Boco- All your flat land training goes out the window once you move to the mountains. Elevations change the formula with animals moving around.
Many of the southern long tail weasels do not change.
Keep up the posting there bvr-takr-upr

Well I never trapped in the mountains but wherever weasels turn white, they arent fully prime until white..
I always thought it was only southern weasels that didnt turn white,I figured the ones in the mountains do.

That weasel pic a while back has to be a long tailed weasel. Never saw one as we do not have them here but never saw such a big weasel with such a long tail as that.

Crosspatch,Longtailed weasels just started showing up here a few years ago.
Caught the first one I ever seen in a marten box about 5 years ago and have caught 2 more since.
They have a ,large triangular head compared to the more elongated head of the short tail,and of course a very noticeable long tail
They were all males and were the size of a small female mink

Eastern long-tails are different than western long-tails, when on the grading table the skin of easterns has a sand-paper feeling. Depending on the amount sometimes they were lumped together.
Alberta has a policy of tail length as there are regs on long-tails over 3.5 inches =long tails but the females tails are under that.

bvr-takr-upr hubby should get just as much for it as the marten, but skin asp as the strike location is over a rupture spot

If you look at Cathryns pics, it's pretty obvious Jerry is trapping country that is hard to access. It appears to me he isn't penetrating very far into the forest. All the downfalls make travel into the forest difficult. He isn't accessing as much country as northern marten trappers do on motorized vehicles. I really doubt Jerry's trapping is the controlling factor in next years population. There is just too much untrapped country around him.
Better luck next year, Jerry. Even if he doesn't catch much, it appears he has a darn good woman to partner with!

thanks for taking us along .

Boy I would like to be there when they do meet. that would be interesting......jk

Jerry has both long and short tail weasels where he traps and both turn whiite. He's never caught a brown one this time of year. They're either gray backs or whites.

We have long-tailed weasels in the mountains of WV and they don't change to white and we get snow and cold Temps in the mountains.

It's weird cause the snowshoe hares in the mountains of WV will change to white but the weasels don't

Where he's at in wyoming there's no way alot of what he traps can be accessed after the snow because it's super steep and there's a.lot of downfall timber.

The downfall and the steep terrain makes it impossible to access alot of his marten.sets..not being funny but when Mark gets the show on the air yall can see exactly what he's up against.

He said he's even more blue grouse this year than there's ever been in all the byers he's been trapping.


His last days catch

Hey Boco..or any of you northern trappers..if a marten passes through your area and doesn't get caught how long do you think it takes it to come back?

Is it right there somewhere close or is like a otter or bobcat where it takes it days to come back through the same area?

That picture of last days catch is a TRUE PICTURE of a trappers trk that is harvesting fur !!!!

For me in Pa it seems that route 80 going east and west through the state is the dividing line for white weasels. I used to trap very heavy for them but not any more. I could obviously be wrong but that is what I noticed.Dec first almost all are white and BOCO description seem very accurate for them.......jk

It depends on a few things.
First,juvenile dispersal in november(here)will have a lot of marten looking for a winter home range,Marten use dispersal routes like other animals.These dispersing juvenile marten is what trappers want to harvest the most of.
Some years,usually cyclical and from my experience the cycle is between 8 and 12 years,there will be a crash of small mammals that is widespread over almost the entire marten habitat.When that happens Adult resident marten will abandon their home ranges en mass and go on the move.(Marten can cover a lot of ground for a small animal)I noticed that the few times this has happened almost all the marten are adults,and where I am located I know when this is happening because I start to catch a lot of marten that are moving down from way up north around the Bay.These are very large marten so easy to distinguish.
After a small mammal crash and the abandonment of the home ranges,the marten population will be very low due to both die off,but moreso from a reproductive failure in the adult females because of their poor conditionin in late winter.
These have been my experience from trapping marten here for 51 years.
Another factor with marten here is their ability or lack thereof to re populate an area of good habitat that has been fragmented and not connected to other core marten habitat.Fragmentation of the habitat occurs mostly here from the past practices of clear cut logging.As long as the juvenile marten have timbered drainages running thru large burns or clearcuts,they use them to re populate trapped out areas.If the habitat is fragmented with no connecting timbered drainages connecting them marten cannot re populate these areas easily,if at all depending on the size of the open areas.

In core habitat Marten maintain home ranges.A male marten home range will cover 2 or 3 female home ranges,and trappers like myself use this fact to exclude the harvest of some adult females when trapping in core habitat,by setting boxes farther apart as opposed to trapping the dispersal routes where it doesnt really matter how close your boxes are..

He will be reading your post for sure Boco, lots of good info.

Last year out of 75 he caught a total of 16 females..not.aure the juvenile/ mature ratio of the males or females.

year he caught 9 females out of 56.

jk. It's crazy how the interstate more or less is the dividng line for them..


Rdfx... it'll take him awhile to get it straightened out for the next round.lol

like I said Boco will get Jerry lined out. Would be real interesting to watch them trap on a line together.

Up for Nessie