Marten die offs

This summer we had a bumper crop of martens now with snow covering the ground 4-6” they are almost nonexistent,do they get distemper or something like that ?

Sometime between the 1910's and 1930's, depending on where you were in Labrador marten died off over at least half the territory. Excluding the barren areas we are talking over 50,000 sq. miles and probably into some areas of neighbouring Quebec. There were a couple of generations of trappers here who only heard of marten from the old timers. When the marten came back, starting in the 70's, most people around saw their first marten then. Back in the day there were too few trappers and the Innu Indian families trapping to make a difference to the marten. Something went thru them and it took about 50 years for them to come back. By the mid 80's they had completely repopulated their former range here. Since then, depending mostly on pricing, we have taken up to 6,600 marten a year here. Our marten were in every top lot, at either NAFA or FHA, either auction had for decades. We have a lot of big dark marten with better quality fur besides colour and size.

Up here marten can be prone to move. Here today, gone tomorrow. When I see that I assume there are just small pockets of them, not a good high overall population. When the overall numbers are high they don't just disappear like that. A crash in the food base drives them down. Here the food base is voles.

Thank you for answering checked 11 proven spots yesterday 1 female marten track squirrel,rabbits tracks in all locations void of marten ???? I know they move but it looked like they had plenty of food to hunt for.

Rick,
I would say that the marten are down a bit from last year where we are trapping also, not that far from you. I find it interesting that of the 6 that we caught, every one was a male.
Jim

Stomach contents Friar Tuck were ?

Crosspatch you got that right, know of several Labador people that tell of their grandparents leaving the traps in the trees to return when the marten returned. Just to think of all those #1 newhouses just blowing in the breeze and the others wrapped in oil cloth and by the third rock cairn past the big rock.

Good question Northof50, but I did not check.
Jim

Exactly the old people used to talk about their marten paths they called them. Lots of traps left on them never be seen again nor the paths ever walked again.

And those that were lost when sealing in the spring only to have their traps only happened on for those that ventured onto the relatives land come fall time.
Sometimes considered a BAD OMEN to touch them or use them when found.

Rick ever consider that the marten are dying of old age considering the management that your state has had on them in the past. Especial with the season length and quota system in place.
Make it a commercial operation and not a sport. For example look at southern Manitoba marten take 1/4 the size of Minnesota's range but they take 2-3,000 each year there, unregulated trapping.

When they started going downhill around here........maybe 2009 ??............the most obvious thing I noticed was that there were fewer juveniles each year. Finally, there were no juvies. Mostly all adult males.

It all started with a hard rain in November of 2008. There was no snow and I think it drowned a lot of voles in their holes. The decline seemed to spread north and east....eventually extending clear to the Canadian border.

I'll bet Dave, Yukon254, remembers better than I do

I have no control how our state figure out what they think the season and limits should be,I don’t believe that most are dying of old age mostly a 50/50 on adults and juveniles.I have friends that work out in the big woods all summer and they saw many,many martens,now they have seemed to disappear,most of the local trappers are saying and seeing the same thing?????

The tough thing about what you describe is that several people may have seen the same marten or have seen the same marten several times. Pretty hard to get an accurate idea of what the population is when using that standard.

When things are "normal" on my line I can take around 10 marten per mile of trapline between November and February.

When things seemed to be at their worst for population numbers I timed the interval between sets of tracks from a Cub. This was probably 2011-12.
I was seeing a different set of tracks about every six minutes. So if you're traveling 60 mph, that means about 6 miles between sets of tracks. This was a straight line and by no means scientific. The habitat changed also of course.

Nevertheless, I am convinced that that was a very low marten density at that time.

By the way, if your population structure is 50/50 adult to juvenile I would suspect you have problems already.

Fisher get canine distemper virus. I would guess that marten can too. I know of one state that had a fisher die-off at least partially attributed to rodenticides. I don't know the details, but post mortem testing showed lethal levels. I would guess that those animals probably ate mice or rats that were killed by poison, and then died themselves. Just a guess though.

We had a bumper crop of marten this year too but they seemed to hold up well through the fall. We had a very dry spring.

White17 we had a snow melt in mid January and then rain to seal the ground. Every trap set had a marten in it next check. same happened for other trappers at the time)Several were sent as specimens to the museum because of ,mouse chew clippings. Some of those stomach contents were very large amounts of Sorex and Microsorex in their gut system. so for 3 grams of food is not enough for a marten to live on.

Not sure I understand your point North.

But I do agree that 3 grams isn't going to suffice to keep a marten going very long.
BUT, there are so many variables that I think it would be difficult to come up with one size fits all.

Obviously a marten's caloric needs will depend on where he is (latitude), how big he is, and what season it is.

If the marten you mention were stuffed with sorex but mine are stuffed with microtus that's a difference in mass of maybe 4-5 times.

If Mr Marten weighs 1000 grams he is going to need between 150-250 grams of biomass a day depending on the season and the metabolizable energy in his prey. This probably has a bearing on why they live under the snow when it is super cold. I think it must reduce their cost of foraging because they may actually have prey come within close proximity rather than spending energy hunting on the surface.

A marten in my area could probably get by on 5-6 red backed voles or three yellow cheek voles in a 24 hour period. If your guys are eating sorex it's going to require 9-10 to get the same calories.

I know that in some areas marten apparently eat a lot of red squirrels and hares. Personally, I have never seen any indication in the snow or in stomach contents of a marten taking a hare.... or even trying to. I have seen them chase red squirrels but have never seen them catch one. I'm sure they must occasionally.

In my area bunnies are not common so I suspect that's part of why I've never seen it and also why the marten generally use an alternative prey as their primary


Gulo is the one who has a good handle on this subject.

It all makes sense now!

When a marten chases a red squirrel, all you see coming down out of the tree is a tail slowly descending down much like a feather floating down.
Seen that a couple of times.
The red backs are probably 20gm and deer mice 25gm
The shrews were because the labador tea moss area was flooded and the shrews had to come up and with their insect life frozen in water, they probably froze on the snow top @-30c

I always see marten chasing rabbits in march when the crust is on.When the snow crusts marten cannot get below the snow to hunt voles,so they chase rabbits.
The Cree word for marten is Wabushstan which translates to Rabbit chaser,from their habit of being seen in march chasing down rabbits.Large male marten have no problem chasing down a rabbit.I have watched them a bunch of times.They are relentless,the rabbit will dodge and weave,the marten with his little short legs going full speed goes directly in a straight line always keeping his eyes on the running rabbit.The marten runs down the rabbit on the crust,and grabs it right behind the neck with its teeth,and wraps itself around the rabbit.The rabbit goes stiff in about 30 seconds,Paralysed I suspect from a bite to the spinal column.Then the marten will drag the rabbit to cover.
Out of all the times I have seen marten chasing rabbits it has almost always been larger male marten.I dont believe the smaller female marten are as successful at rabbit hunting.
In years when the crust is hard I would suspect any female marten would have a hard time sustaining body fat at that important time of year and likely results in a lot of reproductive failure due to low body fat and the blastocyst being re absorbed.

In the past a lot of late winter beaver trappers in northern Ontario would stockpile beaver carcasses in old growth parts of their line where female marten den to help increase the carrying capacity of their lines at this important time of the year.

I picked through the stomach on a Fisher ONCE and told myself not to do that again. That smell was bad! Had deer hair inside.
I’ve never picked through a Marten stomach but watched them catch mice or voles while deer hunting and also video taped one eating a rabbit.
I seen one chasing a rabbit one winter too. Not sure if he caught it though. It’s rabbit city here though.

A few of you know that I have looked at literally thousands of marten carcasses from various places in Alaska (Glennallen, 1981-1986, McGrath, 1987-1998, ABC Islands, 1998-2003, and Fairbanks, 2003-2008, regions) and Idaho (various locations, 2009-2020) over the past 40 years. Mainly, I was trying to figure out reproduction (and what affected the number of blastocysts in adult females), and diet (and parasites, among other interesting tidbits).

Pretty consistently, North American marten subsist on voles during the winter. Red squirrels, grouse, and snowshoe hares make up only a minor portion of the diet. Mice and shrews likewise. I know that berries and birds are utilized in summer, but I don't know the actual percentages, as getting a decent sample size in summer is problematic. In SE Alaska, at least on Baranof and Chichagof Islands, it was pretty obvious that severe winters, when deer were pushed down on the beaches and many succumbed to starvation, I generally saw good marten reproduction and neonate survival during the next year. I could only conclude that the bonanza of food (beach-killed deer) was very important to those pregnant female marten in bringing off their litters. I suspect that winterkill (caribou, moose) may also be very important in survival of young marten in the interior. But, first and foremost, it is the voles that "run the system".

What affects the vole numbers? To me, based on thousands of snap-trap nights during the summers and through literature searches, voles in North America are not cyclic (as they appear to be in Eurasia). Many of you might argue this statement, but "cyclic", by definition, infers that the ups and downs of populations are predictable. In North American voles, the ups and downs are not predictable. There might be forty-fold differences in population density of vole numbers, but they are not "cyclic". Based on these thousands of museum special snap-trap nights and computing catch-per-unit-effort (X number of catches per 100 trapnights) it finally became evident that vole numbers were controlled by winter weather. A good snow pack is an amazing insulator. Most voles are sub-nivean throughout the winter, and, even in OAT (temps) of -40 degrees, the snow/ground interface is pretty constant at around 0 to 10 above (F). However, if there are mid-winter or early spring (January-March) chinooks (warm spells), the insulative value of the snowpack diminishes greatly, and thus, the voles get wet. A wet vole is a dead vole when the temps again plummet following the chinook. Especially in the spring, when marten are whelping and the adult females are lactating, food in the form of voles is understandably important. Without that food, no successful reproduction and/or no survival of the neonates.

As white 17 already pointed out, a 50/50 ratio of yoy to adult marten in the harvest is very poor, and it is likely that next year the marten numbers will be grim. Although it's a bit tricky to get accurate age class on some marten (especially yearling versus adult females), it is important in managing your lines that your ratio of yoy:adult females in the harvest not drop below 4:1. 6:1 or 8:1 or better is the desirable mix. Adult males seem almost immaterial. Apparently, there will always be enough of them around to take care of the breeding. What you want is to not take out too many adult (2+year-old) females. Elevating your sets seems to reduce the percentage of females in the harvest, while cubbies on the ground (or snow surface) are more likely to capture females.

I hope this monologue has been helpful, or at least given some of you some food for thought. I can only speculate (PIOMA) on the long-term absence of marten over certain areas.

Jack

Great information Gulo! Thanks so much for sharing!

Thanks for the infill Gulo.

Ricks area and mine is in a severe drought since July and the mushroom crop has been effected, limiting the Red back vole population of it's food source.
Jurassic have you set up any traps this fall ? Your only 30 miles north of Rick's trapping area .

I didn’t get any traps out this Fall cause I was too busy this year. Any spare time I had I spent it archery hunting and checking trail cams.
It’s a bummer cause I was really wanting to go hard at it for about 6 days.

Awesome info, we haven't had much for vole presence that last four years or so here. It was 2012 or 2013 that we had lots of voles, can see them coming out of the snow as we drove along out the country. Got marten in wide open areas where we don't usually get them. Hopefully we will get a good population of voles soon.

Here, we have had low snow cover, and wet to extremely wet springs, (and a summer to make Noah envious), for a couple years, now. And my small lines have seen a decided decline in marten.
On the other hand..........

Thanks Jack as north of 50 said we were very dry since July another factor could be COVID I know some of the mink caught it. Lots of unanswered questions but I do know there doesn’t seem to be as many as last winter

I know that mink have apparently contracted CV19 but I have no idea whether marten could also become infected.
I think it is important to not make that leap of logic without something to go on.

Gulo or Northof50 would have better ideas on that than I would.

Thanks for the info Gulo. I don't go in there often but one time I cut open a martens' packed stomach and it was full of rose hips.

I see them feeding on frozen high bush cranberries in winter here alot when the snow is deep.

Interesting thread.

let's take this quote from Gulo," I could only conclude that the bonanza of food (beach-killed deer) was very important to those pregnant female marten in bringing off their litters. I suspect that winterkill (caribou, moose) may also be very important in survival of young marten in the interior. But, first and foremost, it is the voles that "run the system".

The overall idea, as I see it is FOOD is the determinate factor in successful raising of kits. If females do well, the trapper has plenty of marten.............most of which would be YOY. If they don't do well, YOY are more rare or maybe even close to non existent. So how does a trapper have any ability to "manage" his line if food is the driving force. We can't control food. I figure that the trappers ability to really know if the marten food is in good supply is pretty low. Counting YOY/adult female only tells you what you have right then. It doesn't tell you what happens after you shut the line down (late Feb or march) and it doesn't tell you if the coming summers kits all survive in to the next trapping season.
After 40 years of trapping marten, or talking with others who are trapping, talking to furbuyers, talking to biologists, marten populations in Alaska can change up or down in short periods of time. Those changes are rarely brought about by how many marten a trapper catches.

martentrapper, (and others) -

Precisely! I agree with you 100%.

I would argue, however, that if food is indeed the limiting factor in marten populations, that trapping can affect the recovery time of that population. I have argued for in-season monitoring (by the individual trappers, not by ADF&G). Let me throw out a scenario for you to consider. Bear with me...

In November (interior) or December (SE Alaska), you are trapping your lines hard, and you catch 50 marten. This is your bread and butter, so you are monitoring the age- and sex-ratios. Of those first 50 marten, 6 of them are adult females,14 are big apple-headed males, and 30 are yoy. The young:adult female ratio is 5:1. Obviously, things are good, so you continue to trap. Unless you are continually moving into "new" country, your ratios change through the season. Males have bigger home ranges and are somewhat more mobile, so their chances of encountering a trap are greater. As you take off the "cream" (the males), your proportional take of females increases. Thus, it is "normal" to catch an increasing proportion of females as the season progresses. Your total harvest for the season ends up at 100 marten, 16 of those being adult females, 20 adult males, and 64 yoy. You're still good, as overall you're still at 4:1. This is a pretty typical scenario; I've seen it many times.

The next year finally rolls around. You've made it through another round of skeeters and the "good season" is here. You run your lines again in November, and you catch only 30 marten. Six of those are adult females, 12 are adult males, and only 12 are yoy. Not good. Your ratio is only 2:1. You see the writing on the wall, and you shift your effort over to trapping wolves and wolverines for the remainder of the season. Something changed dramatically on your line over the last year and you want to leave those adult females out there to hopefully re-populate the line for next year. Your neighbor, Goober, one drainage over, hasn't been watching the ratios. His take is down also, but he continues to trap, maybe even a bit harder, to make up for the shortfall. He ends up the season with 60 marten (to your 30), but he's really gotten into the adult females (the breeders) and his ratio is down to 1:1 (20 adult females, 20 adult males, 20 yoy).

You suffer through another summer, hoping the voles have recovered and that the marten did well. Indeed, your take is back up to 75 marten for the year, but Goober only gets 15. He had no breeder females remaining on his line. You, on the other hand, "farmed" your line, and the marten recovery was much quicker.

This isn't a made-up, feel-good story. I saw these exact scenarios play out in the interior. Granted, there's little to nothing we can do over a large area to ensure that vole populations are always high, thus ensuring good marten numbers. But I'm convinced that we can manage our lines, voluntarily reducing the take of adult females, and see the resultant recovery in a much shorter time period.

Jack

I keep a journal on catch records etc but its out at the line. I believe it was around 09 though, and it was widespread. Our population has stabilized, but is still not back to what it was. We a lot more winter rains now than we ever did before and I believe it has an effect. Two days ago it was -30, yesterday it was 0 and raining. One thing I've noticed for sure, is that these winter rains are hard on ungulates, especially caribou. The water seeps down through the snow to the ground and then freezes. This makes it hard for the caribou to get lichen. My theory is that it also makes it hard for marten to get voles?? In the last couple years I am convinced that the same winter rains have caused a moose die off on my trapline. Freezing rain coats the willows causing them to bend over, then it snows and a good portion of the feed is gone. Just my theory, take it for what its worth.

Goober traps north of me. Gooberland is to my east. Oh! It's real!

Big howdy wave from your Montana neighbor, Jack !

Aren't the high peaks just breathtaking with snow this time of year ? I love the early mornings and evenings when the sun turns them into glowing golds and rose apricot tones, with a dark sky behind them.

I really love these discussions about marten .

So great to have input from trappers and their experiences on the changing moods of environment and reactive fluctuations of their trapping territories. Good custodians insuring future populations , instead of the "bull in the china shop".(Lack of capitol C intended ) ... I always think of Trapped4ever , how he is so in tune with his environment and those amazing coloured ones he harvests every year...his hands on the heartbeat of the land he lives in , so very well.

I have saved your information from along ago about the marten types you have enjoyed from your studies in different parts of the world , like Russia . I will add these to my folder too.

Along with some of the other's observations and input from this sandbox.

And I don't even know the half....learning all the time. Adds such enriching depth in appreciation of the fur that I enjoy wearing .

Many thanks for your kind efforts in taking such time to explain the details that you have worked so hard to gather over decades. A treasure house shared.

Life is good.

Face to the wind....on the surface

I can see your point,Gulo. How about migration? If your drainage has more total females than goobers, can there be some migration as your females look for a home?
YOY females will not be bred when trapping season opens, correct? When those females become "adults" at one year of age, they are bred in Aug./sept. and don't contribute young until the following trapping season.

Dirt, you have been trapping the same country for about as long as this forum has been around I think. Since your not a "goober" do you have records of your management and it's success?
If a guy is surrounded by goobers, isn't his area effected by that?

If your vole population is too poor to lead to successful kit survival, does it also cause a loss of adults? Poor food resource must be harder on pregnant females or females raising kits than on males. The non goober trappers will suffer poor marten number if "food" doesn't improve.

Enjoy the discussions.

I think you are right Mike. If you are surrounded by Goobers you too will be affected...................depending on how close Goober is.
I have heard some discussion over the years that five miles apart is far enough. I disagree. I think there needs to be larger areas than that in between traplines.

I also suspect that females MIGHT breed at one year old but maybe not the majority of them. And those who can/will breed at that age still need to encounter an adult male.

Yes, I have records and a journal.

To know if I am successful, I have to have knowledge of what goes on in goober country. I do somewhat.

Home Ranges, Migrations of marten...

(I sincerely hope you all don't mind me rambling on about marten. Most of what I have to contribute is not perfect science. Most of it comes from a lifetime of observing rather than from scientific investigations with expensive telemetry gear and top-notch biometricians; I apologize in advance.)

If one looks critically at the telemetry data on marten, a 5-mile "gap" between traplines would appear to be plenty sufficient to insulate you from Goober. Even adult male marten don't have a home range that even comes close to 5 or 10 square miles. Too (and probably more important), the scientific studies using contemporary radiotelemetry rarely, if ever, mention migrations. However, many marten trappers have seen these unmistakable, one-way, mass migrations ("waves") at one time or another. They do happen, and are probably in response to either a lack of food (voles) or to snow/ice conditions that make that food source unavailable to marten. Adult marten, like most mammals, establish and maintain home ranges where they are intimately familiar with the landscape and know where the food resources are low and where they are high. It is in their best interest to stay within the confines of their home range...until the food base goes gunnybag. Let me digress a bit and introduce another conundrum (I promise, there's a point I'll get to). Litter size in marten is 3-4 young, once a year. How then, is it possible, even under the best of circumstances, to achieve a ratio of 4, 5, or even 8:1 in the harvest (total young:adult female)? Simple really. Those yoy marten are not usually confined to an established home range. They are somewhat nomadic, looking for an unoccupied tract where they can set up housekeeping. Thus, their chances of encountering a trap are much higher than the residents' chances. Consequently, it appears to me, 5 miles between traplines may not be adequate to insulate you from the poor management that is being done by Goober. Your area, reasonably managed, is providing dispersing marten into Goober's line, but his area is hammered, and it's contributing no dispersers back your way. Get enough Goobers around you, and it matters little how well you manage your line.

