Dirt,
If you have no recruitment, and little incoming dispersal, do you really think you should even be trapping that line?????

My over simplified way of thinking works like this. If my catch rates on any given line are abysmal, I shouldn't trap, no matter the ratios of YOY to adult female, or any other ratios such as M/F. Usually my preseason scouting will have already indicated to me, not to even bother setting some of these lines. If my harvest rates are more "normal" for said line, I utilize the adult female to YOY ratio, to help me determine when to pull that line, but generally, I don't leave an area set for more than about 4 checks. If I'm experiencing a super abundance of marten, of varying year classes, I trap more aggressively, as generally, my preseason scouting will have let me determine my surrounding refugia is also at a high than normal abundance. In this situation, I also don't worry as much about ratios, since I'm fairly confident that my refugia areas hold enough brood stock, and YOY, to fill back in my harvest areas.

I'll also add, I'll go out on a limb, and say in SOME areas, I think other microtines, not just voles, are at times, "driving the train" when it comes to marten abundance. I've seen years of low Long-tailed vole abundance, but super high Keen's Deer mice abundance, yield exceptional marten production. For certain, over most of the range of marten, voles are a VERY KEY and often THE KEY prey species, but I think there are exceptions to many rules.

Y254,
I've used jam in my some of my marten baits/ lures, for close to 40 years now, so I agree, they seem to have a pretty keen sweet tooth, at times. Kind of like some of us humans!! I too remember tracking the furbearers, as a little kid. Doing so, was how I learned just how adept marten are, at catching songbirds. In my area, they hunt the beach fringe salmonberry brush, for songbirds a lot. By moss berries, are you meaning the black ones, some of us call crowberries, or are they a Bog Cranberries?? I used to go through your neck of the woods a lot, 20+ years ago, now seldom make it up that way. I'll try and look you up, next time I'm in that country. Certainly is a nice area you operate in!! Would be fun to shoot the breeze, some day............

This is a fascinating thread and makes me realize I am an amateur in the Marten business. I have just a few observations to offer from our small line. We're not trapping it this year, but snowshoed it 12/26 just to check out the neighborhood. Our line goes up a steep little valley with a drainage divide above tree line at its head. In past years we've caught mostly adult males, with lesser numbers of YOY and females. Sorry, don't have stats compiled for that. Our catch rate drops off steeply after cold snaps and often never picks up again, because, we think, our Marten leave our cold little valley for warmer higher terrain. We usually pull the line after the first December cold snap. I always check stomach contents, and am surprised at how many marten are stuffed with blueberries. Like, really stuffed. We also catch them with fish scales and bones, appear to be salmon and whitefish. I'm not sure where they get them, perhaps raiding someone's cache?

I recall prowling through stomach contents looking for S.bats. Early in the season it was pretty obvious by the color that there were blueberries in the mixture. I recall reading the results of a study of Humboldt marten in the last 20 years or so. Based on many hundred scats from several years and all seasons, the conclusion was that berries contributed less than 5% of the total diet. At least in that location and all seasons considered.

Augh the wonderful word ...blueberries that wonderful Genus of Vaccinium
across the various regions means a lot of different plants that grow
the Crosspatch are different from Gibb's and mine are interphase
then off the coast where 1000 feet you have different species as you climb

There is no way you can find a BB after they mature and drop come Sept, unless we have had lots of rain in Manitoba.
blue scat means only one thing here, big and it's a black bear, loose and twirley on a stump is a marten
It is interesting that the first botanical specimens sent to England all the leaves fell off the cards, at least they got it right in the description....the blossoms were in a whirl..so Whirley-berries

[quote=trapped4ever]Dirt,
If you have no recruitment, and little incoming dispersal, do you really think you should even be trapping that line?????

That was the case in 2012. And no I shouldn't and didn't. IMO it paid dividends in the future.

P.S. Similar to you I harvest the creme and keep setting new areas. However, weather (cold weather) delays harvest. Sometimes it can take three weeks, sometimes it can take six weeks. Sometimes cold weather for a month can really shut things down.

It's possible here to find blueberries still on the bush into october with snow on the ground. Not a lot of them but certainly enough to cause color in a gut. In the case of the Humboldt marten the most prevalent species of berry was the salal......there were four others found also but manzanita is the only other one I remember.

I have a vivid memory of fall 1978.....again at Plastic lake......... I was out checking marten traps so it was early November. I noticed movement ahead and stopped to look. About 50 feet away was a ptarmigan picking blueberries off a bush and stacking them in a small fork of a spruce branch that was very low to the ground. I watched for four or five minutes while he picked and stacked. ( it was like watching The Music Man......pick a little stack a little)

It was pretty evident that he planned to eat them at a later time but was putting them where the snow would not cover them...at least for awhile.

