BY DAVE BECK A second chance

The winds of change are coming. In the early morning I can feel Fall pinching me in the arm. I can also see it on the lakes and streams in the form of the fog lifting caused by warmer waters clashing with cooler air temperatures. I also got a sign compliments of the Wisconsin DNR. A couple of weeks ago I found my fisher trapper tag waiting for me in my mailbox. Admittedly, I am a novice when it comes to fisher trapping. I have only one year of experience under my belt. Prior to last year’s season, the last time I trapped was in my youth when I chased muskrats on the Mississippi River. That was so long ago that I ran my trap line by bicycle which tells you that I didn’t run a lot of traps and I didn’t venture far from home. I did manage to bag a few ‘rats and it was during a time and place when prices were sky high. A few pelts brought me extreme wealth; well, at the time I thought I was rich. Trapping back then was about making some money. Pursuing a fisher this winter is all about matching wits and being one step ahead. They are a very capable adversary whose home range could be a 15-mile loop that they travel on a regular basis. That makes them even more elusive because an animal may be only in your trapping range for a couple of days every two or three weeks. So, when they are in range, you have to have the right setup in the right place. Getting back to last year’s efforts, to make my trapping a little more interesting I placed a deer cell camera over both of my traps to hopefully capture the capture. I was oh so close a couple of times. My first close call was when I had a fisher literally with its front paws atop the entrance to my box trap set up. It was a perfect picture and almost a taunt directed towards me. The second near miss was a photo that my camera captured of a fisher circling the back side of my setup. For whatever reason, the fisher resisted the white-tailed deer scraps that I had wired into the back of the box trap. It was both awesome to see the animal come so close yet maddening that my setup wasn’t good enough to close the deal. Was it my bait? Were my traps not located in the right spot? Did I use the wrong scent attractant? All of those questions followed me after the season closed. When I opened my mailbox and found this year’s orange fisher postcard, I had conflicted feelings about the fisher trapping business. My initial feeling was the frustration that I had after my first fisher trapping season ended and I was shut out. That was very quickly replaced with a bigger and better thought: I got a second chance.

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