For five years (2003-2008), I had the dubious honor of trapping near one of Alaska's population centers (Fairbanks). This was after many years, in three very different areas, of trapping in less human-populated areas of the state. The area out of Fairbanks had people all around me. They were, unquestionably, Goobers. It was relatively good marten habitat, but my annual take was only about 8-15 marten. I'm convinced that overtrapping by all of us was responsible for the relatively low marten population. I adopted the same attitude as my neighbors; "I'll get those marten before they do". In hindsight, it would have been much smarter and better for all of us if we'd had a self-imposed moratorium for a year or two on marten; let the population recover, then enjoy the fruits of our "management".

Jack

Jack, I trust YOUR lifetime of experience over other's "re-SEARCH science " any day.

Never feel trepidation for sharing everything you want to . I imagine I echo other's sentiments here in how much your mind shared is appreciated.

I have to take a little drive but when I return I'm gonna enjoy what you've added .

Thank you !

Thanks Sharon. I appreciate your thoughts.

Jack

Never trapped a Marten in my life but I can tell there is allot of "meat" in this thread

Sharon, I trust your not insinuating Jack is the only one participating in this thread with a “lifetime” of experience. Your mistaken if you are. As well, none of the other Alaskans participating need SEARCH for science. We are all knowledgeable, experienced trappers.

I have a question for you interior guys. Not exactly germane to this thread, but sort of..
During March of 2004 I believe it was, I was helping a guide friend of mine (the famous, or infamous, wolf killer from Healy) haul hay from the highway up the Yanert river up over the divide into the Wood River drainage and then down stream for several miles. It was probably close to 50 miles each way by snowmachine. I have no experience in south-central or interior Alaska with marten. However, the country we were going through for the most part looked to me like great marten country. But, I never saw one marten track.
What's up with that?

It will be interesting to see if Boco line has the freeze-out of small mammal population this year since he had snow then melting conditions and what his marten harvest will be.

martentrapper -

Sharon was referencing my somewhat disparaging remarks in my previous post. Those disparaging remarks were directed towards certain members of the "scientific community" that tend to look down their noses on us "mere trappers" because we lack statistical rigor in our observations. She and I have had previous discussions on the validity of certain of these "scientific" papers which, too often, ignore the reality of what trappers have known for decades, because it doesn't fit with their "science". I have laughed at the way they pronounce the word "research", (which is often "RE-search" rather than "re-SEARCH"). I don't want to RE-search anything if it's already been re-SEARCHED. Sharon was merely saying she trusts the observations of trappers over those peer-reviewed scientific contributions of "scientists". She wasn't dis-ing anyone participating in this thread.

Merry Christmas to all.

Jack

Gulo you got it all wrong, those should be pronounced " Me-search" as the spotlight is to shine on them.( I'm a DR and you don't talk up to me... attitude)

"ME-seach", HA! I love it! How true, how true....

I was hoping trapped4ever might weigh in on this discussion. Now that trapper has some insights regarding marten...

Jack

Maybe you were in front or behind the "wave"?

The "wave" Oh! It's Real!

The problem with the "wave" is it blows a hole in the home range theory.

Yes he does. From what i've gathered, his population doesnt cycle like it does in the interior. Probably because of the constant food supply the coast provides??

I would be interested to hear others thoughts on lemmings ( bog) as a food source. Some of the highest densities of marten tracks Ive ever seen were in an area with an unbelievable population of lemmings. I have never trapped that area, but have hunted it extensively. Late in the fall when the snow comes the marten sign is incredible.

Dirt, I have questioned the home range theory too.

I videoed a marten chasing a hare at highway pull over last weekend on my way up to the trapline. I’ll try and figure how to post it when I get time.

Just from my observations.............I suspect it was just crappy marten habitat. For several years I trapped an area that I really had to work hard to take 20 marten. It was great fox country though. But evidently there was something missing that a healthy marten population required.

I moved about 60 miles southwest and got into an area where 100 marten by Christmas was easy. I have thought a lot about the difference in those two areas over the years. The only OBVIOUS difference that I can see is the different soil types. Along with that, I THINK, must come different plant life as well as small mammal species and density. Even in this newer area I have a section of 8 or 9 miles that is like a biological desert. I don't know what is missing there but something clearly is.

Eventually, I set up a line that ran from area one to area two. It was really evident while traveling northeast toward the old area that there were fewer tracks of everything except fox. Fox density increased moving that direction.

Cat density,while never great, also increased .

Moose density in the new area was much higher and I suspect that supports, somewhat, my comment about soil differences. There may also be a slight difference in temperature regime . It MAY be that the newer area is slightly warmer statistically than the old area.

I remember in the 70's doing soil temperatures from Winnipeg to Thompson 800km and then on the west side of the province. We stopped at 50+ locations and did profile temps down to 2 meters on predrilled probes. One of the riches area was by ScooterMac spot in Waboden . Depending upon the soil over what type of material is important for winter/ spring thawing conditions and the soils development. This in turn goes to vegetation and it's nutrition and then to the wildlife that feeds on it.
Areas over limestone formations warmed up slowly in the spring , but remember that they have large/ small chambers for the animals to go into, and I have had marten go down for 10 days below surface @ -30c only to be caught when they come out.
If only some small mammal populations were sampled !
Remember that a lot of small mammals reproduce during the winter under the snow layer, anyone with crops laying in the fields can see the meadow voles reproducing through the winter, to be over-run in the spring thaw.

white17 and Northof50 -

Very interesting observations. I've never really given soils types (or underlying bedrock types) much thought. Guess I'd better change my evil ways. Good food for thought. Thanks.

Obviously, soils dictate the vegetation type and lushness, so it makes perfect sense to assume it would affect the small mammals that reside thereupon, and, in turn, the predators.

martentrapper,

I sure am glad you mentioned your concern on my comments to Jack...this allows me to gladly explain to you what I meant, though Jack covered that completely.

The last thing I ever want is misunderstanding...and my mind nor heart wasn't even thinking about all the great experienced trappers , in any state, that know their land and animals intimately when I made my comment.

Matter of fact , I did state somewhere in this sandbox of trapped4ever , who is in SE AK, of his amazing depth of knowledge as an awesome trapper , and one who has harvested astounding numbers of marten for years on his longlines , who knows how to take such good care of the population of marten . I too would love to see his input here. I'm also pestering him for a couple more taxi skinned marten , this time to admire on my wall , instead of made into a garment.

JR is another trapper who comes to my mind , his energy and knowledge of the land, and enjoying everything he sees , the artist in him, is endless , Sir Ken is another man like that , I could go on and on with others.

So yes, I do happily acknowledge and so much appreciate all the trappers who, in my opinion, really reflect the heartbeat of the land and its animals more than some of the others who in their occupation,have sat behind a desk more than have true years of experience in the bush.

So actually, I was saying just the opposite , and defending trappers.

Thank you, martentrapper, for allowing me to explain my intent , to you, or anyone else that it may apply. One thing you can double Arkansas guarantee about me, is that I always defend trappers , and fearlessly and patiently explain the trapper's high value on this earth to anyone who doesn't know about them, or who gives erroneous comments in anti trapping thoughts. I love when I can skillfully speak with them to success.

I never intend to dis anyone . I am glad to explain so that no one may misunderstand what I meant.

Jack, I did have that backwards ! RE search !! Ha !

Manitoba with its flat landscape was scraped clean with only 6-7000 years to mature some of those soil types. So rock formation below did supply much of the nutrition.
Now slopes on mountain sides have the same type of development but in micro settings. Explains your barren ride between spots White. I know one place we went into was 800 m off the road and the tamarack you could put your finger to thumb around them and they were 150+ years old, that was over a small depression of a gypsum formation. Show shoeing in there we never came across any small mammal pop-outs on the trail, like we would encounter at the other spots.

A Professor once said to me; if you ask a question ?; there will be two answers and then two more questions. So be prepared to think....but BY asking the question you are thinking.

2 answers 2 more questions....typical professor.....job security.....LOL

Sorry this was before Google came on the scene. He was someone who lost from Alaska and pardoned 40 years later. (Pruit) ie The Fire Cracker Boys

Sharon you cant back petal on this one; it will cost you to post one of your marten prints here; to get a Out of Jail Card

Sharon, “double Arkansas guarantee “ that sounds like something a person could market.
I got more questions AND answers but only have a phone so will wait!

N50, Ok here's a marten for you, but I had no idea I was in jail !

Love it! I wish half of the taxi examples would have the ear, eye, and nose position that you so easily depict.

I can say that where I trap, micro-habitat is the key phrase. On the ABC islands, you may have whole stretches of coastline and valleys that support marten, my line(s), have little holes, if you will, that will produce all the mustilids. I'm talking ermine to gulo.
I can have sets 100 yards down the beach, or less, using the same everything, and catch nothing. I ask myself, "why here?", constantly, and keep trying wheel spokes, but still no answer.
Frustrating, and I know I trap in vertical terrain, but still, I am talking VERY specific sets that produce. Miss it by even 100 feet, miss it by a mile.

^^^^
Same experience for me. There are apparently very subtle but important things that we just don't see.

Waggler we had this discussion at the Minn convention a few years ago. Road side warriors who set on the edge of roads do not realize the micro habitats they are setting in. Those plow zones with the turned up soil create a good medium for vegetation growth and fungus growth = key red back vole food = key marten food = hunting zone.
Being put last on the program to present you missed the major group of people to present to Waggler. but- I know that the several Manitobans in that crowd probably equaled the total harvested a full years take of marten in Minn

Thanks Sharon, knew you had some wonderful art work. With the winter apex of the needle cover just coming off; I would put that picture being done in May-June

^^^^
Wow, so that was you I spoke with about soil fugus, I never made the connection with your name on here.
I was thinking about that exact conversation (soil fungus, and red-backed voles) earlier today while reading this thread.

Going back to the original question. Yes, you can have a decent summer/fall marten population and then with little to no voles they will starve in early winter or move. Happens here.

I have an advantage over many trappers, I live on my first marten set. Therefore, I witness what the entire year is like, not a slice of time.

I do pretty much the same, and one thing that is certain where I trap. Throughout late summer/fall into the early trapping season, the marten population around the lakes will be pretty dense. I will often see them while hunting moose even. This is at an elevation of about 2200 feet. By the middle of December, or even earlier some years, they will begin to move into higher elevations.

Back in the 80s-90s they did a long term study on red backed voles in the Kluane area. I believe the study went on for 10 or more years. They looked at a lot of things that might effect the vole population, including predation. They found the same thing gulo did. Snow depth was the limiting factor. More snow is better. I believe thats why traplines at about 3500-feet are consistently more productive in our area. Those areas get a more consistent snowpack year to year. The trapline just east of mine belonged to a good friend for almost 3 decades. The entire trapline sits at an elevation of 3500-4500 feet. Not one spot on the line is lower than 3500. The average number of marten this fellow took over all those years was 150 marten per season. Some years he took over 300, but it averaged out to 150 a year, and his effort was pretty consistent. My youngest daughter and her husband own that line now, and their catch has mirrored the previous owners.

^^^^^^
Do you suppose that marten seek out areas with better subnivian conditions? If so is it because the hunting conditions are better, the drier conditions are easier on the marten, or??

In the Washington Cascade mountains marten are seldom found below about 3000 feet; that is the elevation where a considerable amount of deep snow remains on the ground all winter. Below that elevation it is generally wet with back and forth rain and snow.

Studies have shown that below 3000 feet there are still plenty of voles. I would be inclined to think that marten are seeking out drier living conditions rather than seeking out a food source. That being said, I doubt that winter conditions below 3500 like you (Yukon254) describe are wet and soggy like they are in the Cascades.

All this marten insight is very fascinating. I have trapped marten but in limited numbers in a very small area and always wondered why I would catch them in some sets and not others despite the same terrain. My higher marten catch years always coincided with higher vole numbers.

All very good info,I figured nice,red squirrel,ruffed grouse and snowshoe hare made up most of their diet.

Did you ever maybe think their diet may be seasonal?

Marten also cache food.

I think staying dry is very important to marten. We have all caught some during a rain storm and it is easy to see actual skin between clumps of hair. Some of them seem to never look right even when dried on the board. ButIhave no doubt they lose body heatquickly when wet


Dave: what is timberline in that are your daughter is now trapping ? I my country timberline can be as low as a thousand feet MSL. I'm pretty sure marten go there occasionally. There isn't a lot of ground cover for voles and no overhead cover for marten unless there are a lot of jumbled rocks. I have seen a very few yellow cheeks in that environment but not enough to support a marten population.




I have stooped so low...........as to lay down in the snow to try to see the terrain as the critter sees it. Specifically why a wolverine travels where he does instead of 20 feet to the left or right. So far I have achieved no great insight ! I think they know where they are going generally and, like water, they will take the easiest route getting there.

I started trapping marten 5 decades ago. I cut lines all over the place prospecting. I have never deliberately crawled on the ground looking for what goes on under the snow but the last few years because of old age i spent time face down in the snow LOL When I started all the information I had was from an old time trapper was that the marten move sometimes in herds so have your sets out. So over the years that is how I trapped marten, lots of sets baited attractors ready to go. 6 or 8 sets per mile.
The last 3-1/2 decades I trapped an area that the trail head was at around 1000 ft. elevation. Creek bottom, large cottonwoods, spruce and willows. I ran the creek bottom to the head waters which were at 3200 ft. elevation. Back when we had really cold winters and not much snow and lots of glaciers in the valley I couldn't catch a marten, no food. As I developed the area I prospected ridges on both sides of the narrow valley and that is where I found the marten. I did have some help though. A fur buyer told me her flew my area years prior to my being given the line and he saw marten runs like rabbit runs but told me he wouldn't tell me exactly where I would have to find the area myself. That was my motivation to push on.
The valley produced marten early if the creek crossings allowed early access. As it became colder and darker the less marten were there except the years when the herd would happen. To my thinking when the herd occurred it was because of the food source. I probably ran more sets than were needed because there were areas that never produced.
As I proceeded to prospect onto the ridges is where the marten were but not everywhere. The consistent areas were where snow would be deep all winter, sunlight would hit and the inversion would keep it warmer than the valley, 20 degrees or more. A cold snap, than snow would be like crack to the marten they would come to life even invading my wall tent looking for something to destroy!
I remembers snow shoeing in country where snow would be deep and walking over and falling through a hare run and It became my belief that the marten lived under the snow in this high country and that gave them access to voles ptarmigan, hares as well as berries and other food. One ridge in particular produced most of my catch. I would trap it every other year or 2 years trapped1 year rest. It produces to this day and was burned over a bunch of years ago.
As the years moved on there were areas that I did not trap but knew there were marten and I called those areas my nursery. No matter how much a Marten would bring I believe that it takes seed areas to farm your line.
I was fortunate to come to Alaska when there was areas that available and there was a code between trappers that if an area was trapped everyone stayed out of that area and I could farm my area as I saw fit.. Today the code of ethics has all but gone the way of its all about me individuals. Too many new trappers have said I came here to trap and you can't stop me, new code of ethics!
Trapping pressure and the distance between lines has a real impact on especially marten . I have first handed experience. One of the areas I called my nursery was a 3 mile ridge off my main trail. I knew there were always marten there and left it alone. I took the wrong person with me and he claimed it as his and my catch on the main trail went to 0. He hammered that ridge and his catch went to a few.
OH SNAP

My first experience see lots of marten in the summer was in the river systems around Telegraph Creek BC and close to the Yukon/Alaska/BC boarder. The fellow I worked with liked it so much he sold his houses in Calgary and bought the gas station/restaurant/cabins there and started trapping marten in the winter. RIP Mike Jones cause he drown trapping what he loved. The high plateau they sure did have what Oh Snap was explaining= highways in the bog laurel vegetation. They would stand up as the helicopter flew over, almost looked like ground squirrels on the prairie landscape.
I know in northern Manitoba that the glacial beach ridges are highways for them to travel on especially south of Hudson Bay. When the marten travel on them and guys are set up it's go time. Maybe Scottermac can shine in on some of the guys in the Gilliam area and their catches. 5 dozen spare traps was not enough to swap out on their daily route,

Northof 50 what did you do around telegraph creek? What year would it have been? I live up in Atlin BC
I own a trapline on the historic telegraph trail route.

Like this mount from Robertson Taxidermy in YellowKnife NWT

Some of those Northern trappers show up year after year with in the neighborhood of 200 marten to our Thompson fur tables. This year in my area there are a lot of marten especially YOTY, we had a record amount of rainfall this past summer which produced lush vegetation. This in my eyes produced an abundance of food sources which I believe paved the way for a higher survival rate of young. They had lots of ground cover and food. Now so far our winter has been tough, lots of snow with a late freeze up then plus degree weather before the super cold hit creating a crust. It will be interesting to see what happens next year.

Well, I've been busy, "managing" my line, getting some new lines setup, so been to busy to comment, but have been following this thread a bit...... I try to refrain from getting to involved in any of these threads, since it takes time out of the fur shed, and off the line to do so, and I'm currently keeping plenty busy. Plus, I try not to "offend" anyone by disagreeing with some people's ideas or input, so I find it easier to just not comment. First off, I have nothing by the utmost respect for most of those already commenting on this thread, so PLEASE don't take any offence to anything I say, or put forward, as none of it is intended to be disrespectful, or disagreeable, just my personal opinions/ observations.

I only have a few minutes here, but will add further comments, if I have any free time, in the evenings....

For the original poster rick olson: How do you define a "bumper" crop of marten? Were you getting reports from hunters? Personally seeing them everywhere? First things first.... After the YOY marten mature enough, to get out on their own, they will, like many species, go through a "Fall dispersal" phase, where the YOY are looking for a home range of their own, suitable to be able to support themselves calorically upon (prey base), and having the required habit. This Fall dispersal phase can create outmigration from an area, to some extent, if you were seeing marten in a few select areas of habitat. Say for example, 3 females each have a litter of 4, in a few hundred acre stretch of timber, where throughout the summer you observed, or it was reported to you there were "marten everywhere!" So you had 3 adult females, maybe 3 adult males, and the 12 YOY marten, so a total of 18. This DOES not mean that come FALL, those 18 marten are still going to be in that same area of habitat. Probably the bulk of the YOY will die of natural causes, before winters end, predation, starvation, cannibalism, injuries, (in your part of the country, probably roadkill), etc. Same goes for the adults, any of those six adults, or ALL, could die before Fall, due to any number of circumstances. Then, as the survivors go through the Fall dispersal/ outmigration, you could easily be left with only 1 or 2, or even none, left in that pocket of habitat, especially if the outmigration is caused by a seasonal diet change, or food shortage, which absolutely does occur with marten. Maybe you were talking about a larger scale abundance, like statewide? Without knowing more details, I don't want to hazard a guess, but you can imagine, if the "waves" of marten come and go across a huge state like Alaska, they could certainly do similar things over a much smaller state like Minnesota, and leave large areas at relatively low abundance.