Alas for him.............. I popped him with the .22 and ate both him and his berries. It was all quite efficient as well as interesting

Good deal, Dirt. I thought maybe I was misunderstanding you..... I've had a couple seasons, where I pulled the plug early, just due to lower abundance than I wanted to see. So I understand your decision. You have to deal with the cold, I get to deal with wind, rain, waves, tides, and sea ice. I guess there are drawbacks to every region. Good luck out there today, stay safe.

Without a doubt the fisher step into the void left by harvesting the mature forest, it takes about 5 to 8 years after they clearcut but the fisher thrive in the young forest for at least the next 25 years. About 1987 was the first fisher I caught for a few more years the marten hung on but slowly and steadily the fisher took over. Inherently I loss my red fox population about the time the fisher population became constant.
I believe the boreal forest runs in cycles, logging for the most part has replaced fire as the main game changer. The average cycle roughly in my area is 100 to 175 years depending on the type of tree stand jack pine vs black and white spruce. After a clearcut it takes 35 to 40 years to start meeting the reproduction needs of marten, namely having enough course wood debris standing or laying for denning sites. I also believe a human lifespan does not or is not long enough for most people to understand the dynamics. Can't see the forest for the trees syndrome.
The bigger problem now is how they manage the forest for wood fiber vs biodiversity, I have thousands of aces of one type of tree with no significant dead standing trees, they come back in intervals to space the trees which makes it look good and improves along with quicken the cutting cycle. They spray to release the conifer after 3 years, than cut out trees after 10, than again after about 25 years, looks like a manicured park but is desert for wildlife.
Fire is still the best method in my opinion for renewal.

In Alberta I learned a new word to describe the plateau forest on the foothills. Lodgepole pine = boring forest
now with mountain pine beetle infestations could not imagine the desert wildlife conditions in them.

Gibb you got that right ;the enemy of forestry is deciduous trees in their management plans.

Just another spin for White17 to think about. The use of fiber especially in newsprint is going down fast now with electronic communications what is it going to be in 10 years. do these forestry company still have to manage wood fiber ?

Great point Northof50,
Just to throw another wrench into the discussion....
In this area, hardwood pulp (from deciduous trees) is used for newsprint which is in decline....BUT, demand for cardboard boxes is through the roof, with all of the Amazon Prime, WalMart, and everything else delivered to our door. This has boosted demand for softwood pulp (spruce/fir) and perhaps more incentive to clearcut hardwood ridges and plant spruce monocultures for future returns.

The best marten habitat in my trapping area seems to be the mature mixed wood stands (fairly equal mix of hardwood and softwood). Forestry seems to be trending towards one or the other (high value hardwood stands and softwood plantations) which seem to be more economical.

Explains all the flour cars sitting in the rail yards going to make cardboard those amazon boxes. The boxes design and strength needs a lot of flour in their formation.

Just what I need !! Another responsibility to worry about !

So many things here I would like to discuss further, but just to busy, currently. Slammed in the skinning/ fur shed lately......

jwood, Glad to see you join in the discussion here, nice to get further perspective, from another region of marten habitat, on the opposite side of the continent. Which mast crops seem to be the prime food sources?? I used to sell/ trade glands to a lure maker in your state, and he would send me some of his lures to try up here. I recall he sent one that was a "mast crop" type food lure, that was apparently a little heavier on the nuts, and less of the fruits/ berries, or so I guessed, because it produced Red Squirrels like crazy!! It did catch some marten, but the squirrel by catch was very high. Oh yeah, thanks for the book!! Good job on that one! Fun to read those things from history, that some of us missed the first time they were in print ; ) Glad to see you preserving that part of your states trapping history....

I also found Gulo's story about the obvious dispersal corridor to be fascinating, thanks for bringing that back up, I'm just not able to keep up with input, or questions, with my limited free time. I've been reading some stuff, but just not able to keep up with the thread.... I wonder how many of those type dispersal corridors exist, even in more "normal" marten habitat. Sure sounds like the optimal ratios!!

W17's story about the hares at "Plastic Lake", kind of gets at what I've seen with marten, drastic population density changes, at various elevations, throughout the year, seem to be pretty common. Several different things can drive these "migrations".

When I get some time, I'll try and add some input on clearcutting's affect up here, in the big timber country.

Also would be interested in discussing a bit more about "home ranges/ territories", and how much overlap occurs. Dispersal distances, home range size for each sex, etc, etc.

