Rockin’ & Rollin’

Posted On July 25, 2025

Living the Wildlife

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The prologue to this story is actually the epilogue to another. It was fall 2024, mid-October. I had just returned home from my annual Southern Tier crossbow deer hunting trip with my son. I’d expended all of my time, money & energy through 2024’s spring & summer battling a beaver’s dam building efforts. My bank account nearly emptied, my left shoulder shot, I thought battle beaver had ended. I thought that tale had reached its conclusion. I thought the shots we heard out back earlier that summer from my farm neighbor’s lot had finally & forever sealed the beaver’s fate. I thought I had proven myself more RELENTLESS.

When my wife showed me the weekend’s new trail cam pictures, I immediately knew…

I was wrong.

I unpacked my gear and quickly headed out back to my swamp pond. Sure enough, the beaver had returned, and, working overtime, begun stockpiling a winter limb food supply and reconstructing his dam.

I headed back towards the house, firmly resolved. I’d sit out there all night if I had to, locked & loaded, until battle beaver was beyond doubt resolved.

My walk back towards the house took me along the left bank of my main pond. I glanced right. Something new along the pond shoreline caught my attention. I immediately circled the pond bank to investigate.

I knew immediately. That tree had been beaver cut. There was no doubt about it.

My main pond is home to several massive poplars. Three of them have duck nesting boxes mounted on them. Alert & alarmed, I did more scouting.

Sure enough, that damned beaver had marked all of my main pond’s poplars for felling. He clearly had plans to take down every last one of them.

“NOT ON MY WATCH! ENOUGHT IS ENOUGH!”

I thought to myself as I raced back to the house. I returned and set myself up in an overwatch, sighted in on what was clearly the beaver’s current target tree, locked and loaded.

I was confident that if I was patient, this time I would have him. My swamp pond has both an inlet and outlet stream, which the beaver had used successfully as escape routes. My main pond, however, is spring fed. Thus I knew the beaver was trapped. My main pond has no escape routes. It’s landlocked.

Sure enough, within about 10 minutes, I saw the line of telltale bubbles. They were heading towards the target tree. The beaver was inbound.

His head surfaced less than ten yards from me. He never knew I was there. I fired off one round, then two more for good measure. My nemesis sunk like a rock. Battle beaver was over.

Not leaving anything to chance, I went back to the house & donned a pair of chest waders. I returned to the pond with a big fishing net and a garden rake. After a bit of wading, prodding & probing around, I finally located my quarry and dragged him from the pond. I don’t know a great deal about beavers in terms of size, but this one must have weighed well north of fifty pounds. Getting him out of the pond required a two handed lift.

His webbed back feet, tail, front claws and teeth were massive. I was duly impressed. One thing was for certain. That beaver was built for business.

Left to his own devices, he would singlehandedly have taken down every tree The Monroe Wildlife Area possessed, destroying all my trails, flooding my family’s property, yard & home in the process. Not to mention those of our neighbors.

I felt no sense of victory at the beaver’s demise. I had gained great respect for the beaver’s relentlessness thru the course of the summer. I did not relish this end. I truly wish he’d have just left.

In accordance with the nuisance beaver permit the NYSDEC had issued me, I buried the beaver out back, near the swamp pond outlet stream he dammed. I even gave him a nice big rose quartz head stone as a memorial.

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Flash forward to spring 2025.

My post-beaver swamp pond was replete with all manner of critters.

The Monroe Wildlife Area clearly was flourishing.

Still, I had a lingering concern that once spring turned to summer, due to the hole blown through the pond bank & the channel the beaver carved out, my swamp pond would actually end up well below its original pre-beaver dam water level.

As June turned to July and the summer’s hot, dry weather persisted, my concerns were borne out.

That’s exactly what happened.

So I set out to rebuild my swamp pond’s rear outlet bank as a waterfall dam. I used solid curved retaining wall blocks, arched upstream towards the current for added strength.

I then backfilled with crushed stone and plant rich pond muck to reinforce it and fill all the cracks. By the time I was finished, my new waterfall outlet dam blended so well, it was nearly invisible.

Then, the next morning, one of my neighbors saw my Facebook photo post about what I’d done, & offered some lilies from her garden pond.

So I harvested six pond lilies from my neighbor and headed back out to my project. I dug a lily pond on the upstream side of my new waterfall dam and planted them. I then channeled from my swamp pond’s main body down to my new lily pond so that it filled up with water.

As an added touch I dragged an old moss covered log from the woods and placed between my new pond & dam as a frog/turtle log.

The next morning I awoke to day 3 of my post-beaver swamp pond bank waterfall dam building project. My plan was to add 2 big rocks on the down stream side, one on each end of my frog log.

I’ve been rockin’ & rollin’ since I was a lad. It’s a skill set bestowed upon me by my mom, who still to this day firmly believes every big rock she comes across belongs in her gardens. When I was a kid growing up in Saranac Lake, “Now go move those 3 big rocks” was one of Mom’s go to punishments.

I later further enhanced my rock rollin’ skills during my tenure on the NYSDEC trail crew.

A good big rock is quite frequently a trail hand’s best asset. The trick is finding one close to the work site that is big enough to do the job but small enough to move. I am fortunate that here at the Monroe Wildlife Area, I am surrounded by a good selection of such rocks, courtesy of the old stone fence line, now half buried, that borders my property.

So, armed with a hand cart & a shovel, I went “shopping at Rockmart” & selected two candidates.

Rock #1 I was able to move without trouble. I rolled it out of the woods, onto my handcart & then down the trail. Once I reached my series of stringer bridges, using one thigh as a fulcrum, I was able to lift it. I carried that rock the last hundred feet and dropped it in place.

Little did I know.

I missed a direct encounter with one of The Monroe Wildlife Area’s resident fisher cats by a matter of minutes.

Rock #2 was a whole ‘nother story.

Twice as big as rock #1, I could not lift it. But sometimes a big rock is so pronounced in its awesomeness, that a determined trail hand will use every last ounce of strength to possess it. I decided to place that one dead center behind my frog/turtle log, because I knew it was big enough to withstand the deluge of water to come.

(Kids, don’t try this at home. I am a professional)

Rock #3 was more akin to rock #1, but by then my trail hand muscles were tired.

A hard morning’s work , but it was worth it.

If I do say so myself,

the end result really rocks.

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Until Our Trails Cross Again:

ADKO