Perhaps W17 or Gulo have some idea of the "average" attrition rate of YOY marten, but of course, it will vary by location, and from year to year. During food shortages, there will be almost total reproductive failure, or very minimal survival by the YOY. The delayed implantation, and short gestation period marten under go, can lead to the females just reabsorbing the blastocysts. Or the kits may just not survive, due to a lack of food for the female, at any stage during the pregnancy, or nursing period. What I have always seen, during the crash years, is an overabundance of large adult males, which I suspect have survived, due to "survival of the fittest, and perhaps cannibalization from the large males, to some extent, also explains the lack of YOY and females. The next couple years after seeing this scenario, it is imperative to curb trapping efforts, or you can delay the recovery, if you harvest your line to heavily. This would be because the overabundance of adult males indicates a LARGE scale population dynamic change, over a large area.

A few other notes, if rain killed marten, I wouldn't be catching them!! I'll see months on end of rain, with NO breaks (ie. days without rain), this is all throughout the year.

Some key things to remember. Everywhere is different, different topography, prey bases, weather patterns, precipitation, snow levels, habitat, latitude, longitude, amount of sunlight, soil types, elevation, vegetation, prey abundances, these all lead to different carrying capacities, for every species in that area. Those carrying capacities vary, from year to year, depending upon, moisture, sunlight, prey abundance, etc. Everything is in a state of flux, all the time, nothing stays the same. There are very few hard, fast rules that apply to all regions of marten habitat. Every area needs to be assessed at the time it is going to be trapped. I've always found the simplest, most successful way to manage my line is through catch rates. I don't worry about tracking the adult female to YOY ratio much, if the catch rates are sky high. If catch rate/ abundance is high, that tells me my areas of refugia, that go untrapped, will have enough breeders to reproduce, and bring more Fall dispersing marten back into the suitable habitat areas I'm trapping, by next year. An EXTREMELY important thing to be careful of with marten, is the duration of time you leave sets in any given location. This gets at what Gulo mentioned about interior trapping (and I totally agree with), around areas like Fairbanks or Anchorage. Many of those lines get set at the start of the season, and remain set ALL season. To be properly managing a line, you usually can harvest the surplus animals in 2-4 trap checks, and then should probably pull that line, and set up in a totally different area. Of course this means tons of work, always setting traps, and covering huge areas, but that is how to consistently catch good numbers, years after year, without self induced population spirals. Unfortunately, in the areas of higher human population densities, the first to the resource race, hobby trappers, greedy guys, etc. will probably always keep populations pinned much lower than they would be, with proper management. Pretty hard to manage everyone surrounding your line, especially when prices go high.

I'm sure I drove ADF&G biologists nuts, while conducting fisheries surveys, always asking them questions, and giving them input to consider. Not necessarily disagreeing ; ) just respectfully introducing different ideas for them to exercise some critical thinking skills upon, and consider. ie. making them think "outside the box" of rules that aren't ALWAYS correct. It seems to me, that biology and some biologists, want to put every species in a box, with certain "rules" that apply to that species, without considering that nobody ever told that particular species, or individual, the set of "rules", it is supposed to abide by ! HA! This certainly goes for marten, as over their entire range, much of it covered by trappers on this thread, there is obviously an abundance of different behaviors, habitats, population densities, prey dynamics, seasonal diet changes, etc.

Thank you for the time to comment Trapped4ever.
The Michelin rubber test is always a good indication of fall dispersal in the lower range of the marten.

Keeping the state and federal bio's on their toes is what that Univ prof taught with his question and two answers ploy.

Maybe Doric will comment because he is way out on the barren ground his observations.

trapped4ever -

Many thanks for weighing in on this. I figured you were out among the marten tending your lines rather than sitting in front of a computer monitor pontificating like I'm doing. From earlier discussions we've had I well know that you're a critical thinker and often times well "outside the box" (which is extremely valuable and productive).

Back to Rick's initial question (so I don't feel too bad about hijacking his thread). In my opinion, some of the other comments regarding your impressions of high numbers of marten, followed by seemingly low numbers (once the harvest season rolls around) is not too uncommon, and those speculations on the reasons for such observations may well be correct. The "fall shuffle", in which 5-6-month-old marten are heavily dispersing, may be a reasonable explanation for the differences you're seeing. On the other hand, those long-term absences that were mentioned in Labrador don't sound to me like a food or overharvest problem, especially if they went on for decades. There's not really much known about diseases in marten. Avian influenza (H5N1) and tularemia have both been seen in stone marten in Europe. Sylvatic plague and canine distemper, too, are mentioned in the literature as possible population-wide factors which may periodically affect marten. Hearing about the corona virus outbreaks in ranched mink leads me to think that it could also be a potentiall factor in marten population decline. Parasites, too, are not off the table as far as affecting marten. I've done quite a bit of work on the stomach roundworm, Soboliphyme baturini, and it can become quite prevalent in marten. However, when I looked at marten weights versus the parasite loads that they had in their stomachs (sometimes stomachs full of parasites with over 100 individuals), I got the impression that the parasites were not effectively "killing" the marten and thus causing population declines. Thus, while I surmise that diseases and/or parasites could be responsible for marten declines, I have no real data and can't point you to any good literature. It's simply a PIOMA speculation.

Thanks to all for the stimulating (to me anyway) discussion. I'm particularly intrigued over the "soils" theory.

Jack

I agree 100% about the statement of traps per night per length of duration, I believe in the 3 checks max and out method of harvesting.
My limiting factor in my area is commercial logging/ clear cuts. Sadly most of my marten line has been clear cut to the point the habitant has become the limiting factor to the population.
Some good information below
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_marten

I have seen and trapped marten with huge population swings from one season to the next. Same effort same amount of traps totally different results one year to the next over a 40 year span.

Gibb your latest youtube clip sure shows the logging practices that has effected your harvest on your one line. Maybe post a link for others to watch.

They clear cut in front of my camp in 1980 not a tree left standing on either side of the road for a thousand feet. The only trees left were either for the lake/river reserves or the small creeks, it took 33 years before I caught a marten there again. When I first started in that area the average age of the forest would have been 100 years plus up too maybe 175 years for the swamps, fast forward to today and the average age of the forest would be 40 years to 2 years, with very small fragmented of old growth reserves. Talking 400 feet to 100 feet strips around lakes and streams. My marten population crashed around 2004 and has never really recovered. They would cut the high country in the summer and all the swamps in the winter. It took 20 plus years to reach a tipping point for which the marten could not recover. I started catching fisher around 1987 and can probably catch as many fisher as marten now. I am talking just my 108 square miles which is very flat, all the trap lines around have had the same type of impact.
Nice roads but no marten.

Thanks T4E ! Lots to think about !

Attrition: From the things I have read over the years there seems to be a consensus that the average marten litter is reduced to about 2.2 kits surviving to the point of dispersal. That is just barely above replacement rate. I think that reinforces your point about duration of sets in one location.

Just based on the tooth aging that Gulo did from my line, I have to conclude that marten, in a trapped population, do not grow to old age. Out of several hundred individuals, there is only one male that was 14 years old. He was clearly an anomaly as no others even came close.

If I recall correctly there were no females greater than 4 y/o which leads me to believe that pregnancy is a real drain on them. That may not be borne out in data from and UNtrapped population.

The other noticeable trend is that the overall age of trapped critters declines over time, as long as all other environmental conditions remain equal. That would cause me to ask if trapping might be beneficial to the overall population. Is it possible that marten are capable of compensatory reproduction or has the trapper just encountered more YOY as they are dispersing ?

Another question is, what is the sex structure of all the litters born in an area ? Does it change ? I think I recall reading that male kits were slightly more prevalent than females. Perhaps it was a 1:1.1 female/male ratio. Are young males more susceptible to accidental death just because they may be/are more aggressive ? Could that control the make up of the litter ?

Always more questions than answers

Hey White, on that 14 year old Marten, did you notice anything that would make you believe he was that old when you caught him? Or did he look the same as say a 4 year old?
Ex; worn teeth, body size (big or small), skeletal deformity etc.

It was a long time ago but as I recall there was nothing out of the ordinary when looking at him.

white17 - You didn't notice worn, rounded teeth and severe discoloration on the canines and incisors?

No massive "apple-head" from the masseters?

So winter rain in the interior seems detrimental to marten relying to some degree on subnivean shelter while rain in SE AK seems less so perhaps given the shelter of the forest canopy?

I MIGHT have but........it was over 20 years ago. The head may have impressed me when I started trying to stretch his mouth over it. But I don't remember well enough.

I am pretty sure he must have been a critter who migrated into the area from a large untrapped reservoir.


The individual animal I remember best was a marten caught in my conventional pole set. Caught by the left front.

He was unremarkable at the time I removed him from the trap. Frozen in the typical "strap-hanger" pose.

When I went to skin him I saw he only had the left front. No leg at all on the right. I figured there would be a scar on the skin side. NOPE !

Nothing. Not even a scapula. Birth defect for sure. But he was well furred and even had a little xiphoid fat.

First thing I do when I pick up a male marten in a trap is feel for the "groove" on the top of the head.

11-YEAR-OLD MALE. Central interior Alaska. Sorry, not the best photo.

Ken, the area my daughter traps is pretty much black spruce forest right up to 4500 feet although the trees do get smaller and more dispersed as you go up.

Trapped4ever brought up a good point about the rain. We've all seen his pictures, and it is wet down there, but he gets good numbers despite that. I would venture a guess that his marten probably dont rely on voles like the interior populations seem to. Low snowpack, and wet weather does seem to effect the voles though. Which would in turn effect marten numbers.

I think you bring up a valid point Yukon. The root voles (Microtus oeconomus) are undoubtedly an important food source, and in some places in SE Alaska, the red-backs (Myodes rutilus) and the long-tailed voles (Microtus longicaudus) can be important. However, there are major islands in SE that don't have long-tailed or red-backed voles, and deer mice (Peromyscus) become an important food source. I remember in '02 or '03 a biologist tried to shut down the marten season because of a failure in the long-tailed vole population, and he wanted this closure even on two major islands that didn't even have long-tails, and the marten population was just fine. It appears that the deer mice are not negatively influenced by the high levels of precipitation like the voles. Even in the interior, however, I think that rain is okay for the voles, unless it is sufficient to negate the insulative value of the snow, and it is followed by severe cold. Then, it seems, vole populations are hosed.

Again, T4E could probably shed light on the role of voles in the diet of SE marten.

Jack

On the prairies the deer mice Peromyscus do not travel when the temps fall below -10*c. They go into a sleep period much like hibernationor tubor till it get to zero for a few days. Their denning areas seem to be cavities in trees, so you need some root rot in the jack pine trees to start these cavities ( Armillaria or Annosum root rot ?)

Maybe 10 years ago, I examined stomach contents of all the marten I took, (did it for 2 years, actually).
At that time, I was trapping a valley that was about 2-1/2 miles long, and went from sea level to about 800'. A small stream that had no fish, (a 50' vertical waterfall is about 200 yards from the sea), so not even an odd lost salmon.
I am a conibear guy, so whatever is in the stomach at capture is there at autopsy. Every single marten had a gut full of small, thin whitish worms. A clump of fur here and there, but the worms were in all stomachs, some with dozens.
I forget the name of the worm, but I sent a picture to Ken, who identified them right off. Some research showed that fish is the vector, so I have to assume that at some point the marten made the 3 mile migration to the nearest salmon stream. ALL of them, and foraged on fish

viking -

I'm assuming that this is the stomach parasite you're referring to. Soboliphyme baturini. Very common in Alaskan marten. Females on the left, males on the right. As far as I can tell, even with extremely heavy infestations, the worms do not constitute a significant mortality factor.



Jack

Yep, that's them. Lovely beasts.

Such great educational info , everyone....love learning these things. Thank you all. And thank you T4E , we all appreciate your input very much and your time to share your decades of experience . Everyone appreciates you and values your input.

N50, no one has ever mentioned the time of year from the conifer ends on that picture -great observation ! Thanks Mad Mike, and Scooter, love that taxi mount ! Especially like the top marten on the axe handle. What a perfect setting idea !

Please carry on, I am really enjoying this subject .....worms.....maybe not

Oh boy, I can tell I'm never going to be able to keep up with input on this thread. Just got off the line, and currently trying to thaw out/ warm up. 3 buckets of marten to skin tonight.......
Rain alone isn't much of an issue, in my estimation. It's when it comes in conjunction with other issues (snow depth, lack of snow, rapid cold snap afterward) etc. that it can create trouble for marten and prey species. Vole tunnels get saturated, and freeze solid = bad news for the voles!

I've mentioned in past threads on here, and both Y254 and Oh Snap mentioned similar observations, of what I refer to as "elevational density", my own made up term. At times, marten will move up or down slope, due to weather changes, snow, rain, wind, temperature inversions, seasonal dietary changes, etc. So as you are trying to manage your line, these smaller "migrations" up or down slope, can make it appear there are more, or less marten in the area, than there actually are. In SE especially, I always theorized more marten travel up in the higher elevations, when snow is falling up there, that is coming down as rain at sea level. As winter progresses, and snow line reaches the beaches, more marten seem to show up in the lower elevations. There are always exceptions to every rule. As W17 said, and I say the same thing, the more I "discover" the more questions these newer discoveries raise! I never get ahead on the questions, as the answers seem few and far between, in comparison. Same thing with fisheries, for me, each observation just leads to more questions.....

Like Alaska Viking mentioned earlier, in all regions of the state I've trapped, there seems to be suitable habitat areas, that for no obvious reason, are almost devoid of marten. The strange thing being, not far away, in what appears to be very similar habitat, there can be an abundance of marten. Like others also mentioned, many times I've relocated poor production sets, a matter of 100 yards or less, and had them produce well ever since. I've also had unproductive sets, that haven't produced much for several seasons, suddenly switch gears, and produce well for years??? What changed? Marten traveling a new route?? A few more oddball comments, regarding male/ female kit ratios. I've wondered the same thing as W17, and have always wondered if the males and females may key in on different prey species, during times of abundance, such as males targeting the larger voles, and females targeting Keen's Deer mice and such. I've also always theorized, and observed what I assume to be sibling YOY marten travelling together. I don't know for sure that these are always siblings, they could just be unrelated YOY marten that are travelling/ hunting/ hanging out together.

At some point, I'll try and dig out some of my information from the studies I was involved in here 25+ years ago. Lots of age (cementum analysis), recorded dispersal distances, seasonal diet change, various % of dietary make up for different food sources, etc

A couple other things here. Many times, on the SE islands, I've seen marten up in the alpine, well above tree line, and many seem to be hunting ptarmigan, and raiding ptarmigan nests for eggs/ chicks.

The voles in SE tend to be pretty prolific, at times, and the tidal grass flats in the heads of bays will be criss-crossed with tunnels/ runs, during high abundance years. I've watched many (mainly male) marten out on open grass flats, in Spring, actively "mousing", pouncing up, and coming down like foxes do, while catching these voles. When higher tides hit, these voles will get flooded out of their tunnels, and be swimming all over the flats. While waterfowl hunting in the Fall, when the big Fall tides hit, I've seen dozens and dozens, swimming for higher ground, looking just like a little muskrat. Rain, moisture, tidal inundation, alone don't seem to cause them much harm, I think it's probably much harder on them, when there is a rain, and then long term severe cold follows. Either forming an impenetrable crust, freezing tunnels/ runs solid, encapsulating their food supply in ice, etc......???

Here is a participatory activity for everyone trapping at least moderate numbers of marten. I don't want to tell you my own long term observations, so as not to skew your own perception/ interpretation. Simply keep track of your male/ female catch ratio, during the different lunar phases, throughout the course of the next season or two. I used to hang a calendar, with the moon phases printed on it, in the fur shed, next to my skinning area, then record the number of males/ females, YOY/ adult, etc, on the calendar, while skinning that night. After a while, it seemed certain patterns emerged.......

Another thing no one has mentioned yet, what role do larger kills (ie. wolf, bear, lynx, fox caches or kills) that marten can scavenge play in overall survival?? Is an abundance of larger predators advantageous to marten (scraps to scavenge)?? I know on the coast, both marten and mink will always hit up otter den sites for the fish/ crab , etc leftovers. I would think some of those Fall moose kills, that bears have killed and covered up with sticks/ leaves, that I've flown over in the interior, would be a pretty good winter food source for marten??

I had a trail camera set on a bait several years ago, and got a picture of what I thought looked like a Kangaroo Rat, of all things. It was snacking on salmon scraps. According to the camera, about 30 minutes later, a very large mink showed up. Didn't touch the salmon. Just sniffed around, and loped off.
I assumed it was a deer mouse?
I see small mice and shrews scamper out of my wolverine cubbies pretty regularly, but have yet to lay eyes on these other "jumpers".

Just my opinion......I have always thought that having wolves on my line benefits all creatures great & small. Even though the birds will clean up the majority of biomass on a dead moose, everything else gets a better meal at the margins. I would think that beach habitats with high fat carcasses would be utopia for furbearers

On the worms: S.bats as Gulo likes to abbreviate them.........what surprised me when removing them and counting /sexing them, was that some marten had a few, some had very high numbers but many had none at all. These were pretty much in the same habitat. I would have expected all of them to be carrying some degree of infestation.

I never took the time to correlate worm numbers with marten age. Maybe that is a factor.

Again, thanks T4E. I've never tried to correlate moon phases with marten catch ratios. I'll keep better notes on that. However, my marginal marten area down here will be pretty worthless as far as science goes, I just don't get very many here in the sagebrush. A couple pages back, I did hit on what I consider an extremely important food source in beach-killed deer in SE Alaska and the possibility of these same bonanzas in interior in the form of dead caribou/moose. I have no doubt that this food source in SE (beach-dead deer) has a great influence on neonate survival and probably lactating female survival.

alaska viking - I'm guessing your kangaroo rat was probably one of two species of jumping mice that are in Alaska. They look like a miniature version of the 'roo rats. The western jumping mouse (Zapus princeps) has been recorded fairly common in extreme southeast Alaska mainland, and as far north as Taku Inlet. The meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius) is reasonably common throughout mainland Alaska as far north as the Yukon, with a few scant records for SE as well. So one or the other of the species could be what you saw on your trail cam.

white17 - I looked extensively at more than 3000 marten stomachs trying to correlate parasite loads by sex and age. Without going into boring detail, the adult marten had higher loads than the yoy. No statistical difference between males and females in any age class.

Jack

Not to redirect this thread but I want to mention again about things like waves and vertical migrations.

In the fall of 1978 I was trapping at a spot Gulo refers to as Plastic Lake. T4E will know it as the head waters of the river he used to trap with PS.

Anyway, the place was lousy with yellow cheek voles, red fox, caribou, and a respectable marten population. There were no hares at all. UNTIL one night around mid December substantial numbers showed up at lake level. Just for grins I back tracked them a bit and they all seem to have originated at the highest terrain around.. and that wasn't all that much higher than the lake. Maybe a few hundred feet. I don't know whether it was temperature or snow depth induced.

How about the spawned out salmon carcases that get washed up over the steams banks during fall storms as protein resources.
With more work in hair DNA and food source background this should come out.

those waterfalls don't overlook what a mountain whitefish can climb to the upper reaches of that stream been my experience.

Zapus hudsonius from my experience in Manitoba is hibernating from 10 Sept to 1 May so not readily available as a food source.

Can I throw another bone out to chew on ?
You guys can deal with the internal, my focus is external parasites.
So I wash and Downey my marten in 3 cycles to get the fleas and fur mites and louse off them. This gets run through a 100 mesh/ inch screens and picked for the external parasites.
I have a source of white terry cloth towels and roll the animals up, just to look for any ticks that may become detached. ( Ixodes usually do not because they cement their mouth pieces in)
the taninc acid staining on those towels is great,
I wonder how much in colour grading goes down as there is a lighter coloured marten in the end when they are dry. Dark brown haired remain the same but only 1 in 10 in my sampling.

