Good job Guy.

Thanks Bob not brain surgery though just a matter of having the trap locations. Before we started loosing so much land my brother and I got 127 in 22 days. If we could get a two day cage check here and I could run two lines I believe I could catch 300 fisher

Better catch them while you have them, a few short years ago I could have caught 100 in the month we have , but we had a stupid limit of ten. They were way over populated and now the have died off from distemper and our limit is 2 for the month and they are hard to find.

I believe that we are approaching that right now!

You have a huge population there

We have a very healthy population of all furbearer here, again the problem is not finding fur it is finding a place to set where your trap will not be smashed to (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman)

Are you still buying fur?

Very interesting thread, thanks for the tips re: cage trapping. Not required here but would work great in certain locations.

wow,thats great you have alot of them...looks fun!!!

Yes we still get out and buy a little, nothing like the old days though

TrapNH when did you you start noticing the decline in your fisher population and how rapidly did it progress? Was it statewide or regional?

Our decline was fairly slow covering the state. It started along the Vermont border and went across the state. I am in the middle of the state and when they were mostly gone along the river, I still had some. It has probably been six or seven years covering the state, although I think along your border there are still pockets of them. We now have an over population of bobcats and they prey on fisher as fisher also prey on cats. Fisher populations have always been up and down. I understand this started in western NY and spread across Vermont and now here. I think their population has come back to a good trapable level. Don't be surprised if yours start to go down, so if you can keep the population at a lower level, that may help. Good luck.

Thanks for your reply my friend. Our population down here seems to have been very stable over the last 10 or 12 years with my harvest numbers almost identical year to year and my same set locations produce year to year except this year, catchbis down and some key locations produced nothing. I'm relatively sure that no one else has harvested in my area so obviously we have a weakened population. I hope it is a cyclic problem and not distemper! Another variable as you stated is that the bobcats are now populating my area and apparently that could be a factor! Thanks for your input and knowlage!!

Interesting information!!!

Being on the Cape, you may have a while for this to get to you, but that is what I first saw here, hot spots I trapped for years with success and a slow down. Maybe with the canal in the way it will help you.

I disagree about the bobcats, at least in my part of Pa. Several Spots that had a lot of cats now have fisher and no (zero) cats. I am sure there are other factors, but the fishers seem to have taken over. We have a lot of cats due to the one critter limit but the increase in the fisher population is occurring very fast and it SEEMS to me the fisher are replacing them is a few locations. My parents retired to the /cape while I was in service and I lived there for a year, I was surprised by all the muskrats there and Quail-they really surprised me. Nice catch congratulations......jk

As I said earlier fisher prey on cats and cats prey on fisher, they do have a affect on each other. I sold a bunch of fisher tp Pa when they were introducing them back there.

TrapNH, we have a decline in the eastern ADKs and DEC shortened the season.