We sell all Tomahawk products and use a number of them, including the Bailey Live Beaver Cage Trap

When beaver either get educated by springing a trap that I have set or we inherit one from another trapper, a smart beaver can be maddening to remove.  Once they know they are the target, they are on guard, watching every change, looking for traps and then firing them.

The Bailey Trap is large, but can be camouflaged completely in the right situations, offering a very good shot at taking that last problem beaver.  Its a fine line we walk, trying to catch that hold out beaver without pressuring him to the extent that he leaves the pond.  The goal is to keep him there fighting with you.  You can make multiple "mistakes,"  while the beaver has only to make one.

I have found the Bailey to be a great asset in taking the only beaver in a colony that counts, the last one.  With our Swim Through Comstock Beaver Cage Traps we take most of our beaver, but being visible like conibear traps or snares, smart beaver will often avoid those devices.  Like a foot hold trap, the Bailey can be sunk into the mud, then draped with Lilly pads and pond weeds, rendering it invisible.  Since beaver do not like swimming under or through obstacles once they have been alerted to trapping, the Bailey fits the bill, because the beaver simply swims over the trap in his normal routine. With the small trigger under water, the beaver breasts the mechanism, which fires both jaws that lock securely.

Yesterday I ended a battle with a large male beaver in a remote pond many miles from home that had begun several years earlier, a long story.  The Bailey requires some focus, as attention must be payed to how it is set, but set properly it can solve some aggravating problems with wised up beaver.  Not as experienced with the Bailey, I once did not check the safety catches that were hidden in deep black muck.  Because one safety was not kept clear, when the beaver fired the trap the safety caught the cage wire, my mistake.  Live and learn, I will not repeat that error.  If the jaw retainers are set near the edge and the cables clear, the trap should do the job.

Having seen the other clam shell type live traps, before I had ever seen the Bailey, I thought, "wouldn't it be nice if there was a trap that would lay on the bottom in shallow water with both jaws firing together, coming up to meet in the middle, triggered by a beaver simply swimming over it."  That is the Bailey.