Well here we are with less than a week until the first trap is set, knives will be sharp and ready to skin. Hope the weather cooperates! Bringing the trailer, snow machine and dogsled into the shop tomorrow to make sure everything is in tip top shape

Good luck with your marten, fisher season, show us some pictures of your trip.

Boxes are baited and loaded in the truck. Have a few choice spots for cats as always.

Hope the weather cooperates with you. Could be a difficult year with this crappy weather but it does add to the adventure. Good luck and safe travels!

All ready to go here. I have a few baits out with marten at each spot. Plenty of fisher and wolf photos too. Tundra ll purchased this year and rigged up for the line.

I just got a few canine baits out and the cats are checking them out but the fishers are not yet. The fishers around and have seen sign so it will be a cold interesting week next week. Good luck guys!!! Be safe.

I hear the CO in your neck of the woods is a real stickler.

A bit of snow for sure! This year I am seeing more fisher sign than I have seen in a long while. Cat sign and hares are both way down. The guys from the metro will set up camp tomorrow and then the fun will begin! They want to catch some beaver this year so we will set for them and fox on Friday.
Good luck everyone, have fun, appreciate the opportunities that we still have, and stay safe.
Jim

Good luck to everyone slinging steel in the morning!

Give'm heck today! Good luck everybody!

Marten sets are out. Lots of mustelid sign. Less than 20% of my cat spots are accessible due to blow down and plow banks on forest road entrances. Will set what I can later in the week. Implementing these vertical flower pot sets along with my newspaper boxes this season for marten. Just a piece of lathe, flower pot, MB coni bracket, trap anchored with fence staple, and bait is held in back of box with an onion bag. Picked up a fox and weasel as well.

Broke trail today just to get back in the woods. I didn't believe there was as much snow as there was. Going to put in a couple of fisher sets and maybe a cat set tomorrow morning.

Well, good news/bad news! Good news is that there is marten and fisher sign everywhere, bad news is that there is enough snow to make me realize that there is only a one word difference between "cardiac exercise" and "cardiac arrest!". We decided to abandon the sets we normally have on the side roads and just set along the plowed logging roads. Good luck everyone, have fun, and stay safe!
Jim

Saw these pics you had on the northern mn trail cam page. Did the same thing myself this year.

I only got a half dozen fisher sets out today since I couldn't get to my good spots either. I do have an active gravel pit I want to check out tomorrow. Last year I caught and released 6 fisher before the season and 2 after in coyote sets. This snow is definitely going to make it tough this year. Hope to put out a few cat sets but not finding any sign. Will keep at it.

Well I can’t believe I’m still awake after the butt kicking we took the last two days. Got seven sets out yesterday and six today. Checking traps tomorrow then driving home to get the son on Tuesday and returning to camp on Wednesday then check Thursday and pull Friday and back home Saturday for Christmas Eve.

This is the most snow we’ve dealt with! We are definitely earning it this year! Calling for 4”-8” on Monday night, hopefully it gets the fur moving and we have some in our sets Thursday morning!

Good luck to the rest of you!

Some pics from day one

Some pics from day two

They need to move the season back to its original start and end date.

Unfortunately that will never happen, actually I hate to see what new restrictions are coming, maybe they are going to make us wait until after grouse season is done now so Fido doesn’t try eating my beaver meat.

Well I did manage to catch my first fisher of the year this morning. Oddly enough it was a nice male in a coyote snare with a fisher box about 20' away. Not what I had planned but will take him.

Its hard to understand how but have done that a few times over the years. Yep, take them when you can. This will be a tough year I think.

Well we managed one marten out of our 13 sets, made one more set to make it 14. I feel we were rewarded for our efforts. More snow coming tonight, assuming the fur will be in the traps the next check!

It was cold today but think it’s going to get worse

Nice martin! Interesting critters no doubt!

We pulled up on this one still wiggling at our first trap of the day, had just stuck his head in there so we left him until we came back past. Wanted to make sure the fleas had time to jump before we loaded him up

Picked up this large male marten today in one of the newspaper boxes set on a low to the ground running pole. Nice sunny day.

Nice marten, good looking trappin rig you got there

Well we are pretty excited to check traps tomorrow!

On another note has anyone seen or heard from Rick Olson?

After tomorrow it’s going to be brutal. Forecast lake effect snow and 50-60 mph wind gusts. Checked 24 empty boxes today. I have picked up two cats in cages so all is not lost. I almost pulled my boxes today, but decided to send it till Saturday.

Got about 4" of new snow last night. This mornings temps with windchill are currently at -35°.

8-10 here on the shore, not sure what dumped overnight inland. 11 degrees snowing and blowing.

