In this episode, Cole Porter and I finish up our discussion during our trip to put out marten and fisher boxes on the trapline and do a little fishing. Enjoy!
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In this episode, Cole Porter and I finish up our discussion during our trip to put out marten and fisher boxes on the trapline and do a little fishing. Enjoy!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
A few thoughts:
Your comments re nose on the lure. If you ever have the opportunity to watch 2 pet ferrets (which are mustelids, as are marten/fisher) introduced to each other for the 1st time you will observe them burying their nostrils in each other’s junk and putting their noses right up each other’s ___, as will domestic dogs.
You conversed at length re your pre-season scouting trip. You didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was – taken 1 step further by leaving boxes at sites destined for your traps later on. I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for either of you to mention toilets. I can’t speak for marten, but fisher, big, dominant, territorial, apple-head, male fisher, maintain toilets atop fallen trees (blow-downs, as you Mainers call them). Those are hot spots. No lure required. Check every fallen tree you have time for, especially those lying horizontally 3′ to 5′ off the ground.
You mention root wads. I’ve seen fisher tracks in the snow going up to the top of root wads 5′ even 10′ high.
Your chewed boxes: we have had porcupines chew our rake and shovel handles, presumably drawn to the (salty) sweat from our hands. During the 80’s here in southern NY, before fisher were reintroduced from northern NY, road-kill porcupine were a common site. No more now. Where there are high densities of porcupines we find few or no fisher. And vice versa.
That skunk quill. The one that you can still smell 10 months later. So in certain odometerized areas it’s every 1/4 mile. How “novel” is that? Or have mustelids there evolved to ignore it?