This is all very interesting, and like most things furbearer, anecdotal, and best-guess.
One of our local biologists did necropsy on 5 local fisher. 3 females, 2 males. They were collected over the last 3 years.
Of the females, 2 were juveniles, and had not been impregnated. The 3'rd had indeed given birth.
One male was determined to be a juvenile, and one was an adult.
Waiting on stabile isotope analysis, as to diet.
They didn't do stomach content, for some reason.

It’s often stated that deep snow hinders the fisher ability to adapt to an area. It’s not actually the snow depth that hinders a fisher’s ability to use a suitable habitat, it’s the condition of the snow. No matter the depth of the snow level if it develops a suitable crust that will support fisher, within several days or so following a significant snowfall, they can establish a territory and survive reasonably well as long as a food supply is available.

I just saw one that came out of the Yukon that was trapped, where there is a road or rail system the coyotes will travel. Was not a pruty western soft hair type but dark haired. He did travel down with 30 wolverines in the shipment.

Eddy McLeod said Johnny Lennie shot a coyote below his camp back in the day.. it was eating his garbage he thought it was a wolf. So it is not a totally new thing.

No matter how you look at it I would love to have the opportunity to take a fisher, it and an Arctic fox are the only two furbeaers in Ak I have yet to take and I have a son in Acric fox country now so it is a matter of timing and i will have that one off the bucket list I hope

I thought it would be fun to trap raccoons (which we do not have up here.) It WAS fun................... but then I tried to scrape enough fat off one to put the hide up!

Now I don't think they are as much fun as I envisioned... Geesh, worse than a Kodiak fox!

Pete

Been there done that Pete and your right and so are you Joe. However I never had the pleasure of a possum or a skunk either but somehow i can manage to live without that pleasure

Well, I admit to the same envy, HOWEVER, I have taken Kodiak fox, coon, opossum, and even a couple skunks, (long time ago).
I absolutely prefer marten, and the odd gulo, above all others!

Oh yeah...............? Well I had the "top lot" coons in the ATA Auction in Fairbanks!

Maybe Daniel Boone hats are coming back into style?

(Or maybe they were the ONLY coons in the sale.....!)

Pete

That would be my hunch. And a pretty clever marketing syrayegy, to boot!

There has been much said here about deep snow inhibiting feeding habits of fisher. Up in northern Mn when the winter gets very cold and or very snowy bunches of porcupines take refuge in the tamarack and cedar swamps. There are so many trees naturally uprooted in those soft soil bog swamps the porcupine hole up down in those root masses. The fisher are very good at finding them there and even in the deepest of snow they move around easily in those bottoms.

Osky

Were one is so focused on porcupines being a food source. Then tell me why I have not got any fleas that are associated only with porcupines on the fisher that I have processed ?
The secondary flea species besides the several species of mouse/ squirrel flea on fisher are on wood chucks fleas. This is a large 6-8 mm brown size flea, slow crawling, not like fox fleas. Think about it= It is a lot easier to dig into a winter denning chuck hole and eat on than deal with a few quills.
Granted my observations are for only Manitoba, but some years there are no snowshoe hares to support fisher populations but they are everywhere some years.

research shows that snowshoe hares form more of a fishers diet then porcupines. I believe aspen / polar stands are also critical. Big study out of BC determined that females needed the cavities created when branches snap off the main trunk for birthing dens. I catch the odd fisher but rarely in old growth conifer stands. Usually found in the mixed aspen spruce complex along one access route I have. The fishers territory and numbers appear to be expanding in Alberta There’s a proposal on deck for Alberta trappers to get involved in another citizen science project to determine occupancy and numbers. A pretty cool animal. I was in my 40’s before I caught one

Joe there are many species of fleas than you can imagine. Very fine details between species identification is difficult to say the least.
All fleas are cleared and mounted under micro-scope slides and preserved and stored for reference in a museum.
Our trapping season runs from Nov- Feb, and permits for salavaged road kill outside of that. So the bulk of specimens come from trapping.
Woodchucks are not as common in Manitoba as the rock piles of the homesteaders get cleaned up with new agricultural practices.
Yes I have found them because, chuck holes are also skunk denning sites, and 120's guard the holes come season's start.

Just the mention of fleas and i start scratching.
No fisher where I trap.

There is a thread on trap talk about fisher preying on lynx. Certainly don' t want fisher cutting into our lynx pop.

MT

Don’t have to worry about that down here, we don’t have a population of lynx or fisher. One shining statement from the fisher study done in Taku was that fisher and wolverine cannot cohabit.

Fisher and wolverine co-habitate in Northern Manitoba,and a few other provinces in Canada.

I sort of figured out that was the case here in SE AK.

Yep. I caught a fisher this year in a gulo cubbie, then a wolverine in the same set 2 weeks later.