Well today is the first day this season that I look out the window and don’t want to go outside.

Just finished breakfast and going to check traps shortly!

I just got back from running my short line and can tell you I'm glad I pulled most of them the other day. I even made another pot of coffee trying to work up enough enthusiasm to go out in this weather. Nothing in any of my traps except a new layer of snow and no new tracks. Maybe tomorrow.....

Yep all is pulled. No snares or traps out. Maybe time to put some fur up and see what the weather brings in a week or two.

My problem is all my fur has been put up and I have most of my gear cleaned up and put away.

Well with the forecast for tomorrow and no new tracks anywhere today we opted to pull two of the three lines. No fur in the traps today which really surprises me as I must not know as much about marten as I thought I did. I know they don’t really have any fat on them but I still assumed they would move like normal in single digit temps but they haven’t.

Only five traps out and will check/pull them early tomorrow hopefully before it gets ugly out

The marten are under the snow pac.

Nice looking Sled and gear box on it! Where did you ever come across that?

Shannon, it took a lot of searching. I picked this one up from a guy in the U.P. who used it for similar hobbies. Just what I was looking for.

Caught a bobcat today. Was very surprised. Seen the trap was out of the box and expected a fisher as I have caught two in the last three years there. This my first cat in a 220 cubby. I will post a pic when I get it thawed.

Congratulations on the cat, good surprise

Congrats on the cat. Not much for movement in my neck of the woods.

You ain't kidding,I've only seen two sets of tracks (neither was fisher or cat of course) since we got the heavy wet snow! Been making as many sets as I can,but with the cold and blowing snow it's becoming mission impossible to keep them operational. Good luck to everyone 👍

Nice Eric! Probably a while before he thaws. Was outside for a few minutes and figured that was enough for me.

I thought it was my old one I sold up that a couple years ago, especially with that box design. Take Care Nate!

WTG Eric! Wish I could say I was hot onto them but no one has seen anything this fall and I haven't even cut tracks on one. This wind and snow doesn't help much either. Looking forward to the pics!

My experience with marten has been that when temps go extreme cold, they move either higher up the mountains, where it is warmer, or they hole up.
Minnesota doesn't have high enough mountains, so there you go.

The marten are under the snow in Minnesota. We have over 4
Feet in the arrowhead region.

Here are the pics.

A nice swamp kitty.

Nice early Xmas present!

I managed to get a second male marten right before the close of season. Not a very vibrant one, but happy to fill tags after all the effort this season.

Nice looking cat Eric. Good job beanpole!!

Better picture of #2 now that the sun has come out. Hope others found some success. Tough conditions.

Well it was another great year! The snow made me realize that I am not 25 anymore. We managed to fill the marten tags, but only found one set of cat tracks. We pulled traps on Friday and the partners headed back to the twin cities area.

One of our sets

Started out well




Managed a few grouse


Seen 4 different bulls

And more marten

And after we were done, I went out again today to check for cat sign. I was able to congratulate this guy for surviving the season

Murphy's Law. Fresh sign the day after you pull your traps.....

Nice to see the gang had some success again this year! Congrats!

Congratulations Friar, looks like your population is holding strong! Glad they were working sets for you!

Thanks, the population must be doing ok, in the last two years we have caught 14 marten there, and 13 were adult males. Not sure why, but we only trap boxes on the ground, maybe that makes a difference?

At the fur registration today there was one monkey that brought in a fur and skull from a fisher that clearly had been in the freezer for a year. BUSTED

Oh man, just out of curiosity what it at the Grand Rapids office?

No it was at the Wadena office. I wasn’t there when the guy was but the officers had it. Asked me if it looked like it had been in the freezer. It was freezer burnt bad.

That is a bad sign for a marten population.
Ideally you want high numbers of juveniles with a ratio of sexes in your juvenile catch around 50 50 in late fall early winter.

A bunch of adult males with few adult females and no juveniles is what you often find when you go into a long untrapped refugia.The large male marten will kill the smaller females when feed becomes scarce in late winter thus few adult females and no juveniles.

That sounds reasonable Boco. I trap in a huge state forest with probably10% or less accessible this time of year with a 45 mile road through the part I trap. I know of 5 people total that trap it and we are allowed 2 marten each, so that is 10 marten allowed. That qualifies as a refuge to me.

I know a guy that use to work at the Grand Rapids office and he said registration day was quite comical, said the wardens just sat there waiting for the criminals to walk right into them.

Most criminals are really bad liars 🤣

I love to leave the bait in place when I pull the traps.
Today I was checking to see if any cats were checking them out and this little guy stayed in the tree above me and barked at me to leave so he could get back to eating!