Gulo, the leggy mouse was about 30 miles north of Taku, so not sure. I have the pics, somewhere.
I was so interested in the worms at the time, I had a fellow trapper who trapped about 10 miles away, but across 3 large river systems do a few autopsies. Of course, he found the same infestations. But as you stated, they don't appear to be detrimental to the marten. Weird.
As for external parasites, I first started finding fleas on both marten and the odd mink about 10 years ago, here. Not loads of them, but almost always a few on marten, and occasionally on mink.

I enjoy this topic, so I don't mean to derail it.
But, regarding "jumping mice". I once saw a long-tailed jumping mouse on Adak Island. I mentioned it to the local USFWS biologist and she said that was impossible since they don't live on the island. I know exactly what I saw. But I guess she knows best, after all she is a government employee.
Those kinds of attitudes really irk me; no scientific curiousity whatsoever.

^^^^^^^
I hadn't thought of the Adak jumping mouse in years. However, just after writting the post above I came to the realization after all these years why there are probably no jumping mice on adak Island.
This was about 15 years ago, they were just starting a major Norway rat eradication/poisoning program on the island. I imagine the last thing they wanted someone to do was to discover and endemic rodent living on the island.
It wouldn't surprise me if they knew they live there.

Oh man... Talk about overstimulation of my weak frontal lobe. I've got a list of tasks for today that is nearly a mile long, and I make the mistake of opening this thread...

I hope Rick isn't too disappointed in the way we've redirected his question....

I can't believe it took somebody from Manitoba to bring up Salmon?

Worked one fall on a salmon run on an island on the Queen Charotte's or should say Haida Gwaii on a chum salmon study. Entomologist do get around to different places.
Those costal marten there were sure different than what we have in Manitoba.
Southern/eastern Manitoba was only re-populated with marten come 1980 or so. RE-introduction into the Peace Gardens has them in western Manitoba right into eastern Sask and ND now

Jack this had been very interesting all good info they are logging like crazy here making our big forest looking more like the Dakotas every year I know that’s not helping might help with the bobcat population in a few years with the rabbits in the new growth poplar

Since you mentioned the hair mites. Why are they so thick on the legs? Or do they migrate there after the marten dies?

At the distinct risk of further derailing this train, I will put forth my recent observations concerning a "marginal" marten population I'm currently exploiting. This is mainly in an effort to highlight what T4E mentioned about us (those involved with this thread) having very diverse populations and systems in which we operate.

Currently, and for the past 13 years, I live in a desert. Somewhere around 12 inches of moisture annually. Relatively high elevation; my house is in the bottom at 5000'. Topography is relatively steep, grading up to the continental divide at 7500-10,000' only 3-5 miles to the east. Because of access, I only trap marten in the lower elevations. Consequently, it's what I would consider poor marten habitat. Actually, I wouldn't consider it marten habitat at all. Open sagebrush/bunchgrass hills. In the drainages there are willows, cottonwoods and occasional copses of Douglas fir (north slopes only). Early on, I was astounded that marten existed here at all. In 13 years, my wife and I have taken 122 marten from along these riparian corridors, surrounded by sagebrush. Many places we catch marten, one cannot see a conifer, even to the horizon. Of these 122 marten, we have caught 2 adult females. TWO! Eleven adult males, and 109 yoy (mostly males). Therefore, I'm looking at this "population" as a dispersal system only. I suspect we could take every marten out and not really affect the dynamics, very much unlike any other system I've ever seen or heard of. I'm convinced additional dispersers (from the divide higher up that is "good" marten habitat) would re-populate these stringers of habitat annually. There are good numbers of voles and mice along these riparian travel routes.

I'm pretty familiar with other marten systems (and have trapped many diverse areas throughout my life), and have never heard of anything like I have here. Anybody else have a similar anomaly?

Jack

I am really enjoying this thread. So many contributing with a lot of information.

A couple of discussions I would like to hear comments on is what effect was there on marten when we had an October 20 season start and anyone experience canabalism.

Boy your glasses are a lot better than mine and Gulo's. mites are 0.25 mm across so probably what you are seeing is lice > 1 to 1.5 mm, and if they jump when you blow some CO2 on them they are fleas. Some species of fleas are warm blooded so when the animal cools they go to the extremities. Several species of fleas are winter host fleas ( only have their generations in the winter) so they just stay inside the fur zone. They can freeze and come back to life, something is in their gene pool, few other species of insects that feed on blood can do this. And yes they move there when the marten dies and cools.

Yes Jack they can show up on the bald katush prairie and the only thing to climb is a old fence post, 30 miles from any forest, and with the way farming is going now with the big farms holdings is the 2 acre shelter belt farm steads get leveled for more crop land.

There are 3 life stages of a tick species on this marten. There is an adult in the bottom right corner, the other medium sized ones are larvae, and the small dots are the 6 legged nymphs. This tick species does not have a male described so we hope a larvae to molt to one. The bag has not been washed for any mites or lice yet since the University is closed to researchers to work due to covid. The ticks name is Ixodes gregory named after a famous tick expert in Canada

Only reason I can see them( ADFG said mites) is they migrate right out to the end of the hairs. Like somebody salted their legs.

Cannibalism is normal here. Bigger problem when it is warm and the marten easily chewed. More common, is what I call territorial biting. Neck and legs.

Speaking of Cannibalism-I see that in certain years and only when marten populations are high.A marten will only cannibalize another marten before it freezes solid is my experience.
A couple years ago I came across a marten head in the 120,and noticed marten tracks and drag marks in the snow,The cannibal had severed the body of the marten from the head in the trap and dragged the severed body about 30 meters to a hole under some blowdowns(a cache for later).marten often like to cache chunks of bait here and there so they can "hole up with a bone" when the weather gets extreme.
I may have a couple pics related.

1-Scene of the crime
2-The evidence-drag trail and tracks of the culprit.
3-Corpus delecti.





In severing the body from the head to cache,the marten actually consumed about an inch and a half of the entire neck.
When I sewed it back together the pelt looked a bit stubby.

I have seen those too but specifically on wolverine. So small that I was sure they were really there. But once the sun got to the right angle I could see the critter was covered with them, Literally thousands. No bigger than the dot at the end of this sentence. Definitely smaller than the diameter of the hair they were perched upon.

I have had a few cannibalism issues but seems like they were always early in the season and with high populations.

Mites, ticks, lice and fleas.....oh my ! UGH.....poor marten .....

I had no idea they collected so many varmints on them, not counting the ones inside. I'm happy they keep such good fur texture under those sappy conditions. And, happy that trappers don't suffer from those same things in dealing with the marten they catch. At least I haven't heard of anyone enduring trouble from them.

I wonder how much of those things they get from the voles , mice, etc they catch ? If they all share the same varmints....

Jack, you are indeed in a special environment for marten . I'm glad you have them there to enjoy and study.

inside thread

My experience with cannibalism is much like Boco's. I've seen some years where the only way to prevent it was a daily trap check, and I would still lose some.

Thank you N50....I thought they got those things from the voles and mice.

What? marten in North Dakota? I can't picture marten habitat in ND, what does that look like?
And marten in sage brush in Idaho??
The only thing even remotely similar that I've seen is marten in the Brooks range where the only thing resembling a tree for miles is a thin strip of willows along the riparian areas.

Uh Oh! It is raining!

Pretty normal every winter. Hard for that rain to get through the 4 foot snow pack to kill my voles.

Takes a lot of rain to even make a good crust. I love rain in the winter. Beats another 2 foot of snow.

When your on a dying mouse you get one chance....jump. Or be eaten.
As for what the life cycles in marten nest are I don't know what fleas can continue. This tick species is thought to cycle in the nest.

As for ND maybe someone from there can chime in. The RTL trappers in the Peace Gardens Canadian side do take most of their allotted 10 animals. The do travel along the Pembina River and are found all along the Red River and our farm is 6 miles from the boarder and they are there.

I've seen lots of cannibalism, and the territorial biting like Dirt mentioned. Usually the territorial biting seems to be adult male, running down the line, biting the neck, chest, thorax of any marten hanging in sets, I presume making sure they are dead. I've often followed their wake of destruction (tracks), to eventually find them caught further down the line. It can be really irritating, as all those little holes from chewing are pretty hard to sew up. They seem to really go after the vitals (heart, lungs) and the neck in my experience. Similar to this one...




At one point, I think on here we hashed out the role of salmon/ fish in the dietary make up of marten. To the extent of some believing scavenged salmon carcasses, whether dead spawned out carcasses, or bear left overs that have been discarded further back from the stream side, do certainly make up a substantial part of the diet of marten seasonally. Further bunny trails led to discussions on premature tooth wear, for coastal marten, due to sand, grit in these scavenged fish wearing out teeth prematurely, etc. etc. For certain, coastal marten will absolutely utilize the intertidal zone, for a consistent food source, much the same as mink do. Like the old saying around here goes, "when the tides out, the table is set" meaning there is always something edible available. I find all sorts of larger sized things for marten to scavenge as well, such as dead seals, whales, porpoise, skates, halibut, octopus, etc. Many of these larger fish seem to be kills that Stellar Sea Lions abandon, after feeding on partially. Sea lions eat large prey by biting down hard, then shaking vigorously, until the chunk in their mouth tears loose, and the rest of the prey species goes flying through the air. They then gulp this bite down, swim over to the prey and repeat. Apparently, they occasionally get full, before finishing, or get distracted, because I often find partially consumed prey from them on the beaches.

As to the parasites...... I would say virtually every marten I have skinned in SE has been loaded with dozens of fleas, and hundreds or thousands of mites. I've never found a tick on any. The fleas do bite some people, but apparently not me, because I've had them crawling all over me, in my beard, etc, and never been bit. Maybe it's a blood type thing, but probably I just taste as bad as I smell, during trapping season I tend to have an aura of skunk scent...... The interior areas (Central all the way down towards the Toklat River), and SW Alaska areas I've trapped, fleas/ mites were nowhere near as common as SE.

I would surmise in extreme cases of infestation, it could certainly be fatal, if for no other reason due to the parasites causing under fur damage, thus the fur losing some of its insulation value, and requiring more calorie burn, for the marten to stay warm. Similar to one of my other crazy theories on why SE marten seem to have a preponderance of pitch, compared to those from colder climates, a topic I think I PM'ed a bit with Gulo about. Whether SE marten acquire more pitch due to warmer weather, thus softer pitch, are just less careful about acquiring it, or just more tolerant, since they aren't dealing with -30F to -60F temperature like they would in the interior. For whatever reason, I always find my interior marten lines produced much less pitched marten. My theory there, was just simply based on my curiosity as to how many extra calories a marten would have to burn, to maintain body temperature, with large areas of fur at a reduced insulation value, due to pitch mats. Parasites can have some pretty obvious affects on marten....





Then sometimes, you just find the oddball stuff that is just so fun to look at....

WTH is that ?? Is that on a wolverine hide ?


T4E: in the picture of the marten suffering territorial bites above............... Do you find that the hair retains some sort of slimy saliva feel and sort of clumps where he has been bitten ?

W17,
No, that is on a marten skin.... Not sure what it was??? It went in the carcass tubs, while busy skinning, and I forgot to remove it for further inspection, before I got rid of them.

I just wash those marten, that have the saliva/ blood on them.

These ones must have been infested with something?

I sent one like that to NAFA in 2013. ( Generally I don't send them ) and got $90.

I don't ever recall having a marten eaten by another marten, but have had quite a few eaten by lynx with only the head left in the trap. Also have had a few eaten by fisher. Normally catch the culprit on the next check. I did start catching doubles in marten when I was using 330 size boxes for lynx which eventually led me to start doubling up my marten sets.

Have had marten eaten by fisher on a few occasions-it is unmistakeable its a fisher from the amount of sign and scraps left at the site.
Like Gibb-always catch it next run.
Never had a marten eaten by lynx that I can remember,but have had a few eaten by fox.After installing snares behind the marten boxes and on the walk ins and gang setting snares using jackpots,predation was all but eliminated and multiple catches are not at all uncommon.

thanks !!

Dirt,
I almost always shipped my junk/ damaged fur, what else was I going to do with it, I figured. I always seem to have a few in the mix, every season, that look like those you displayed. 2013 was a good year to ship junk...... I had some partial marten (cannibalized), that sold at higher levels than many years top lot. I remember at least 1 that graded PCS w/tails, so apparently the rear half of a marten, that brought $132. Lots of the damaged junk was over $100, and almost every male was over $200. Still, those are a couple ugly looking marten you posted, and looks like flea, lice or mite damage to me?? Sometimes, the damage is at least partially due to the animal scratching at the irritation/ itch.

Maybe Northof50 or Gulo can give us more info on the external parasites?? Northof50 has mentioned the ticks he finds on marten, and like I mentioned, I've never observed ticks, just an abundance of fleas and mites. I'm curious if Northof50 or Gulo have any photos to show the skin side of a marten, where a tick has been attached? Is the location visible, from the inside of the skin, so it would be obvious while fleshing? I'm thinking it would be pretty apparent? Also, maybe one or both of you know the answer to this.... I've always noticed when brushing/ combing flea infested marten, there are often little loose tufts of fur, scattered around on the pelt, that are already loose. Maybe an area the size of a pinhead, or a bit bigger. They show up when brushing, and can be picked out of the pelt then. I've always called them "flea nests", and assumed they come from the fleas feeding locations? Is this in any way accurate? It's always been my interpretation at least.....

gibb, I went to multiple sets per location long, long ago. Partially for this reason, but also to increase efficiency. I can use half as much bait, fuel, and double my trap nights, with two sets, and minimize cannibalism. Some really good locations get as many as 4 sets. My rationale is simply to harvest as quickly, and efficiently as possible, then move on. This can be achieved by checking less times, to equal the same number of trap nights, just by simply adding a trap, or multiple traps. I generally hesitate to advise this on here though, as I fear many would then simply overharvest, by leaving these sets to long, at that location. I think it's always best to err on the side of being overly conservative, with the resource, than over exploitive, especially with marten. That being said, you definitely can't piggybank marten until next season either, so if you have an abundance, you can certainly take them, with minimal impact. It's the ability to understand how many to take, from each stretch of line, that takes years of experience to learn, and realizing that each line is different, and production varies from year to year. I don't know how many cannibalized marten I experienced, before the light bulb finally went off, and I made more sets per location, but it was probably in the hundreds. I have MUCH fewer issues now, with both cannibalized and territorial chewing. I think maybe I sent you my "Marten Strongbox", double box design? It has maximized efficiency for me, from years of tuning up speed and production on my line. More sets run, faster, and quickly relocated, equals more fur.......

I also make at least 2 sets per trap location. About 10 years ago, I got to run a friends line with him, and every stop he had multiple boxes with-in sight of each other.
I asked him about it, (though it was clear it worked, with multiple marten hanging in close proximity to one another).
He said something to the effect of, "If it's worth one set, it's worth at least two".
I have been doing it since, and can't count how many times I found multiple catches, ermine in one, mink in another, and a marten in yet another.

skin side 1 December coyote.
This picture I have shared before. It is on a coyote and show the ECM around a Lymes disease infection area, ( the tick was checked at CDC Winnipeg lab as positive) Several other diseases were tested for but not at liberty to say.
The tick head's mouth piece has been touched with the scraping knife, it shows as a white dot in the middle of the forceps. The mouth pieces are usually black on the outside.
The ticks on the marten have all been where they cant reach closely, nap and ears and the tips of the ears( picture coming)

The fleas are not nested homesteading on the marten as you think. They are raising their larvae in the nest material probably living off the duff or dried shed skin.

lets give trapped4ever some time off to catch up.

Due to shipping material that can be classified as bio-hazard shall post links later where interested people can send to researchers in Canada and the USA external parasites, ticks and fleas and lice. The only researcher on fur mites is swamped,( Univ Alberta) and she has a lifetime worth to deal with. One of the problems these researchers have right now is getting medium and the micropipettes since it is the same stuff as used for covid sampling

This is a nymph on the inside of the ear, there is probably a larvae on the outside edge of the ear in the white hair - probably the same length as hair. That funny little fold in the ear usually has some in it as well.
Above the yellow pencil is another but not in focus in the crease of hair.

The most common thing I see on marten is a yellowish waxy looking thing about half the size of a rice grain. Most always in the ears and heavy fur on the feet....but sometimes I have seen them crawl out from under the eyelids.

They give me the creeps !

Rice-A-Roni will never be the same.

Quote from White:
Just based on the tooth aging that Gulo did from my line, I have to conclude that marten, in a trapped population, do not grow to old age.

Since no one ever supplies skulls/teeth from untrapped populations, how do you know this to be different than untrapped populations?

And, back to this from Gulo: But, first and foremost, it is the voles that "run the system".

And another quote from Gulo: In hindsight, it would have been much smarter and better for all of us if we'd had a self-imposed moratorium for a year or two on marten; let the population recover, then enjoy the fruits of our "management".
Then this from T4E: The next couple years after seeing this scenario, it is imperative to curb trapping efforts, or you can delay the recovery, if you harvest your line to heavily.

So I ask, which is it, food, or trapping, that controls marten populations?

Alaska has huge expanses of wilderness with much of it being marten habitat. Obviously some areas better then others. If trapping controls an areas population, then there should be huge areas in this state with high marten numbers if a trapper can just get to them. In my experience this isn't true. An untrapped area can be just as devoid of marten as a heavily trapped area. In untrapped areas, marten numbers change as the habitat/food changes. The same must happen in trapped areas.

I'm not going to say that trapping never has any effect on an areas marten. But there are so many other variables effecting marten that trapping can't be the single biggest effect year after year.

One more item...........in interior Alaska, there is one more thing that effects marten................FIRE.

Just jumped back in tonight and haven't read all 8 pages yet.

Martentrapper better take a antihistamine before you read the back 8 pages. It will settle down the flea bites and the itching

martentrapper,

Honestly, both trapping and food supply will obviously affect the overall marten populations, along with a multitude of other factors, both current and historical, for example weather conditions, fires, topography, vegetation/ soil types, moisture, large scale logging, predation, disease?, parasites?, starvation, poison, etc. etc. countless variables........

I think like I've said before, you always have to look at the "big picture" of the overall area you are trapping. Refugia? Adjacent trapping areas? How many marten are realistically available (carrying capacity), for the region you want to trap, and of those, how many can you safely harvest, without to drastically affecting the number that would have died of natural causes, whether you trapped the area or not? So many scenarios and big picture variabilities, these are impossible questions to answer. I have stated before on here, and I'll say it again, in areas that have proper surrounding refugia, I have many times experienced marten populations that continue to climb, no matter how many I trap, for 4-6 year stretches. When the populations are going down, there are entire drainages I can leave fallow for years, and the numbers (tracks) will continue to decrease, along with everywhere else on the line, so I'm certainly not the one driving those numbers down, and no one else is trapping ANYWHERE near these drainages, so it is a nature induced decline. Now, if there are 20 marten left in that drainage, does me going in and harvesting 18 of them help that population recover?? Certainly not!! Does it mean those 20 will survive and bear young if I don't? Nope, but it is one variable I CAN control. I try to manage as conservatively as possible, with the exception of those years, when I'm seeing those large numbers of adult males, that seem to be cannibalizing (starving) every marten they encounter, and the vast majority of the harvest is older adult males, then I know they are going down hard.

I agree, you are absolutely right, untrapped areas that are good habitat, do not automatically mean good marten numbers. Over the whole range of my trapping career, I've found if I'm in good habitat, with proper refugia and no close competition, when numbers are climbing, my trapping seems to have pretty minimal effect, as both the untrapped, and trapped drainages seem to be holding similar densities, when next season rolls around ( just judging by sign, so some margin of error is possible). Conversely, when populations are falling, I've found drainages left fallow, decrease as rapidly, and possibly faster, than the rest of my line I'm trapping, in the same season. Again, this seems to be a natural decline, not induced by human activity/ trapping.