This is a great thread. Got to print off and find time to digest. Any person wanting to be a marten bio. would be smart to do same. Info. from a lot of experienced successful people. Bio's would be wise to remember that successful trappers, hunters, fishers are that because amongst other things you really have to know an animal to be in the top % of successful harvesters. Anybody can get a few of anything but a big consistently successful harvester a person has to be really tuned into what is going on out there and how it all connects as best they can figure.

Yes berries big food and marten get fat on them with all the carbs and marten will eat trapped marten on occasion. Saw those pts. somewhere in the thread.

Hey T4E, glad you enjoyed the book! I'm still trying to catch up and get to reading the ones you sent me. I seem to collect books at a much faster pace than I can read them.

The main mast crop here is American Beech (fagus grandifolia). It's believed that beech nuts are the driver of a lot of the populations here, especially black bears. But all of the mast crops seem to be on the same 2 year cycle. Wild apple trees in the reverting farmland produce a bumper crop every other year. Same with a lot of the berries.

Marten do feed on the beech nuts during the heavy mast years, but I think the sheer abundance of voles in the beech ridges is the more important factor. Someone wrote earlier about how short the life cycles of these small mammals are, and it makes sense that they could expand very rapidly, creating an almost instant increase in the food supply due to a bumper crop of nuts, berries etc., as opposed to larger mammals whose populations would take a year or more to respond to changes in food supply.

I try to check stomachs on most of the marten I skin anymore. Sample size of about 60 or 70 to date. It is pretty nasty, usually have to open the windows and door in the fur shed! I find beech nuts in some, but have more commonly found what I believe are mountain ash berries. The vast majority of the stomachs I've looked at have had mostly decomposed 'goo' mixed with short grey hair, which looks to me to be from voles (I've never verified this, just assuming). I've heard marten eat squirrels, and it makes sense they would, but I'm yet to find what looks like squirrel remains in stomachs. It would make sense that voles drive marten populations here similar to other areas, and mast crops influence the number of voles.

The importance of soft deep snow without thick crust, allowing subnivean access to voles would (as was mentioned earlier) make a lot of sense to me as a critical factor for marten survival. Some years -especially when we get mild winters - we see pretty big differences in the snow pack with just a change in about 20-30 miles of latitude and a couple hundred feet elevation difference. Add the timber harvest component (open areas=more sunlight, rain, wind to weather the snowpack and create crust) and the presence of fishers, and you can start to tell a pretty good story, I think. But how does this explain why marten in T4E's area do well despite the winter warmups, rain, snow crust, waterlogged vole habitat? The abundance of food from the ocean might be part of the explanation? Maybe you speculated on that earlier and i forgot.....like you I don't have time to go back and re-read it though...haha!

jwood keep in mind that there are 14 sub-species of marten in North America, I would think each has adapted to their region. Following Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule helps explain how animals/species adapt to their environment over time.
Hands down the largest marten I ever seen came from Old Crow in the Yukon and Anderson River area from the NWT.
Smallest from New Brunswick/Maine
Here in Ontario I see three different marten in a sense with the largest from James Bay region, smallest around Algonquin park region.
It is not uncommon for trappers/hunters in the Arctic trapping white fox to catch both marten and wolverine well above the tree line.

T4E, the moss berries I'm talking about are the little black ones that grow very close to the ground. Here they are prolific in the timber, as well as up at higher elevations above the tree line. Ive seen them throughout the winter under the snow and even into early spring. I've taken a few bears that I found feeding on them right after they left the den.

I have never bought into the marten dont like open areas theory. My old trapline up near the NWT was very open country and still produced decent numbers for its size. The best marten country ( as far as sign goes ) is also very open country.

The winter picture is my old line, and the fall picture is the Dendale Lake country I mentioned.

Nice view yukon254, makes my flatlander charley horses quake.
Don't know what your black berries are but jwood the difference between Wintergreen Berries Gaultheria procumbens and mountain ash or Rowan is that the mt ash is in the rose family and the 5 petals of the flower always are present in the fruit, the wintergreen are 4 sided fruit. Both are red/orange in the winter. Highbush cranberries have a oval seed and are distinct.
Wintergreen berries is where the first ASA was made from, at least I got something learned out of my organic chemistry classes. Make a cup of tea you will see.

This is what good marten country looks like where I am.
I avoid setting boxes in these type areas later in winter.

Suspect the blackberries Yukon254 mentions are what we call blackberries too. Country and description seem right. Can grow in more open timber but more on the barren country. Big fall migration food for gulls, geese and black ducks (real black ducks not scoters). Book name is crowberries. Old time Inuk food some people still like here is "sivak"; blackberries and cod liver mixed together. Those berries have a really small gritty seed in them.