that thing has got to be homemade!

White

We only trap 5%-10% of all the available Marten habitat in MN. No public roads or motorized vehicles in lots of it. Very few are willing to go into the Boundary Waters region via dog sled for any length of time to come out with only 5 Marten. It is just not feasible !!

I find the Male Fisher is the most reluctant to climb !

White

You are going to have a hard time convincing me a Marten prefers to live within 200 yds of a road ! We have vitually 100's of square miles of super Marten habitat that will never see a trap or trapper. As Marten are harvested in country the we can access thousand more continue to live and multiply in country no one will ever penetrate.

Last year the MN trapper harvested 2563 males and 1225 females. There were 1171 trappers that caught at least one Marten with an average of 1.8 Marten per trapper. 2917 of those Marten were taken in the 3 counties we refer to as the Arrowhead region near the Boundary Waters Canoe area. This is Country where we are only able to scratch the surface of available habitat as the roads are few and far between. Most of these forest roads are not even available for travel after the first couple of snowfalls. This leaves a bunch of trappers trapping off the same County roads ! The majority of MN Marten trappers are exploiting this same country so it is likely you will see another trapper.

White

How long is your season ?

What is your limit ?

How often are you checking traps ?

I suspect we do things quite different here !


Any time Marten are taken out of terrific habitat more Marten will eventually move in. My point is Marten from the country that is never touched are free to disperse into this now available habitat.
Your statement was just because there was habitat that did not mean there were Marten living there. Just where do the Marten live if not in good Marten habitat ?

Keep in mind we also must combine our limit with Fisher. Two Marten and three Fisher for instance. Marten are no friend of the Fisher I assure you. A fisher being much more aggresive and not real tolerable of Marten, or fussy about what he eats, a Marten would be a sufficent meal ! Kill a big Fisher and I believe I saved at least one litter of Marten !
Sure we exploit the area we can get to !! Put a lot of pressure on that small area we can access. Kill a couple of Marten and make room for a couple more to move in to take advantage of the recently vacated hunting grounds.

In 1995 we harvested 1500 Marten. Jump ahead to 06-07 season and we harvested 3788. Either we our getting dang good at it or the State has done a terrific job managing this fragile species !!

I have spent the last several years trapping Marten with the MN DNR Furbearer Specialist. He talks about charts and graphs and population models. The state does a very good job of protecting our resource. I believe the Marten are in good hands.

brucet, do you use any scent at your marten sets? what do you believe is the reason you catch more on the ground as opposed to pole sets?

After trapping them for more then a couple years, I believe they spend the majority of there time hunting on the ground. I also believe that they are an efficent enough hunter to survive with out my meager offering of food. They may not even be hungry when they investigate my set ! Curious is much more likely !

The easier I make it for the animal to work the set the more likely he is to do it. I have seen many refusals by both the Marten and the Fisher when I started to pursue them. Most were when I forced the animal to work, to get to the box.

In other words climb a tree in order to eat at Mc Donalds !