My experience with fires in the interior, with the right soil types, 3-5 years after a fire, once the grass growth exploded, so did the microtines, as long as there was some proper refugia nearby, to provide outmigration. Marten numbers in some burns went considerably higher than they had traditionally been, 5-6 years after a fire. Not all burn areas seem to bounce back the same though. I would assume depending upon the overall size of the burn, how hot of a burn (crown fire, brush& grass too??), soil type, other variables that might effect regrowth of vegetation, sunlight, moisture, soil acidity, etc.etc. Always just more variables and questions!!!

I doubt if any of my rambling nonsense has been very helpful, but if you are asking statewide, REALLY BIG PICTURE, I would say trapping pressure doesn't contribute MUCH to the population swings of marten, except in the areas of dense human populations, which tend to lead to areas of over trapping. The majority of marten range in the state never sees a trap. I would even venture to guess (pure speculation) that areas with proper trapping management, usually will long term produce more YOY marten, than areas that go untrapped, for decades, as proper trapping management often seems to lessen the peaks and valleys of prey species left to natural cycles (more consistent, stable production). This doesn't mean trapping low populations, or overharvesting, won't have even worse consequences than an untrapped populations' low point, of a natural cycle. So once again, I tend to pull back on the ONE variable I CAN control, when I think the situation warrants.


Northof50,

Thanks for the pictures and comments. I can supply as many external parasites as you care to examine!! I stated earlier, most marten here have dozens of fleas, but I wouldn't be surprised, if they were all removed, to find the number in the hundreds. I know as I brush the marten before skinning, the fleas are swarming all over, trying to get away, and jumping off onto the floor, table, etc. My little rolling table, next to where I skin, is literally crawling with them, most nights.

W17,

This isn't to far from "Plastic Lake". Haven't been up there for 12 or 13 years now. Marten populations doing OK in that region these days? Sure wish I could have that weather, down here!! Suffered through 13" of rain in 36 hours, for the first 2 days of trapping season, this year!

If you are counting on refugia to repopulate the area you trapped, then doesn't that imply the refugia has a higher marten population since it was not trapped?

The dispersal will be from the higher density area to the lower density area. We created a vacuum.

"Your area, reasonably managed, is providing dispersing marten into Goober's line, but his area is hammered, and it's contributing no dispersers back your way. Get enough Goobers around you, and it matters little how well you manage your line. "

Goober needs me to provide his marten.

In the southeast Yukon where I've trapped for the last 30 years trapping has no effect on the population. Im not sure that you could over-trap an area if you tried. The registered line system ensures no competition from other trappers and the traplines are just to big. My trapline is just over 1200 sq miles. My trail system basically goes right up the center with a few trails shooting off into another drainage here and there. This leaves the vast majority of the line as a refuge so I am always getting some dispersal. My closest neighbour is my daughters line 30-miles to the east. The trapline to the north, has been trapped very little over the last 30years and the lines to the south, and west have never been trapped in my lifetime. I keep my sets out longer than others have described to no ill effect.

Biggest down fall of the Yukon registered traplines is the lack of trapping, has been an issue there for 30 years at least. Dave do you still see years of low numbers?

Good point Mike. The reason I said that is that one individual that was 14 years old was either a resident or an immigrant from elsewhere. I "assumed" he was from elsewhere because no other individuals came even close to his age. It could be that he had just never encountered a trap before. BUT, if that's the case then it would be reasonable to think there are others like him in the population. I doubt that's the case but it is possible.

Looking back at the records I have, I see that after trapping that line for 15 years I had one female and one male that were 8 years old. Five years later I had one female that was seven and one female that was five years old.
I think it's not unreasonable to think those individuals came from outside the trapped area. Maybe not though

That sounds like awful weather!! Fortunately we don't get rain very often but the wind can be formidable, especially around Plastic Lake !! Nothing like yours of course !

Populations are still grim !

We did see widespread decline like Ken mentioned in the beginning of this thread, but I wouldnt say the lack of trapping has hurt the marten population. I havent seen anything to suggest that anyway. Some ares always produce well and others seldom do. The one area I mentioned earlier that has more marten sign than anywhere Ive ever been has to my knowledge never been trapped. If you are good on google earth have a look at the Dendale Lake area in the extreme southeast. Thats the area Im talking about.

Another area that has always produced extremely well is a trapline north of Watson. Over the last 30 years that Ive been in the area that line has consistently produced 200-300 marten. The amazing thing is it produces those numbers with only about 20 miles of trail. Ive hunted the area before and its right in the middle of the mountains. My trapline has always been known as a consistent producer as well. The lakes, rivers and creeks make for a very rich ecosystem with a pretty reliable food source.

Here is a picture of my boundaries. My main
trails run pretty much straight up the lakes.

Always have loved topo maps. Studied them for years . Even taken my pencils and shaded them in , as late sun on the ranges.

The many variables in changes, food, weather, everything together, shows me the admirable versatility and intimate knowledge of the land pulse that make trappers such amazing qualified educators.

I keep thinking, the summary of it all, like an accomplished group of very skilled musicians , who in the moment can change directions at any time to compensate with versatile improvisations unplanned and unforeseen.

Changing plans at any time they see the land pulse changing direction.

Such great melding in experience from everyone here.

As for the lice and fleas.....even if they didn't bite or infect humans, I would just have to have a system for me to not see or feel them on me...UGH .......

Just for you Sharon are you not glad this guy is under a microscope camera.
M. ermine washed hair makes them glossy

Marten and ermine fleas that I've seen are wimpy. Slow and easy to crush. Lynx fleas are a lot faster and tougher. All of them are nasty.

Out of all the marten I've caught, mostly in the Nowitna drainage, I rarely see fleas. Ocaisionally have seen a skinny bug, longer than thicker, crawl out of the fur but nothing in any numbers. I did once shoot a mink that had a thousand white fleas crawl to the end of each guard hair a couple hours after it died. This wasn't on the Nowitna tho. Also have caught marten just outside of Unalakleet. Don't recall much for fleas on them. I'll admit I never looked much at ears but must have seen enough that I would have noticed parasites.

N50.....UGH !!!!!!!

I am so sensitive to feel , even a hint felt by me results in action !

I do it with deer and elk I butcher, looking out for them.

Thank you for the education, I need that to be informed.

As they say; in the conservations about fleas and ticks;
Stimulating tactile sense...butt...nothing to do with sex.

Dirt,
I feel for you, being surrounded by "Goobers". I would say, to answer the question I think you are asking, ask yourself a few things. Is the carrying capacity of your refugia at a higher or lower population density than the area of line you are trapping?? You can certainly have outmigration from refugia at either higher, or lower population densities than the area of line you are trapping. This isn't uncommon, going either direction. If an area of "better ground" comes open, due to you thinning out the higher carrying capacity region, why wouldn't a marten from a less abundant region relocate to the now free range in the land of milk & honey? Obviously, the circumstances you laid out, by creating a vacuum, you can also draw marten in from areas of higher population density too, but it's not always the case. I know around my line, I have many areas of refugia, at both higher and lower population densities than my line is. Higher density areas are higher density for a reason, right?? Conditions are obviously optimal for marten survival, or they wouldn't stick around.

Another thing to consider, a regions carrying capacity can change, throughout the year, since, for example, microtine populations can explode, in short order. Most females of the vole species reach sexual maturity within 2 weeks of birth. Voles gestation periods are generally somewhere in the 16-24 day range, so they can be birthing their own litters, a month after they themselves are born. With an average litter sizes of 5-8, it's easy to see how a population can expand exponentially, quite rapidly. When this occurs, in many instances, this is going to increase carrying capacity, and due to the marten having a much slower lag in reproductively being able to capitalize on this new found food source, this new vole bonanza could instigate a scenario of marten being drawn from surrounding areas of both lower, and higher population densities. Sometimes I talk in a circle, until I wind up with my foot in my mouth, so maybe my "logic" isn't really making sense to anybody but me????HA!

Makes sense to me !

The microtine population can change from year to year. Remember when doing live small mammal live trapping in a Lymes tick reproducing area from a 70% trap night capture ( 200x5=1000 trap nights) to 0.001 rate when you took out the shrew captures ( they are much longer life cycles) from one year to the next. That is one reason the tick can wait around a couple of years till it does get a blood meal to continue it's cycle, so a 5 year cycle for some Ixodes is normal.

Boreal ecology is understudied to say it simply.

I've always been a bit skeptical when carrying capacity is referred to. The whole idea bothers me. In my opinion, K (carrying capacity) can, and does, change daily. For red-backed voles, for example, an ice storm in February might change K overnight, from a habitat that can support 200 individuals per acre, to a habitat that supports 2. The whole idea is fraught with pitfalls. Is it the maximum number of individuals that an area can sustain over the course of a year? Well, because of weather vagaries, each year is different. Is it some percentage of that maximum, allowing for stochastic events? Again, that percentage varies. On the other hand...

Despite what scientists say, K (for whatever species) is a fleeting number. By the time that number has been arrived at with any scientific certainty, it has changed.

Sorry for the monkey wrench.

Jack

Real life scenario.

2012 Scarce marten sign. Voles about average. Slow trapping. Harvest sample 70% female. 14% YOY (male and female)

Okay food source. Complete recruitment failure.

Two options:

1.Keep killing adult females

2. Stop killing adult females, so they may survive to try again.

And in 2012 that was when they measure marten in C notes so it was a hard choice.

Gulo,
DING! DING! DING!!! I say you win!! You got to the point I've been trying to make!! Carrying capacity is constantly changing, due to an infinite number of variables. Changes in food sources, weather, snow pack, rain, cold, trapping pressure (you, or surrounding trappers), etc.etc.etc. As many variables as possible need to be considered, then an educated decision (best guess) needs to be made as to whether or not to trap a particular line, and how many to harvest. This can be when all the rules of thumb you, and others have put forward, YOY to adult female catch ratios, trying to minimize harvest of females, comes in handy......

Dirt, That is certainly an "odd" sample, if I understand your numbers correctly, it sounds like your population was mostly adult females, with very few adult males, or YOY males? I've never seen a population similar to those %'s. I wonder if your males were relocating, or were just trapped off, due to higher trapping pressure around you?

Also, just because there is a good or even great food source, that doesn't mean marten will be in an area. Habitat, weather, trapping pressure, any number of factors may change a regions population density. Like Gulo said, the carrying capacity is constantly in flux, so just because an area once had marten, and there is currently a good food supply there, it doesn't necessarily mean the marten numbers will come back to what they once were, because other variables may have changed. In many cases, trapping pressure, or over harvest, may be an influence. However, other events like forest fires, and logging are a couple obvious, more drastic examples of other influences in population density/ carrying capacity changes. Think about changes in weather patterns, predator numbers, precipitation levels, amount of sunshine vs. overcast days, etc.etc.etc. to many variables to list, that are going to have some effect on that ecosystem.

I agree with you 100%. Marten like any other animal will be wherever the best source of food is. I saw two extreme examples of this when I was trapping up in the Logans years ago. The outfitter that I worked for had his base camp up at about 4500 feet and the cabins were on my trapline. I would overnight there once in awhile so it was handy for me. I would always catch some marten in that valley, but it was never an outstanding area. The only reason I broke the trail out and trapped the area was because it was usually good wolverine country. One winter I got to the cabins and I couldnt believe it, there were marten TRAILS everywhere. It looked like rabbit trails. The trails were so well used you could walk on them. They were spider webbed out in every direction. It turned out someone had left the lids off the food barrels and the marten had found the gold mine. I had a bunch of traps with me so i made a bunch of sets. Every time I would hear a trap go off in the night I would get up and reset it. By morning I had caught 14 marten. I dont remember the ratio, but I do remember that most were large adults.

The exact same thing happened in that same cabin about 5 years later. I hadnt gotten in there that year but the outfitter went in to haul fuel in March. His cabins were in a shambles and there were marten everywhere. In two nights he shot 12 right inside the cabin. Somehow the story got back to the COs and he was actually charged because the season was closed. they got a search warrant and counted the bullet holes in the logs. think it cost him a $200 fine.

Point is, they will stay if they have food, and they will move if they dont. Anyone remember the caribou that drowned up on the Peel a few years back?? They closed the river to paddlers for a few weeks because they counted 45 grizzly bears on a short stretch of river. Same idea.

Perfect example Dave.

Back to the root of the question. If, indeed, marten are dependent on voles for sustaining decent populations, are there things we can do to maintain that food source? Boco, I believe, talked about old-timers that distributed beaver carcasses far and wide to supplement hungry female marten in the early spring. I have no doubt that this helps (as evidenced by the higher marten numbers in the harvest in SE Alaska following a heavy die-off of deer on the beaches). However, supplemental feeding would be a task too large over a broad area. Thinking about this, I'm of the opinion that habitat maintenance (no monster clear-cuts) is our best bet. Wildfires are a mixed blessing, depending on the size of the burn and the regeneration of forests and their resultant microtine inhabitants. I still think, when populations are depressed (for whatever reasons), keeping the harvest of adult female marten to a minimum will shorten the population recovery period, but, is there some reasonable way to ensure high microtine numbers? Not that I am aware of. I'm all ears...

Jack

HAPPY 2021 TO ALL!!!

Yukon sound like early explorers and finding washed up drown bison on the Red River banks and them shooting Plains grizzly bears off of them and plains wolves. Seems that the English guys did not have the stomachs to digest the soupy meat, or at least the " culture in their guts" as the French paddlers had.
off topic, but it brought back in it the Minnesota connection.
Happy 2021 all out there.

The diseases of the microtones is far from being understood what whips out the system so fast in their populations. Look at what happens with the mouse hanti virus some strains are so deadly while others are just background noise.

Thinking about the recent successful reSEARCH and design of mRNA vaccines, I am wondering if maybe it is possible to create a designer drug that will carry information to create better looking female voles. Might increase the birth rate overall ..... Even one more litter per year or slightly larger, more attractive litters would be helpful.

Same thing happened here about 15 years ago. A remote military cabin at an aircraft practice bombing range. Marten got into the camp and at the food and I believe it was about 12 they got between shooting and traps. Of course the problem was not the marten it was the camp. Guys got a bunch of off the books cash.

I am really interested in how you know a "refugia" area, that you aren't trapping, has a higher or lower population than your line.

Well, you can trust me when I tell you, he KNOWS his area intimately! T4E is not an armchair quarterback, but the real deal. 24/7/365. And the area where he lives, while somewhat remote, and pretty vast, is pretty much his own oyster, and has been for a long time.
Couple that with his dedication, curiosity, IQ, and determination, and you get, well, him.
He lives his area, land and sea, every single day.

martentrapper,

On the average year, for the 6 weeks leading up to marten season, I probably average about 150-250 miles (over the course of those 6 weeks), on foot, through my areas of refugia, prospecting the line and surrounding refugia, while hunting, berry picking, fishing, mushroom gathering, etc. I pay attention to all tracks, track densities through prime travel ways, note the number of dropping and what's in them, etc.. You can actually tell at times, when a food source changes or comes in to high abundance and is currently being utilized , when inspecting the droppings. Dietary make up items, like berries, crab apples, fish, and microtines are often able to be discerned from the dropping, by just looking closely at it. Many microtine bones for example, are often visible....The information is out there, a guy just has to learn how, and have the free time, and energy to go gather it.....

Here are a couple pictures from the fur shed tonight, for you Northof50. Not very good quality, but best I could do, without cutting into the skinning time to much. The flea was about 100X and the mite around 200X.

Sharon, is that hat starting to feel itchy ; ) HA!!

Gulo & Y254,
I essentially agree with you both, in MOST scenarios, the marten will be drawn to the best food resource, might be a very few exceptions though. I don't want to go into to many opposing scenarios, at risk of sounding argumentative. I can think of some though.....

I guess my mind often works in a cross between fisheries management strategies and wildlife. The pre-season scouting and assessment is essentially establishing my very rough AI (abundance index), and my catch rates on the first check will show whether or not I'm meeting my GHL (guideline harvest level). See, I never think in normal terms..... HA!!

Trapped4ever thanks, you can see the problems with identifying mites, depending on what life stage they are. As for fleas most of id work is in the male form and shapes and barbs of it's delivery fool. How to explain around filters of the forum sometimes is tough

If I have no recruitment and little incoming dispersal ( which should be YOY) and the previous years I have been harvesting males to females at 60% to 40% rates, why would I have many males in my trapped population. Much less adult males?

My population after trapping and into summer should be primarily females. After recruiting 50/50 males/ females I will add new males to the population.

My male population tends to be young. If I break into new territory they tend to be old.

Being an opportunistic predator and taking in all the variables that occur as trappers we can only take advantage of any present situation at the time we are harvesting. We all know from experience that trapping marten from one year to the next can produce totally different results.
Taking in an ideal harvest of mainly YOY and few adult females trapping only removes the surplus that would either die or in some cases migrate to better locations.
One thing we have not really commented on is price?
How much of a factor does price play into the harvest?

After the last price surge in 2014 I put a lot more effort into my harvesting effort, the next season I set 100 boxes and on first check caught 4 marten, I did not have to sex them to know I was in trouble and wasting my time chasing after marten.
Time is money and not having many marten I had to switch efforts on the fly.
Now with the present market prices again who can afford the time and cost to really go at?

Just another variable that we don't really have much control over.

Price of the resource has to be factored in with the cost of catching.
Trappers that live on their lines and are more efficient harvesters(less expense to produce)and depend on fur income for part of their livelihood may trap more to make up for a drop in per unit price.
No matter which method of management you use-(the spot price of the pelt in any given cycle should not be allowed to harm the resource through mismanagement) keeping a close watch on your adult female to juvenile ratios will be your best indicator of the health of your population.
That said you need to harvest a number of animals to make that determination.
Trapping later in the season will normally produce more adults as the juveniles disperse or have been harvested,also later in the season,in my area traps in or near the older natural successional forest (optimal denning areas) will produce mostly adult females when trapping later(feb).The traditional method that the Cree use to protect their marten is to stop all trapping marten around the end of December.
Over my years of trapping marten I have seen those years where there are "marten everywhere",right through the harvest season.There will be an abnormally high number of adults in the harvest.This indicates a widespread crash in the food source with a resulting abandonment of home range-marten are on the move en mass. In every case after these scenarios the marten numbers do crash hard in my experience,but usually are on the way back up after a year to some degree.Only once I have seen the populations bleak for two years after a widespread failure of marten main prey(voles).Management decisions at this time are not so clearcut.Some think harvesting heavy at these times is prudent since "they will die of starvation anyway".Others believe the opposite,to try to leave a decent number to help with the recovery.

I keep a close watch on the 5 year logging plans in my area and take note of the winter harvest plans.If there is going to be a harvest of wood in midwinter anywhere , I will re-set existing marten boxes located on the travel routes that I set up to harvest juveniles in the fall.
Quite a few times I have picked up a lot of dispersing adult marten displaced due to logging operations in late winter.They follow the same dispersal routes that the juveniles do when they leave core habitat in the fall.Adult marten displaced in late winter tend not to do well in my opinion so I dont have any qualms about harvesting those marten displaced due to loss of habitat thru logging.

In my area of the province logging has not had a detrimental effect on the overall marten population(it has affected individual traplines,but a lot of trappers here have several traplines) due to the vast area.It has not fragmented the landscape as much as it has further south in Jims area.When the bush is too fragmented by logging, trapped out areas of good habitat are not able to be filled in by dispersing marten leading to less and less harvestable numbers in those areas.

