My All Purpose Boy sent this photo this a.m. This good-sized Mink had climbed about 5 feet up a 6x6 treated pole to get to a couple deer ribcages he hung up just outside their window for the chickadees to peck on. I have seen Mink up in trees several times over the years, but was surprised to see this one go up a treated 6x6.

Thats much better watching than chickadees..!

That's a fact, Midlander!

Awesome photo, thanks for sharing.

Cool pic!

Here's another view.

Over the years several times I have found where a mink lived inside a dead deer(in mid-winter) for weeks eating until there was nothing but the bones with skin over them. Possems do this more often than mink.

Mink can and do climb like a marten if they want to. I have taken several in marten boxes during the winter nowhere near a creek in elevated marten boxes. Mostly males I think that they are traveling between creeks like otter do.

Thanks for sharing

Had a mink live in the shed for a few weeks a couple of years ago. Apparently it got in through a ventilation hole under the roof. I put a trail camera in the shed, that caught him stealing frozen bait from a trapping backpack. I even walked in on him climbing shelves a few times, and it wasn't very afraid of me. The property was in the middle of a decent-sized village, with several hundred meters separating it from the nearest creek, and mink aren't too plentiful there.

A short video of the thief.

That's Awesome

We feed bobcats our scraps:

Tatiana, is your video of a native European Mink, or one of the American Mink that I have read is displacing your native Mink?

It's American mink. The European mink is effectively kaputt. There are isolated population pockets in European Russia, to the west of the Urals, but things aren't looking good. The American mink is ubiquitous all over Siberia, although not always numerous (just like the muskrat, which has also been introduced all over Russia, but unlike the mink, it doesn't displace its local counterpart, the water vole).

My first thought; why don't you eat the ribs?

I always take the meat from between the ribs, my All Purpose Boy does not. He does, however, trim off the muscles outside the ribs.