Hello I am interested in marten trapping and have a 7 acre piece of land with mostly oak forest overlooking a ridgeline that goes down to river I have heard martens prefer coniferous forests but would I ever get them here?

Doesnt look like very good place for a marten to make a living but you might catch a dispersing juvenile if the populations are at a peak.
Some years it seems like marten are everywhere in late fall.

I am not privy to habitat like that so I am of little help . Was elk hunting today and saw marten sign in the 6 inch powder snow . About 5500 feet elev. A virtual jungle of blow down spruce and doug fir in a small north facing drainage . I wish I had known your post and i would snapped a photo. Mountain environment though . I wish you well ! Try it anyway .

The only place I've ever seen marten tracks in anything remotely similar to your photo was in a willow bottom along a river on the arctic north slope. There were no trees whatsoever on the hillsides and maybe six little spruce trees within sight as far as you could see.

BTW, the northernmost conifer in North America was only about two miles north of the area just described.

I've heard of other guys finding them in willow riparian areas, but oak trees, I doubt it.

We catch them here in willow swamps with no spruce at all. I have good luck in cottonwood groves too.
wait until the first snow and go look for tracks, that will tell you for sure.

Yeah, set on sign.

Jim

go out when you get a good snow and look at tracks you see, this will tell you what animals you have

There is a huge ridge in CO whose one side is completely covered in oak brush. Lots of animals utilize those acorns including animals that marten prey on. South to the next mountain ridge, only a creek bottom separating the habitats, is pine forest. The Pines have Marten the scrub oak does not. HOWEVER scrub oak is not really trees. Its brush. Your situation may be different.

I've been trapping marten in "typical" habitat for over 50 years, both in Idaho and in Alaska. I am now in "high desert" habitat, not in what I would consider marten habitat (sagebrush). However, as mentioned earlier, there are dispersers here every year. I'm only a few miles away from the Continental Divide. The areas I trap are riparian corridors that is not typical habitat, but we've taken 122 marten in 15 years (average 8 per year). Certainly not big marten country, but interesting to me. Also, out of 122 marten we've taken, 1 was adult female. Reiterates these are dispersers. I'm not saying you have marten, but put out a few sets and see. It wouldn't surprise me at all. Watch your sex ratio in the harvest. If you're getting 70-80% males, or better than 60% juveniles, keep trapping it. If below these threshholds. back off, because you probably have a resident population, and they're easy to overtrap.

Jack

Looks like lots of stem density in the understory so it should support some snowshoes = marten prey
marten are now distributed broadly across southern Manitoba now
I would suspect that you come across a fisher first.

would probably wait a couple more weeks for them to prime up more