Glad to hear Im not the only one who digs around in poo ! Not often anymore that I run into someone who spends enough time out on the land to notice things like you mentioned. When I was a boy growing up it was certainly more common, but not anymore. I really notice it during hunting season when things get tough. Very few guides really understand the animals they are hunting anymore and seem to just travel around hoping they will stumble into something. Knowing the where, why, and when animals travel, feed, and sleep is the key to consistent success. The same goes for trapping. I've never met you, but I knew years ago just from looking at the pictures you posted that you were indeed the real deal. There are always things none of us understand, or ever will, but if we spend enough time out there and keep our eyes open, we will constantly learn. I remember as a kid I would follow animals tracks just to see where they went and what they did. I learned a lot doing that, and it has helped solve some puzzles over the years.

One thing Ive been thinking about for awhile now is berries. An old trapper in BC told me years ago that blueberries were especially important for marten. He actually used blueberry jam for bait. In the country I trap blueberries and moss berries are more prevalent at the higher elevations. I know marten get them to some extent under the snow, but how important they are I still dont know.

Ok, T4E ....glad I saw your "lousy" photos now instead of just before I go to sleep !

Does make one feel itchy UGH !

Been trying to get through this thread for the past few days...finally made it to the end.

The knowledge shared here has been so valuable, I felt compelled to try and contribute something. Please note that anything I share should be taken within this context: we are limited to taking 25 marten/trapper/year here. So T4E may gain as much experience with marten in a day as I will in an entire season. So take my opinion for what it's worth. That said, I try to learn as much as I can from every catch and every mistake.

Similar to Gibb's experience, timber harvest has an immense affect on marten populations here. The areas I trap have seen far more logging activity in the past 10-15 years than in the past 40-50. We also have relatively high densities of fisher, particularly in young, recently harvested forests. For years I've been trying to tease apart all of the variables that affect marten (aerial predators, fisher, denning habitat loss, loss of overhead cover, snow depth, snow crust formation, food abundance etc etc.)

The research done in northern Maine has indicated that trapping pressure, at its current level, does not affect marten populations. Habitat loss due to timber harvest does. Fisher do. The theory goes that snow depth limits fisher distribution, and the presence of fisher limits marten populations. Obviously there's lots of overlap and varying conditions, no solid line anywhere.

Marten here do not spend much time in the open. Telemetry studies, and observations of tracks, indicate they don't stray far from overhead canopy cover, presumably due to the abundance of hawks and other aerial predators, but I also wonder if fisher influence this as well. Fisher do well in cut-over forests and open country here, although in deep snow without crust they struggle, and you will often find them concentrated in the cedar swamps. Fisher seem to be able to catch and kill marten effectively, but I've been toying with a theory that more complexity on the forest floor and cavity trees may allow marten to better escape from fisher. This might help explain why marten do well in less complex forests in other places (Alaska interior?) that don't have fisher, than they do here.

As far as food goes, our forests produce heavy mast crops every other year, which directly affects catch rates due to food availability. There is probably some level of food limitation in the poor mast years (the odd numbered years lately), but I'm not sure it is as limiting as in latitudes further north, and don't know that it drives populations. If it does, it's probably minor in comparison to overall habitat changes. We have large numbers of moose that die of winter ticks in late winter/early spring, which may provide excess feed for adult females. More study of springtime conditions related to reproductive success would be interesting. That said, every embryo could implant in every female uterus, and every little one could survive.....but if suitable habitat for them to disperse to is limited .......

Gulo's Idaho marten trapping experience was pretty fascinating to me. Although nowhere near as dramatic, I think I have noticed a similar pattern. Three years ago I set up a line, 60 boxes, in an area that had been cut over pretty hard. With the level of harvest I figured it wouldn't be touched for another 10-20 years or so, and I could kind of set it up as 'my' long term marten/fisher line. There were a number of really nice micro-habitats for marten in the area, mostly riparian areas, and buffers of mature forest between clearcuts. Over two years I learned a lot about the area, especially when there was a coating of snow on the ground. In short, I found that there were more fisher than marten in this country (about 50 sq miles) and the majority of my catch consisted of smaller marten, I assume mostly juveniles. Looking back, I'm thinking these were juveniles dispersing from refuge areas, particularly a large block of timber that the landowner hadn't yet punched a road in, and a block of state land.

This season I completely abandoned that area and keyed in on the largest block of mature forest I could find. My catch rate per trap night was more than 4x higher (approximately, have to check notes), and far more larger adult males. Also caught less than half as many fishers. An eye opener. I believe I was looking for mature timber and classic marten habitat correctly, but at the wrong scale. Should have been thinking in the scale of thousands of acres rather than 10 or 20 acres.

I thought about this a lot today as I pulled boxes from about 20 locations I had forgotten to get back to from 3 years ago. It was a frustrating day. About half of the areas I had sets in 3 yrs ago were either clear cut or heavy selective cuts. Several boxes had been completely obliterated, never found them. The little marten habitat that had existed in the area has again been cut in half. And the main 'refuge' area has a new road punched right through the middle of it, and is starting to be harvested. As a French Canadian trapper once commented to me, "Well, marten needs tree". Words of wisdom for sure.

Guys 30 years my senior tell me I should have seen it 30 years ago. Sadly I'll probably have to say the same to my kids, and maybe their kids. Hate to be negative. I'll still get after it every year, but have realized I'll never be able to seriously trap marten without moving to Alaska. Hope it's not too crowded by then!

Thanks for everyone contributing to this thread, I've learned a lot.

Dirt,
If you have no recruitment, and little incoming dispersal, do you really think you should even be trapping that line?????

My over simplified way of thinking works like this. If my catch rates on any given line are abysmal, I shouldn't trap, no matter the ratios of YOY to adult female, or any other ratios such as M/F. Usually my preseason scouting will have already indicated to me, not to even bother setting some of these lines. If my harvest rates are more "normal" for said line, I utilize the adult female to YOY ratio, to help me determine when to pull that line, but generally, I don't leave an area set for more than about 4 checks. If I'm experiencing a super abundance of marten, of varying year classes, I trap more aggressively, as generally, my preseason scouting will have let me determine my surrounding refugia is also at a high than normal abundance. In this situation, I also don't worry as much about ratios, since I'm fairly confident that my refugia areas hold enough brood stock, and YOY, to fill back in my harvest areas.

I'll also add, I'll go out on a limb, and say in SOME areas, I think other microtines, not just voles, are at times, "driving the train" when it comes to marten abundance. I've seen years of low Long-tailed vole abundance, but super high Keen's Deer mice abundance, yield exceptional marten production. For certain, over most of the range of marten, voles are a VERY KEY and often THE KEY prey species, but I think there are exceptions to many rules.

Y254,
I've used jam in my some of my marten baits/ lures, for close to 40 years now, so I agree, they seem to have a pretty keen sweet tooth, at times. Kind of like some of us humans!! I too remember tracking the furbearers, as a little kid. Doing so, was how I learned just how adept marten are, at catching songbirds. In my area, they hunt the beach fringe salmonberry brush, for songbirds a lot. By moss berries, are you meaning the black ones, some of us call crowberries, or are they a Bog Cranberries?? I used to go through your neck of the woods a lot, 20+ years ago, now seldom make it up that way. I'll try and look you up, next time I'm in that country. Certainly is a nice area you operate in!! Would be fun to shoot the breeze, some day............

This is a fascinating thread and makes me realize I am an amateur in the Marten business. I have just a few observations to offer from our small line. We're not trapping it this year, but snowshoed it 12/26 just to check out the neighborhood. Our line goes up a steep little valley with a drainage divide above tree line at its head. In past years we've caught mostly adult males, with lesser numbers of YOY and females. Sorry, don't have stats compiled for that. Our catch rate drops off steeply after cold snaps and often never picks up again, because, we think, our Marten leave our cold little valley for warmer higher terrain. We usually pull the line after the first December cold snap. I always check stomach contents, and am surprised at how many marten are stuffed with blueberries. Like, really stuffed. We also catch them with fish scales and bones, appear to be salmon and whitefish. I'm not sure where they get them, perhaps raiding someone's cache?

I recall prowling through stomach contents looking for S.bats. Early in the season it was pretty obvious by the color that there were blueberries in the mixture. I recall reading the results of a study of Humboldt marten in the last 20 years or so. Based on many hundred scats from several years and all seasons, the conclusion was that berries contributed less than 5% of the total diet. At least in that location and all seasons considered.

Augh the wonderful word ...blueberries that wonderful Genus of Vaccinium
across the various regions means a lot of different plants that grow
the Crosspatch are different from Gibb's and mine are interphase
then off the coast where 1000 feet you have different species as you climb

There is no way you can find a BB after they mature and drop come Sept, unless we have had lots of rain in Manitoba.
blue scat means only one thing here, big and it's a black bear, loose and twirley on a stump is a marten
It is interesting that the first botanical specimens sent to England all the leaves fell off the cards, at least they got it right in the description....the blossoms were in a whirl..so Whirley-berries

[quote=trapped4ever]Dirt,
If you have no recruitment, and little incoming dispersal, do you really think you should even be trapping that line?????

That was the case in 2012. And no I shouldn't and didn't. IMO it paid dividends in the future.

P.S. Similar to you I harvest the creme and keep setting new areas. However, weather (cold weather) delays harvest. Sometimes it can take three weeks, sometimes it can take six weeks. Sometimes cold weather for a month can really shut things down.

It's possible here to find blueberries still on the bush into october with snow on the ground. Not a lot of them but certainly enough to cause color in a gut. In the case of the Humboldt marten the most prevalent species of berry was the salal......there were four others found also but manzanita is the only other one I remember.

I have a vivid memory of fall 1978.....again at Plastic lake......... I was out checking marten traps so it was early November. I noticed movement ahead and stopped to look. About 50 feet away was a ptarmigan picking blueberries off a bush and stacking them in a small fork of a spruce branch that was very low to the ground. I watched for four or five minutes while he picked and stacked. ( it was like watching The Music Man......pick a little stack a little)

It was pretty evident that he planned to eat them at a later time but was putting them where the snow would not cover them...at least for awhile.

Alas for him.............. I popped him with the .22 and ate both him and his berries. It was all quite efficient as well as interesting

Good deal, Dirt. I thought maybe I was misunderstanding you..... I've had a couple seasons, where I pulled the plug early, just due to lower abundance than I wanted to see. So I understand your decision. You have to deal with the cold, I get to deal with wind, rain, waves, tides, and sea ice. I guess there are drawbacks to every region. Good luck out there today, stay safe.

Without a doubt the fisher step into the void left by harvesting the mature forest, it takes about 5 to 8 years after they clearcut but the fisher thrive in the young forest for at least the next 25 years. About 1987 was the first fisher I caught for a few more years the marten hung on but slowly and steadily the fisher took over. Inherently I loss my red fox population about the time the fisher population became constant.
I believe the boreal forest runs in cycles, logging for the most part has replaced fire as the main game changer. The average cycle roughly in my area is 100 to 175 years depending on the type of tree stand jack pine vs black and white spruce. After a clearcut it takes 35 to 40 years to start meeting the reproduction needs of marten, namely having enough course wood debris standing or laying for denning sites. I also believe a human lifespan does not or is not long enough for most people to understand the dynamics. Can't see the forest for the trees syndrome.
The bigger problem now is how they manage the forest for wood fiber vs biodiversity, I have thousands of aces of one type of tree with no significant dead standing trees, they come back in intervals to space the trees which makes it look good and improves along with quicken the cutting cycle. They spray to release the conifer after 3 years, than cut out trees after 10, than again after about 25 years, looks like a manicured park but is desert for wildlife.
Fire is still the best method in my opinion for renewal.

In Alberta I learned a new word to describe the plateau forest on the foothills. Lodgepole pine = boring forest
now with mountain pine beetle infestations could not imagine the desert wildlife conditions in them.

Gibb you got that right ;the enemy of forestry is deciduous trees in their management plans.

Just another spin for White17 to think about. The use of fiber especially in newsprint is going down fast now with electronic communications what is it going to be in 10 years. do these forestry company still have to manage wood fiber ?

Great point Northof50,
Just to throw another wrench into the discussion....
In this area, hardwood pulp (from deciduous trees) is used for newsprint which is in decline....BUT, demand for cardboard boxes is through the roof, with all of the Amazon Prime, WalMart, and everything else delivered to our door. This has boosted demand for softwood pulp (spruce/fir) and perhaps more incentive to clearcut hardwood ridges and plant spruce monocultures for future returns.

The best marten habitat in my trapping area seems to be the mature mixed wood stands (fairly equal mix of hardwood and softwood). Forestry seems to be trending towards one or the other (high value hardwood stands and softwood plantations) which seem to be more economical.

Explains all the flour cars sitting in the rail yards going to make cardboard those amazon boxes. The boxes design and strength needs a lot of flour in their formation.

Just what I need !! Another responsibility to worry about !

So many things here I would like to discuss further, but just to busy, currently. Slammed in the skinning/ fur shed lately......

jwood, Glad to see you join in the discussion here, nice to get further perspective, from another region of marten habitat, on the opposite side of the continent. Which mast crops seem to be the prime food sources?? I used to sell/ trade glands to a lure maker in your state, and he would send me some of his lures to try up here. I recall he sent one that was a "mast crop" type food lure, that was apparently a little heavier on the nuts, and less of the fruits/ berries, or so I guessed, because it produced Red Squirrels like crazy!! It did catch some marten, but the squirrel by catch was very high. Oh yeah, thanks for the book!! Good job on that one! Fun to read those things from history, that some of us missed the first time they were in print ; ) Glad to see you preserving that part of your states trapping history....

I also found Gulo's story about the obvious dispersal corridor to be fascinating, thanks for bringing that back up, I'm just not able to keep up with input, or questions, with my limited free time. I've been reading some stuff, but just not able to keep up with the thread.... I wonder how many of those type dispersal corridors exist, even in more "normal" marten habitat. Sure sounds like the optimal ratios!!

W17's story about the hares at "Plastic Lake", kind of gets at what I've seen with marten, drastic population density changes, at various elevations, throughout the year, seem to be pretty common. Several different things can drive these "migrations".

When I get some time, I'll try and add some input on clearcutting's affect up here, in the big timber country.

Also would be interested in discussing a bit more about "home ranges/ territories", and how much overlap occurs. Dispersal distances, home range size for each sex, etc, etc.

This is a great thread. Got to print off and find time to digest. Any person wanting to be a marten bio. would be smart to do same. Info. from a lot of experienced successful people. Bio's would be wise to remember that successful trappers, hunters, fishers are that because amongst other things you really have to know an animal to be in the top % of successful harvesters. Anybody can get a few of anything but a big consistently successful harvester a person has to be really tuned into what is going on out there and how it all connects as best they can figure.

Yes berries big food and marten get fat on them with all the carbs and marten will eat trapped marten on occasion. Saw those pts. somewhere in the thread.

Hey T4E, glad you enjoyed the book! I'm still trying to catch up and get to reading the ones you sent me. I seem to collect books at a much faster pace than I can read them.

The main mast crop here is American Beech (fagus grandifolia). It's believed that beech nuts are the driver of a lot of the populations here, especially black bears. But all of the mast crops seem to be on the same 2 year cycle. Wild apple trees in the reverting farmland produce a bumper crop every other year. Same with a lot of the berries.

Marten do feed on the beech nuts during the heavy mast years, but I think the sheer abundance of voles in the beech ridges is the more important factor. Someone wrote earlier about how short the life cycles of these small mammals are, and it makes sense that they could expand very rapidly, creating an almost instant increase in the food supply due to a bumper crop of nuts, berries etc., as opposed to larger mammals whose populations would take a year or more to respond to changes in food supply.

I try to check stomachs on most of the marten I skin anymore. Sample size of about 60 or 70 to date. It is pretty nasty, usually have to open the windows and door in the fur shed! I find beech nuts in some, but have more commonly found what I believe are mountain ash berries. The vast majority of the stomachs I've looked at have had mostly decomposed 'goo' mixed with short grey hair, which looks to me to be from voles (I've never verified this, just assuming). I've heard marten eat squirrels, and it makes sense they would, but I'm yet to find what looks like squirrel remains in stomachs. It would make sense that voles drive marten populations here similar to other areas, and mast crops influence the number of voles.

The importance of soft deep snow without thick crust, allowing subnivean access to voles would (as was mentioned earlier) make a lot of sense to me as a critical factor for marten survival. Some years -especially when we get mild winters - we see pretty big differences in the snow pack with just a change in about 20-30 miles of latitude and a couple hundred feet elevation difference. Add the timber harvest component (open areas=more sunlight, rain, wind to weather the snowpack and create crust) and the presence of fishers, and you can start to tell a pretty good story, I think. But how does this explain why marten in T4E's area do well despite the winter warmups, rain, snow crust, waterlogged vole habitat? The abundance of food from the ocean might be part of the explanation? Maybe you speculated on that earlier and i forgot.....like you I don't have time to go back and re-read it though...haha!

jwood keep in mind that there are 14 sub-species of marten in North America, I would think each has adapted to their region. Following Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule helps explain how animals/species adapt to their environment over time.
Hands down the largest marten I ever seen came from Old Crow in the Yukon and Anderson River area from the NWT.
Smallest from New Brunswick/Maine
Here in Ontario I see three different marten in a sense with the largest from James Bay region, smallest around Algonquin park region.
It is not uncommon for trappers/hunters in the Arctic trapping white fox to catch both marten and wolverine well above the tree line.

T4E, the moss berries I'm talking about are the little black ones that grow very close to the ground. Here they are prolific in the timber, as well as up at higher elevations above the tree line. Ive seen them throughout the winter under the snow and even into early spring. I've taken a few bears that I found feeding on them right after they left the den.

I have never bought into the marten dont like open areas theory. My old trapline up near the NWT was very open country and still produced decent numbers for its size. The best marten country ( as far as sign goes ) is also very open country.

The winter picture is my old line, and the fall picture is the Dendale Lake country I mentioned.

Nice view yukon254, makes my flatlander charley horses quake.
Don't know what your black berries are but jwood the difference between Wintergreen Berries Gaultheria procumbens and mountain ash or Rowan is that the mt ash is in the rose family and the 5 petals of the flower always are present in the fruit, the wintergreen are 4 sided fruit. Both are red/orange in the winter. Highbush cranberries have a oval seed and are distinct.
Wintergreen berries is where the first ASA was made from, at least I got something learned out of my organic chemistry classes. Make a cup of tea you will see.

This is what good marten country looks like where I am.
I avoid setting boxes in these type areas later in winter.

Suspect the blackberries Yukon254 mentions are what we call blackberries too. Country and description seem right. Can grow in more open timber but more on the barren country. Big fall migration food for gulls, geese and black ducks (real black ducks not scoters). Book name is crowberries. Old time Inuk food some people still like here is "sivak"; blackberries and cod liver mixed together. Those berries have a really small gritty seed in them.

I may not be current on the latest thoughts on this subject, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
(For the sake of this discussion I'm not including fisher.)

Back in the 70's there were many "sub-species" of marten listed in North America; most of the justification for the different sub-species being based on morphological differences. Then along came the wonders of DNA and it was realized that there were only two truly distinct sub-species recognizable; Martes americana americana, and Martes americana caurina.

Then politics entered into the equation and people with an agenda started to divide them up again. Now we supposedly have "endangered" subspecies" that need legal protection. This is happening in Washington, Oregon and California (any surprise?).

???

We now see the same thing happening with wolves, the attempt to make more distinct and obscure subspecies in order to justify adding legal protections.

