Officially my toughest Fisher chasing season

Ahhh... plans for next year include Bear Baiting and Cameras

If anyone thinks the DNR will do anything to benefit trappers your head is not in reality.

Lynx exclusion boxes coming to the marten/fisher/Lynx zone near you.

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Nice design, but does that meet the Lynx exclusion device specs?

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Why do you set them on the ground?,do you have to check them every day?

Ok. The first picture was deceiving compared to the catch picture. From what I’ve read the diamond entrance seems to be the best

We can do a five day check, I generally do two or three day checks. I catch more animals on the ground. Just in case someone wants to know, I wrote down the sex of 75 marten killed in 2020 & 2021. Fifty were males and 15 were females and I didn't record the others. The only fur damage I have seen has been from fishers eating the animal. No set that I've used can prevent fisher damage.








He was hungrier at this set and only left a tail.



He did pay for his crimes the next check.

A 4"x4" square is 16 square inches

compared to
a 4" circle is only 12.6 square inches

Bigger hole = bigger animal

Side note, in 2020 doing a two day check I had about 6 marten & one fisher eaten by fishers. No lost animals this year with two or three day checks, but only caught forty some animals.

No good setting on the ground here if you have any amount of boxes out you'd spend all day digging out mouse clipped fur.
Only fresh caught will occasionally be cannibalized,once they are frozen rock hard they dont get bothered when hanging.Maybe 1 or 2 fresh caught out of 100 in a high juvenile year.

Generally, set 30 boxes each day for three days. After that may set up to 50 more. With 100's of animals caught on the ground I have never had clipped fur. Except maybe this one. Does this marten have clipped fur? It did grade damaged. Trap was about 6 feet above the ground.
2014 NAFA
480722 LGE DG1 GD 1 21.00 21.00

Thats a lot of sets,you must really pile up the fur.
I probably got somewhere between 200 and 250 boxes installed on my lines but wont have any more than about 80 set at a time.
This year I am running 16 boxes since November. I couldnt do a 5 day check setting early like in your pics or the marten would all have taints.
I did every 2 days at first then once a week after freeze up.
Gonna pull those sets soon and just run about 4 or 5 boxes on a new trail into the cabin so I have something to play with while going out to camp for R+R.

when the weather is warm I check every day and can't run more than 75 or so boxes. When the weather is cold can run two lines of 75 boxes and check every other day. I don't trap for more than two or three weeks. After that the snow is too deep for truck travel. A good year will produce about 100 animals. The lowest year I can remember produced about 30 animals. This was a two day check from 80 boxes. 14 animals.

Nice haul.
I only got 34 marten 3 fisher and 5 cats on about 10-12 checks roughly on 16 boxes and 2 jackpots.Couple incidental mink,otter and fox and the usual pile of weasels.
Expenses pretty low since the line is about 15 minutes from home.
Did about 30 beaver mid oct.
Marten will go to the auction the rest to the tannery and self tan all the weasels and a few small beaver.

thanks

This year we put out 112 boxes the first three days added 30 or so the next week and then because of snow started pulling boxes the next day. Took about 10 days or so to pull all of the boxes. Total catch was 24 marten & 16 fishers only two weasels.

Open that box up for a photo please...
..doesn't have to be that one. Just show the box's set up with trap set

Butch, what do you guesstimate your refusal rate is with those contraptions

Eb I see a Barkers pan on one of your traps, do you use an other pans?