sable and marten often have terrible teeth, missing or worn down to short nubs. Otters too. Mustelids are redundantly robust and efficient hunters and thrive without teeth or even feet. I read a report from a British wildlife agency once where they decided to euthanize a pine marten that had been found in a trap because they couldn't save its foot and believed it would be doomed if released. Sheer incompetence. There was a report in one of our Russian hunting research/wildlife mangement journals a few years ago about a sable that was caught in a leghold somewhere in Eastern Siberia (= harsh winters). Apparently it was a serial bait thief because its other three feet were missing and healed yet it had fat deposits.


Last winter I caught a fox with worn-down bad canines. It was healthy and fat, but looked very different from our foxes and a local fur buyer said it was an Aleutian fox, so I contacted local researchers who study tame foxes and they contacted their experimental farm and the farm workers admitted that one of their control group females had escaped a few weeks earlier (a rare occurrence). By a very weird coincidence it traveled quite a few miles from the farm, away from the city, and ended up in my bunny snare. Ranch foxes get bored in their cages and many of them spend hours playing with their steel bowls, which wears down their teeth, usually on one side.

I've been forgetting to clean its skull.

A friend shot a bear last week that weighed around 300, had the biggest paws I have ever seen, The teeth were terrible, what were still there.