Right on the money Waggler.
Marten throughout their range are surprisingly non diverse.Like lynx they migrate extremely long distances and their dna is fairly homogenous.
There are differences in population sections of course but not on a level that the environmentalist/protectionists would have people believe.

I knew Crosspatch would know the crowberry Empetrum nigrum name.
At Churchill the large geese that move up in June non breeders and AHY birds ( maximius) feed on these and cloud berries well past freeze-up. When you get them in southern Manitoba past 1 November and the birds hit the ground they just explode they are so fat. It is a crime to breast those birds and not bake them because of the flavour that come out.
HBC employees out of Fort Churchill they use to put down barrels of the fall birds as larter for the winter months. Funny thing was many of them were Eskimo Curlews back in the historic days.

Dave I suspect you are talking about crow berries.....Empetrum nigrum. Many times in the spring I have picked them in the tundra. They have wintered over from the year before. They are about the only plant you can find to eat in late April early May around here.

Your lower picture looks like large areas of my line. Lots of marten out there...or will GO out there to investigate a visual attractor. It almost seems as though something moving in the wind is irresistible to most marten

Marten systematics in North America is complicated, and still, biologists are not in agreement. The recent wizardry with genetic fingerprinting (DNA), in my opinion, is still undergoing development, and will be in flux for years to come as advancements are made. To my knowledge (and this is changing almost daily), this is the current thinking amongst most biologists: There are two species of marten in North America. Martes caurina, the Pacific Marten, lives in coastal SW BC, down the coast through Washington, Oregon, and N. California. Also, this is the species in Idaho, Wyoming, down into Colorado. It also occurs in Alaska, only on Admiralty and Kuiu Islands. Martes americana, the American Marten occupies Mainland Alaska (and has been introduced on many islands in SE Alaska), through Canada all the way across the continent to the Maritime Provinces, and is the species in the upper midwest states and New England. These two species were accepted by most biologists up until at least 1953. Then, the two species were lumped, and we had a single species in North America (Martes americana). More recently, studies using mitochondrial DNA, and later, nuclear DNA, have shown (suggested?) that the "caurina" and "americana" groups are separate species. In my opinion, this is arguable (I'm a lumper, not a splitter).There is a wide zone of overlap between the two purported species, where marten interbreed and produce fertile offspring (the definition of a species), so a lot of southern BC and north Idaho have a hybrid. I have collected a series of skulls from Alaska, down through Yukon, BC, and Alberta, and through Idaho, and this large sample (many hundreds of skulls housed at the Museum of the Desert Southwest at Albuquerque, UNM) suggests that there is a clinal variation throughout the marten's range, just as one would suspect following Bergman's and Allen's Rules. Further delineations into subspecies to me are meaningless, if we can't even agree on species. The most recent taxonomy I'm aware of was published in 1987, listing three subspecies of caurina, and five subspecies of americana.

Throughout recent history, the pendulum between the lumpers and the splitters has swung back and forth numerous times. With the wizardry of newfound DNA studies, we are currently in an era of splitters. That will swing back the other way in the future, I suspect, and North American marten will again be "lumped" into a single species, Martes americana. On the other hand, we could very well end up with 8 different species if the geneticists get their way, and management would be in turmoil.

Clear as mud? For all practical purposes, the various management jurisdictions have managed marten as a single species (which makes perfect sense, as I contend that they are, indeed, a single species with 2 subspecific variations).

I apologize for this newly-thrown monkey wrench.

Happy 2021 to all!!!

Jack

Thanks for putting the species definition to bed, even though it has a muddy sheet at that.
As both Gibb and I have worked on the grading floor over the past by gone years, many 10,000's of skins have passed under us every year.
You can certainly tell the Montana and some of the coastal marten as they pass by on the floor. They just flip differently in the fur quality/ characteristics/texture, then there was the bar code tag from the region as a backup plan B.
Those NWT barren ground marten are like a sea otter in a group of river otter as comparison for size,(disclaimer those were not at the auction's possession )

I remember a thread on here a couple years back about the top lot of marten at Nafa.
The top lot was 8 marten skins I believe and those skins came from all across the northern part of the continent.
There were skins from Labrador,Northern Quebec,North eastern Ont,North western Ont,Northern Manitoba,and Alaska.
This goes to show the homogeneity of the species across the northern tier(boreal forest)
The main sectional difference in fur seems to be North to south as would be expected due to adaptations for climate.

But wait! What about the famously well known Pine Marten?

^^^^^
Gurrr, what really bugs me is when I hear North American biologists refer to marten by that name.
I immediately discount whatever they have to say.

Same with "pine squirrel"-no such thing.

15 skins March 2013 FHA auction top lot* went for $1300 US each. 3 Labrador, 1 James Bay Cree Northern Quebec, 2 northern Ontario, 2 Manitoba, 2 British Columbia, 2 North West Territories and 3 Alaska. I know cause I had one of the Labrador ones and called the grader, Mark Finnegan, for the details. Next was 40 skins for $310 US each. A year later used the money to make the trip to mecca (FHA AGM/Convention in North Bay) and bought Mark F. a couple of triples at the Saturday night rip.

More to the point all this splitting marten, and other species like wolves up, is a crock of B.S. There is gradient east/west and north/south and diagonally whatever way you want to slice it. The marten are all interbreeding with the ones next to them and even up to 40 miles away (longest distance collared marten** moved back a few years ago - do not have current data). So there is gene flow seeping very slowly across the continent. Certain traits predominate, or are less, in some areas of course but not so much that they are different species that can not successfully interbreed i.e. therefore the same species.

** a Manitoba one

*Same grade of top lot marten topped at $650 US at the NAFA February sale 2013. All in the sales results records for both auctions.

Just to put things in perspective

2001 Top Lot $43 Since they were 2X-Xl X- Pales They probably came mostly from Alaska that year. Heck probably had half my XP heavies in that lot.

P.S. Those are orange, but not canaries.

Got a few minutes. Going back a ways in the discussion, here's a good illustration of the results of "territorial chewing", for those who haven't seen it. It often seems to be done by dominant males, when they find other marten in your sets...



Y254, those sound like what I've always called Crow Berries, here. Traditionally, they were mixed in with blueberries, during years of low blueberry abundance, to "stretch" the blueberries further. Regional plant, animal, & fish names make things kind of "hazy" at times. Salmon berries in SE Alaska are totally different than Salmonberry (Cloudberry) in Western Alaska, for example.

Boco, here is GOOD marten country here. The Spruce valley behind and below the sled is crawling with marten.....




Northof50,
WAIT!!! Are you saying the barcodes actually did specify the origin of the pelt by region?? I was assured that this wasn't the case??? Maybe you are pulling our leg, or do you just mean region meaning State, Province, or Territory?

crosspatch,
I know some of our local marten studies (mostly conducted through the 1990's), showed longer marten movement than that. At least 3 individuals with ear tags, were harvested by trappers, over 60 miles away from the site they were ear tagged, less than a year later. I personally think marten move further (in my region), and more often than seems to be commonly presented. The home range size, and overlapping of home ranges was something I was hoping to hear other people comment on, since I think different regions (habitat diversity, prey, weather, snow, etc) are bound to have different behaviors. Obviously, natal den sites would create some incentive for females to keep a relatively small home range, during Spring birthing/ rearing. I've always thought males to be much more prone to wandering, and leaving "established" home ranges. I find it interesting that despite being located in the "inferior" fur quality area of coastal Alaska, I too, have had numerous, true Top Lot marten, from both NAFA and FHA, including that BIG season of 2012-2013. I know quite a few in the Top Lot at NAFA that year (2012-2013), came from right close by ; ) Surprising actually, since coastal Alaska is so often thought of as having inferior fur, to the colder regions of the state. Probably our marten are just so much darker, due to never getting any sunlight exposure (always overcast, rain or snowing). HA!

Gulo,
Do you know if the marten on adjacent (to Kuiu), Kupreanof and Mitkof Islands have been looked at closely (DNA)? It would be interesting to know if they are pure Martes americana, or have hybridized with caurina? Those islands are pretty close, but the currents through Rocky Pass and Wrangell Narrows may eliminate any chance of an "ice bridge" forming to connect the islands, or the potential of marten drifting on ice pans/ logs, or any swimming (more like floundering, from what I've seen) across those bodies of water.
Curiously, I have occasionally caught marten on small islands around coastal SE (in otter or mink sets), that I'm assuming were able to cross on the ice, and ended up stranded, once the ice melted. These have all been larger, 5 acres or more, timbered islands, so who knows how long they had been stranded?

Dirt,
Do your marten seem to run predominantly pale-xpale? It seems like you mention having paler marten a lot, or do you just get a few mixed in with the more "normal" colors? I tend to get a handful of pales-xpales, but they certainly aren't my predominant color phase. I'm truly curious what anyone with knowledge on this subject has to say......... Gulo probably can tell me straight off, and be dead on, but it's something I've never looked into much..... Will the amount of sunlight in a region, "bleach out" furbearers coloration, similar to humans hair, during a warm, sunny summer? So say for example, my beaver, otter, mink, and marten, are often referred to as "much darker than average" by many of the fur buyers I've sold to. Is this simply genetics, or a "bonus", to suffering through the typical overcast coastal weather?

As for the bar code tags certain depos had certain colours. When on the floor with a scanner a check@ F6 would show who the trapper was on the computer screen. Some guys took smoke breaks, mine were educational breaks.
With the bar codes for example they are made up in batches of a million at a time, guess what FHA picked up after the bankruptcy for their operation.

Crosspatch it could be a marten that I came across grading, the long distance traveller. The tell tail cross stripe of worn fur where the saddle was there was no missing it. The trapper wanted to be paid " restitution for damages" since that marten went into badly damaged and got 5 bucks vs that grade was probably worth 150$. He held onto that collar till after the auction and was at odds with Ontario Resources. It almost got to Manitoba but was in Kenora Ontario 3 miles short of Manitoba boarder. What it did create was a lot more paper work for researchers doing that type of work. I'm not at liberty to say who the trapper was being a public forum.

trapped4ever,
Regarding Kuiu, I read recently that a DNA study of marten there showed them to be a hybridization of M. americana and M. Caurina. The marten on Kuiu are having a difficult time apparently, I saw the number of trap nights required to catch one and it was very high. They have since closed the season on Kuiu I believe. Could this hybridization be adversely effecting reproduction?

If I remember correctly I think Admiralty Island were all caurina. The other B&C islands were introduced if I'm not mistaken.

I'm pretty sure Mitkof and Kupreanof islands are americana.

Over 50% will go Pale ....Xpale. The rest will go from LBR to XD If it is an XD or DK adult male it will be in the Top two Lots probably.

Yes demand can change . The 2013 skins at both auctions were 2X XDk Hvy Select at both sales. Probably super select at NAFA was the name at the time.

trapper4ever - yes like I mentioned info. I had re. dispersal was dated. Actually from 1987 Novak's "fur bible". Have no doubt, and very much agree, dispersal distances are further since more data collected since then.

North of 50: In Novak's 1987 "Fur Bible" book. Collar was furthest of a number that were collared. R.M. Raine is author of the study that Novak quoted. Can. Field Nat. 96:431-438. Exact distance was 38 miles but again old data as I mentioned and more recent, as trapped4ever mentions, shows longer distances.

38 mile marten was 1982 or earlier as article in Can. Field Nat. dated 1982. Again very much dated info. and lots of marten studies over last 38+ yrs. most probably show longer dispersal distances as I mentioned earlier and t4ever also.

This marten travelled much longer distances. Maybe someone from Kenora can chime in as it was quite a gong show, and the outcome I do not know if the charges were dropped.

So of those Minnesota marten that were collared were caught by several members on here,
What were some of their distances ?. I believe the study area was around Fort Ripley military base

Further checking the work was out of Lakehead University mostly in the Red Lake Region and Atikowan Ontario for those Manitoba marten caught in Bissett Manitoba some 50 miles straight line travel more than one was not turned in. Back in the day of collars and UVF transmitters not satellite.

I think that, like most creatures, there will always be the exception, which, while interesting, doesn't represent the whole. (I can give a wolverine example that boggles the mind, but that is another thread).
I see weird patterns on my small lines that I have to assume are both weather and food based. I have never experienced a "wave" of marten suddenly appearing, regardless of even a significant windfall of chow, but indeed see sudden appearances of a couple of individuals seemingly out of nowhere, after a month of no sign.
I have also seen the reverse: Locations that produce every year, then poof. Not a track, for 2-3 years.

waggler,

The marten on Prince of Wales were captured in Behm canal (10 marten), and released on POW in the Spring of 1934. The marten on Baranof were trapped near Thomas Bay and 7 were released on Baranof, in the Spring of 1934 also. These original 17 marten were the only known introduction, I believe, and the current populations all originate from these 17.

The Chichagof introduction was much later, and more scattered. The first ones were introduced in 1949, and marten were sourced from several locations, including Baranof Island (whose introduced marten population was well established by then), Ketchikan, Polly Creek (AK Peninsula, West of Anchorage), Wrangell, and Petersburg. These marten were released at multiple sites around the island, from 1949-1952, with an official total of 21 marten in that introduction. Also, the "official" introduction was supposedly boosted by at least one local trapper (Sitka) transporting female marten he found alive in his traps, across Peril Straight, and releasing them on Chichagof Island. The females that had already been impregnated, could eventually implant, and birth their litters at their new island home.

I have no info on Mitkof, or Kupreanof Islands, but I know the experimental fur farm based is Petersburg, was involved in releases of some animals around the state. Perhaps those islands populations could have originated from Earl Ohmer's (chairman of the Alaska Game Commission at the time) influence with the experimental fur farm, and his own involvement with the Yukon Fur Farm he had on Kupreanof, at the time? During the late 1930's and into the 1940's, I know they did have some marten in residence at that Alaska Experimental Fur Farm. Pure speculation on my part.... perhaps Mitkof and Kupreanof had marten all along, similar to Admiralty Island? Anybody else out there have any info regarding the Mitkof and Kupreanof Island populations? Perhaps marten were able to make it across Dry Straight, on the North end of Mitkof Island, crossing the mud flats, and/ or ice?? Or have been there since the last glaciation??

I think the Kuiu Island trapping season for marten has been closed for close to 10 years. After my limited involvement with studies around here, I would be somewhat skeptical of the "data" being put forth on that Island. I'm not saying it's wrong, since I haven't even looked at any of it, just that it may not be everything it appears, or in other words, take it with a grain of salt..... I know there were some vast discrepancies between reality, and the supposed "data", in the some of the studies near me.

^^^^^
I guess the report I mentioned about Kuiu wasn't all that "recent", ten years ago is probably about when I read the information I cited.
I do distinctly remember the writer saying though that they were a hybrid determined by DNA.

Regarding POW, I never knew those marten were introduced, interesting. I would bet that the marten on Kupreanof and Mitkof are naturally occurring though, the distance across the water between those islands and the mainland is pretty close. The "back channel" between Wrangell Island and the mainland is close also and does freeze over from time to time.

Boco, here is GOOD marten country here. The Spruce valley behind and below the sled is crawling with marten.....




What does the inside of that bush look like T4E ?


This is what the outside of our marten habitat looks like.

Boco, that's the only hill on your trapline lol.

Political agendas aside NA marten across their range vary quite a bit. If you don't want to hear subspecies it still doesn't matter.
I have always found it difficult to explain this to trappers,
Example western coyotes vs eastern coyotes, western beaver vs eastern beaver
Same animal different sections.
Here where I trap in Ontario I catch much smaller marten on my trapline around North Bay than I do on my trapline around Timmins which is further north. Not only are the sizes on average smaller but the colors run much paler.
One thing to take into consideration about todays grading of wild fur, due to the volume continuously dropping, you can not spilt the skins down as fine as you could 30 years ago when you had the numbers.
Todays fur market is all about big lots, the fur trade has changed from Ma and Pa shops to factory assembly lines.
In the 1980's you would grade down to coat lots today you want string lots via the hundreds so anything close goes together.
Best marten overall via average is from crosspatch area of North America, they have both size and color.

^^^^^
Are you saying that the "best marten overall average" are from Labrador? Is that size, color, and fur quality?
I suppose you are might be right if you are considering the whole of Labrador. But, I would suggest that maybe there are smaller regions that may on average (proportionally) produce more top lot marten on average than Labrador does on average??

I believe the northcentral coast of B.C. and then along the same range into the southeast Alaska mainland may produce a greater percentage (proportional to the entire marten harvest of the area) than anywhere else. I don't trap a lot of marten from the area, but I nearly always have some in the top lot. Year before last I had one in the NAFA true "top lot"; 20 skins out of 60,000.

I remember Bedo Hobbs (deceased) used to trap a lot of top lot marten down the coast near Kitimat B.C.

Does Labrador have a maritime climate? Perhaps there are similarities between the opposite sides of the continent.

One of the 60,000 skins is in this picture (I think the third skin from the right), the rest of the skins are typical of the area.

Simple answer "If I was a fur buyer I would buy from the Schefferville Quebec, Labrador City Labrador area of North America.
The best of the best.

^^^^
I would sure like to see some of those marten from the area you describe.
I have a hunch they are quite a bit silkier than the marten in my area; just guessing.

Waggler the gulf current that are on the west coast bring a totally different formations than the east coast and Labrador gets the artic cold masses blocking the warm tropical. Even the ocean fisheries is different especially the inter-tidal area. A good youtuber in " Lady trapper" shows some of the local conditions that the young lady shows there.

In the last years of NAFA it was all in marketing and shipping cost with compressed packaging of what 200 skins bundles to what 80 were before. Selections over 100,000 skins was easier, same apply with wild mink with their numbers drastically dropping.

I think in one of the grading magazine that NAFA put out the grader said every year was different in the quality of the fur that came in, and a new re programing re-set when grading the piles.
It is just in the way the pelage flows....the outstanding ones always get put into a separate pile, much like they do with the coyotes.
The one thing that does happen is they get much crinkled (afro hair type) when trapped later, remember that the artic foxes prime up later so effort is later as well

What is a big marten stretched? I think I have big marten with terrible colors. I loved it when NAFA created 3X. Buyers don't seem to care anymore already.

3XL Over 25 inches nose to base of tail and around 4 inches wide at the base.
The problem with that size was having enough to make grade able size lots.
It may make sense when you are dealing with a fur buyer but at the international level not enough skins to stand alone.

25" is a normal adult male here.

x2

23" is a nice big male down here, at least for what I have currently. Remember, however, some are calling these a different species than what you guys in Interior Alaska have (Martes caurina vs M. americana). I still don't buy it, but that's for another thread...

Jack

No argument from me, that very well may be the case just not enough of them to stand alone, it's been tried a few times.
Same deal with 3xl beaver they are lotted together with the 2xl.
You can look at the FHA August catalogue and they pulled out only the 3 xl hvy select dark's in that size all 76 of them with another 46 semi dark selects The rest are inter-sorted.

A lot of guys are mistaken that if they stretch a marten to the size line that the pelt will make that size grade.
You gotta board your marten(and other fur except beaver) between the lines since the sizes state like Jim said-OVER.And they must remain Over after shrinkage when removed from the board and drumming.-Boarding right between the lines is what guarantees you the size as long as width is correct.
A half or even 3/4 inch over wont always guarantee the pelt will be in the size grade after shrinkage and drumming.

Thanks Boco, maybe they were 26" plus since they graded 3X after all that shrinking and drumming.

Good thing I'm not "a lot of guys".

Got a nice black one today.Juvenile male.If i overstretch him he might stay over the 23" line.

Well, I see I haven't missed as much on this thread, this time around.

