-16" in diameter and the smaller is about 7-8". The beavers have stripped the bark on the little one from the ground up to about 5' high and have stripped the big one from the ground up about 4' and skipped to another place about the size of a dinner plate that is 6' high. I went on down the branch another couple of hundred feet and found another hackberry they have eaten the bark on up to a point I can't reach. I'm 6' tall and when I raise my arm as high as I can, the top of eaten area is about 4" higher than I can reach. There's nothing for the little devils to stand on to eat the bark that high. If the water in the branch got up high enough so they could be in the water and eat that high, you wouldn't be able to walk around without tripping over the FEMA people. I don't see any explanation except that the beavers are climbing the dad-blamed trees which I didn't think was possible. I'm going back and getting pictures tomorrow but has anyone else ever seen that? On my place, they just whack them down, of course cutting them so they fall out in the field to mash as much crop as possible so I lose a tree and a couple of bushels of grain.