While on the line, my mind was wandering, and I thought back to what crosspatch said on the first page of this thread, about marten "disappearing" around Labrador, in roughly the 1910-1930's era. Funny thing is, the same time frame, on this side of the continent, the same thing occurred? From 1916 through 1929, Alaska only had 3 years open to marten trapping, the rest of the years were closed, supposedly due to "over trapping". Of course this was during territorial days, and the Alaska Game Commission wasn't formed until around 1925, so I'm not sure how much accurate info there was, about any harvest data, for marten, prior to that, or even after, for that matter.

Anyways, since the origin of this thread is about "marten die offs", I'm curious, was this a coincidence, that during the same era, both sides of the continent had extreme low abundance, or was it more wide spread? Some of the other Canadian trappers on here, from other regions (Boco, Y254, Northof50, crosspatch, gibb, etc) are you aware if there were low marten populations, in your and/or other regions, during that era? Did the low abundance stretch all across Canada and Alaska? What about some of the long time Alaska trappers on here, any stories from the "old timers", back when you started, that lead you to believe the low marten numbers in that time period, were indeed due to widespread over trapping? I knew several trappers that were active in that time period, and they were not of the opinion that it was trapper induced. Perhaps low numbers due to other natural causes, exacerbated by to much trapping pressure, causing very low numbers? Gulo, W17, Dirt, waggler, Oh Snap, mad mike, Alaska Viking, martentrapper. etc. all you guys were around up here long enough to know some of the old timers, any input on information gleaned from that time period? Or even any conjecture? It just occurred to me, this could have been a case, of a very wide spread, "marten die off", if that event was continent wide, driven by some natural occurrence, but blamed on "overharvest"??? Anybody........??

^^^^^
Back in the 70's when I was a kid I was pestering every old time marten trapper I could find in Washington. All those guys are now dead who trapped back during the depression. I recall a couple of visits with Raymond Thompson. When he was up in NW Canada I don't believe there were many marten where he trapped, but I don't know if that was because he was in an area that wasn't good marten habitat or if marten populations were at a low point when he trapped there. I wish I would have asked him about it because the pictures he had of the area sure looked like marten country. In later years 1930's and 40's he trapped NE Washington and trapped marten in that area.
All of the other marten trappers I knew trapped the Cascades during the 20's and 30's. There were marten trappers in every drainage and ridge back then, I believe they were allowed to have 32 marten traps. One guy I knew who trapped the cascade crest area north of Snoqualmie pass said in a typical year he would catch between 6 and 12 marten. He used to be happy with those catches. That indicates to me that marten numbers were really low compared to would that area would produce today. I'm sure that was due to heavy trapping pressure.

Just about the time that White was going to archive this thread, we go full circle back to the crux of the problem.
As for southern Manitoba south of the 53* north latitude marten moved in from the east in about the 1975 period. I caught my first in a squirrel trap about 1980. There was introductions to Turtle Mountains/ Peace Gardens in lower sw Manitoba/Sask/ND and they now are spread across anywhere there is riparian habitat.

That is one reason the interest in the ecto-parasites that are on them, but that will be another thread for a request for collectors across this vast area. The interesting thing about flea records is published material has all the individual records printed in the publication so they can be pages long. These can be quite expensive to be put out, but along come digital so...we will see.

Another stroke of the saw blade to consider is
the Larch sawfly Pristiphora erichsonii and it's devastation as it spread through and across North America. It came over from Europe and spread east to west at a rapid pace. The larvae wiped out huge stretches of the larch forest and upset the balance everywhere. Being a predominate tree because of the nitrogen to carbon ratio of their needles tamarach grew to substantial sizes everywhere. We are only use to see it in the wet swamps because the initial trees in the uplands died and the swamp trees could withstand the larvae, wet years would flood out the overwintering cocoons.
My university first job was on this study and the parasites they introduced because the second wave of larvae was occurring and DDT was being phased out. They then had to develop a hyprer-parasite to control the initial parasite.

I would suspect that during that time frame............1916-1929.........the population numbers were based solely on harvest numbers. During that time we had the Spanish flu for about three years, WW1 that took trappers off the land , and ........at least in Alaska, we had starvation in some of the smaller villages. Don't forget the diphtheria epidemic in 1924-25.

IF population guesses were based on harvest numbers I can see where those events could make it appear that the population was down.

On the other hand... when this latest episode got serious....around 2010-2012......I remember asking Gulo if it was possible this was a cycle no one had seen before because the frequency was so long. He said...."on the other hand"..

There is always "on the other hand "

Paul Millette told me that back in around the 1930's 1940's there were no marten in the bush.It was all fisher at that time.He said that marten came back in the late 40's early 50's.
There were a lot of marten in North eastern Ontario in the 1870's,all the canoe brigades were paid in Made Marten skins,(Bowmen and steersmen getting 25 made marten and middlemen getting 20)being that they were the currency of trade here at that time.

In 1919,after the first war ended,the fur prices were extremely high,so I can see that overtrapping was most likely a concern.Beaver trapping around that time was closed for 10 years as they were on the brink of extinction right across North America,and were only saved by efforts of Bay man JSC Watt who implemented the beaver preserves around James Bay.

So with prices being so high at that time I can see overtrapping being a factor,as well as normal fluctuations that occur as the bush changes over time being more suitable for different types of animals and switching back and forth over long periods of time.

Boco: what does MADE marten skins mean ?

Just got off the phone with someone that has Manitoba records going back to 1919 when Manitoba started to keep records. In the 1930 there was only a handful of marten 6-10 for all of Manitoba. There was a pocket in the Red Lake area of Ontario 51*n 95*w. There are records for foxes so they were out trapping.
Back in those days 1900-1950 quite a few farm boys went into the woods and trapped and lived off the land. When you find some of their encapments the nitrogen shows in the vegetation around the sites, much like the whaling stations did in the high artic with IR imaging

Somebody mentioned HBC records showing lynx cycles over a long period of time. Maybe HBC records could shed light on marten trends??

Stretched and dried.

That fellow that has the records is afraid to touch any kind of mouse..
so I'm waiting for his wife to scan some of the takes for Manitoba over the ages.

All things being equal on the landscape I think as trappers we take advantage of the natural cycles, in poor recruitment years there not much we can really do to change the outcome. In good recruitment years the numbers speak for themselves and going harder or further does not change the overall population.
If everything stays the same, no fires or clear cuts our success depends on the reproductive cycle.

Where things change is when you have major disturbances over the landscape. In the past it would mainly be big fires that would change things, today it is man and our actives like logging that can have a huge impact.
Looking at the recent history in my area just before the first world war there was a number of gold and silver rushes that changed the landscape mainly by fire. Marten for the most part did not start to reappear until the 1960's and peaked in the 1980's, this time what tipped the iceberg was commercial logging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcupine_Gold_Rush

I thought this piece on succession in the boreal forest was interesting. Especially note when red back voles take over.
https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static-...TION/Forests%20IV_Succession%20Facts.pdf

I was out all day today setting for marten, on this trapline in the 15 years I have been trapping it I have never seen so much marten sign, tracks every 200 or 300 yards in good habitant. I will know in a week how successful the recruitment was this year. My guess from my observation is it was a banner year.

These are examples of some of the fires in the region

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Porcupine_Fire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matheson_Fire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1922

What happened here was the crash of the Yukon Gold Rush in 1900 and all those prospectors spread across the land, Great expanses of rock outcroppings were set afire to find the veins of quartz. Some of those fires were not contained and 10,000 acres was not uncommon.
Other problems occurred with the railways going across the Canadian Shield between 1880 to 1910 with the northern CNR line. with fires from the engines.

Northof50, that is interesting, about the Larch Sawfly. News to me, I guess that illustrates how often there can be environmental factors, many of us humans don't always necessarily notice, that could have widespread impact. So many variables......

W17, I agree, the trapping pressure in that era, would almost certainly have been severely impacted by the flu, TB, diphtheria, WW1, etc. However, I found some info that claims around 8,000 trappers operating in Alaska, during that time frame, made their sole income from trapping, so still some pressure, probably more evenly distributed than now? I understand what you are saying, and agree, since I've seen the same thing occur with fisheries, price goes down for a season or two, or lousy weather seasons, the catch rates plummet. This doesn't necessarily indicate less biomass of target species, just less effort/ less efficient production, etc. If the Alaska Game Commission was simply basing abundance on harvest numbers, it could certainly have led to a misinterpretation of data, if there were indeed fewer active trappers, than previous seasons. I would think in the more "modern" fur booms, pressure would have possibly exceeded the earlier era, but possibly been more village centered, since post statehood, it wasn't always as easy to legally just go build a cabin and trap wherever you found open space? Especially in the last 40-50 years.

Sharon & W17, I think his "on the other hands" is a great asset to Gulo's ability to see multiple perspectives, and helps him in keeping an open mind! On the other hand........ HA! I'm glad that we can have input from such an overqualified source on here, and certainly appreciate every bit of input he has!!!

Boco, beaver was closed off and on in Alaska too, during that time frame. I know it was closed in 1925, 1926, and 1929, at least. Didn't Paul Millette eventually get a plane, and trap other regions? He was still always just trapping Ontario though, I think? Were poisons in widespread use, in Canada during the early 1900's? I've always wondered if that was potentially one of the driving forces (marten decline) during the closed marten seasons in Alaska. I know at least some regions of the Territory of Alaska were using poisons (strychnine, etc.) by the early 1900's, as control measures. These poison bait stations killed indiscriminately.

gibb, some good points there about the natural succession after fires, glaciation, etc. This is another topic that varies greatly, from region to region. The type of logging even has some effect on the overall impact. In my area, the cut units that have "leave strips" in between them (essential wildlife corridors of intact old growth forest, allowing vertical migration through mountainous areas with an intact canopy), seems to have minimal impact to the marten. Massive clear cuts, with no leave strips are not ideal.... The cuts that have the "leave strips" seem to maintain marten production pretty well, and I've often watched marten hunting microtines in the slash piles (limbs, tops, and junk trees). I've actually trapped in a lot of clear cuts that are anywhere from new to 50-80 years old. Some of them are quite productive, but I don't think they would be, if it weren't for the close by areas, of intact habitat they require for den sites etc.

drasselt, That would be an interesting idea to research the HBC records...... I know Alaska didn't, and still doesn't have a very clear picture of the overall marten harvest.

The larch sawflies ( which can only crawl as larvae or adults) were able to travel across Canada into Alaska in 40 years, who thought bugs could get around. When they released the successful parasite they could not get permission from USDA (surprise-surprize) so every 15 miles along the highways where there was larch trees they released 5 of these wasp, right up to a mile from the Alaska boarder. Talk about a scientist in the old day....MY WAY on THE HIGHWAY here I GO was his moto.
Crosspatch may have worked with the mammalogist out of this program by the name of Buckner. He taught us how to raise short tail shrews.

I'm only a mile or two from those HBC records for road-trippers to bunk.
At one time they offered " over-night stays" in the Nonsuch ship replica at the Manitoba Museum.

Before White archives this thread;
One of the interesting things about Larch besides their needles when dropped change the soil conditions and exclude other trees except Dwarf birch so they become a dominate tree. They best grow in clay soils but the larvae do well there and those old trees died in the first wave. They were also the preferred tree for railway ties and bridge building.
One of the soil survey Bio's took 1950 aerial photos and look for downed trees from this epidemic of sawflies devisation, with 3-5 foot diameters, they were nurse trees for the black spruce trees to grow, the 100 foot lines of trees growing was quite neat. He would then go in and look for rare orchards there, got to go with him several times and what a bonanza it was in finding orchids.
Red squirrels have quite a fancy for feeding on their cones especially in winter. With my flea work on the squirrels I focused on looking for squirrels high up. They will work on them before black spruce cones. Unfortunately in the last 15 years a type of cambrian bark beetle has kill most tamarack in southern Manitoba into Northern Minn especial in Rick Olson area

Tamarack has a lot of uses.Fresh tamarack needles when they first come out in spring are loaded with vitamins and immune system boosting nutrients.It is next best thing for your health to cedar tea.Quite a bit is collected in spring for use later in the year.
Large swaths of tamarack are prominent and easy to see on the land.Avoid those areas when travelling in the bush in the fall-Tamarack invariably indicates swampy terrain around here.
There are two kinds of tamarack here.One is very knotty and branchy with a thick trunk and the other is knot free and straight often little difference in trunk diameter all the way up.
Both types have their respective uses in the bush.

The soil around those trees was also changed from those big trees, ratios of C-N in larch is 7- 3, were as other tree leaves are 30-1 ratio. Soil profiles a-b-c were quite interesting different merely 20 m away and was one reason this Bio was studying it in relation to the orchids and their frequency there over other areas, unfortunately he died of pancreatic cancer in 5 short weeks and took his data with him.

I recall a spring about 20 years ago when some sort of caterpillar looking larva showed up on the tamaracks. Just when they should have been putting on those new spring needles ! As soon as you cleared the west edge of the Alaska range you could see miles of yellow/ brown tamaracks.
Some were killed but it seems like most survived

The Larch sawfly Pristiphora erichsonii was probably what you saw white 17. Good write up in the Canadian forestry section.
The adult females come out and lay in the new growth shoots their eggs, these curl up so it is easy to see where they are. The tips die off and force the tree to grow new shoots next year. There are no males in this species of sawflies. 10% of the over wintering cocoons do not emerge till the second year. These cocoons are a major food source for the microtone population, so that is why the marten are hunting in those swam regions. They are in the sphagnum moss 5-20 cm below ground depending on moisture depth and the size of the white moon on your thumb = to days worth of food for a shrew. 2 are needed for a red back vole
Part of the food cycle for marten you do not really see.

^^^
So do those cocoons/larvae eat on the fugus you were telling be about back at that NTA convention, or is that something different?

The mice and vole eat the cocoons and that is the search the marten use around the tamarach trees looking for their prey. Most trappers thing the marten are climbing to tree for an out-look post cause they see all this sign around the trees. It also occurs around large spruce trees because there is a bud worm that attacks them and the larvae drop and cocoon under those trees which usually have a taller moss build up.

Recalling back to the convention conservation it was the micro-habitat around forest roads with more light hitting some sides and growth of the plants and the plow zone created clearing roads before topping is put down = high organic zones and fungus growth and more redbacked voles feeding in those areas.

The sawfly larvae fall out of the trees and cocoon in the duff area around the trees they have finished their feeding, they will migrate if not finished to another tree and climb the tamarch and finish feeding. In a heavily infested location 1000 pupae can be in a meter square = bous feeding site for the microtones.
This is another reason that Great Grey Owls are usually around those sites as well since they are exclusively a mouse eater.

^^^^
I'm just trying to figure out why all else being the same (for the most part) marten seem to prefer damp areas vs. dry sites. More fungus??

I don't think it is a matter of marten preferring damp areas.

I believe what we see is a consequence if wet areas freezing. Water is forced to the margins of swampy areas and is forcing voles out of their holes. The marten know this happens and consequently, they are just there taking advantage of the voles being forced to move.
Just like bears with salmon at certain locations

^^^^^^
I realize that many marten trappers are probably not able to see this phenomenon. The easiest place to observe it is in Washington State where climatic and moisture/temperature variations are dramatically pronounced within both a change of elevation and longitude (west to east). These changes are observed within just a few hundred feet of elevation or a couple miles east to west.

This precipitation map illustrates it pretty well. Areas with purple or dark blue will generally have marten providing the habitat is there. That means; not in a clear cut, above timber line, etc.

It is so dramatic. For example, I can drive up a logging road on the west side of the Cascade mountains that starts out at an elevation of 1000 feet, I can then show you within a hundred feet of so of elevation change where you will start finding marten. I tried to explain this to a USFS biologist I was hire to "train" back in the late 80's. He was very skeptical of my explanation of where we would find marten. He humbly changed his tune after the snow fell and we started logging "snow track intercepts" (STI's), and noting the habitat at the STI's.

In the Cascades, marten will typically show up at 3000 feet of elevation. South facing slopes maybe not until 4000 feet or so, north facing slopes somewhat lower than 3000 feet.

Dark Blue 80-100 inches of precipitation annually
Puple 100+ inches annually

More moisture= more fungus = more food for the red back voles or your equal out there. Ever notice that their scat is black vs microtus which eat greens as well and have green scat.

Like your map, Waggler.

Like there, here is the same way. East of the divide is so different than just over the ridges west....and for elevation, I have loved for years, driving up the log roads and seeing how fast the tree types change , very dramatic and obvious to me.

I have places I have to park and admire the trees and habitat as it changes way before I reach the summits.

Around here you will find them from green to purple

I like that map too, Dirt ! I have always loved studying maps- topo for the dimensions especially. They can reveal much about preferred habitat .

As you move north you have other factors at play, but I think it stills has to do with moisture; it doesn't really matter how much of it comes out of the sky in a year, it's how much is in the soil. Permafrost, shorter dry seasons, temperature and other things factor into soil moisture. There are areas of Alaska where if with the same precipitation (arid regions) you were only 30 degree north latitude you would find yourself in a literal desert.

That being said, It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the purple areas on your map may coincide with the highest marten densities in the State.

In a purple area I had seven marten sets widely spread out along five miles of river bottom a week or so ago. Caught 15 marten in two checks over a total of four nights. Still lots of marten around, cannibalized marten, bait eaten from traps containing marten, fresh tracks, etc..
6 juvenile males
5 adult males
3 juvenile females
1 adult female

^^^^^
I think maps like these are fascinating, they can explain things and help form hypotheses.

I would be interested to hear others thoughts on lemmings ( bog) as a food source. Some of the highest densities of marten tracks Ive ever seen were in an area with an unbelievable population of lemmings. I have never trapped that area, but have hunted it extensively. Late in the fall when the snow comes the marten sign is incredible.

Dirt, I have questioned the home range theory too. [/quote]

In northern Manitoba where the two species of lemmings occur on the sub-artic / taiga interphase area the trappers have good populations of marten. Gilliam area 56.3N -94.6E and east towards Ontario boarder. When some snap trapping for small mammals was done for a Hydro study they were hearing the traps go off behind them on the trails. They had to go back and string tie the snap/ wooden rat traps down because the marten were taking them away in front of the researchers. In the end they quit because of the number they were catching. Those populations went on for several years in that area if I remember correctly.
70% of those marten are 3xl from those trappers when they can get out on their lines.

Well with all the talk of fleas, lice, and mites......

What caused that,T4E,Never seen that before on a mink or marten.
I think they would freeze to death here this time of year with that amount of fur loss.

There are two types of mites and I always get the wrong on. I'm leaning towards that being a Sagunicropic mite. the other is Scabies
T4 E I will pm you where to send the samples.

on the underside of the hide you see the burrows in the leather....if you want to risk infecting yourself.

I don't know what happens to mink when they get the kidney worm but they do go down very fast mid -winter. When this effected the local population it all but whipped them out for 5 years. and that was back when a mink was worth a good bottle old Single Malt Scotch. Maybe Gulo will chime in.

So the neighbor gave me this book the other day. " The Patterson's Den" It is an autobiography by a guy who moved out here in 1941. Trapped with his dad on about a fourth of my line. According to him it appears there were no marten down on river. They had to trap up at 1000 ft to find marten. There were 4 other trappers working the low country around him and he inherited his line. Maybe they were poor managers?

Might be interesting to look at average temperatures in 1941 compared to today

They had the same spruce beetle kill we have today. Must have been from the global warming in the 30's. I trapped up 1000 ft and it was always warmer than on river bottoms, but no more productive.

They knew to manage the beaver. 2 per house. Plus they had a 10 beaver limit. The family limit, meaning 40.

I have found that same thing to be true Dirt. BUT......maybe a thousand feet isn't enough, generally, to get a sufficient temperature increase these days.