Two weeks ago, I told you about the archery buck I bagged. One week ago, I told you about the fisher that kept feeding off the deer carcass that I purposely left in the woods for the critters. This week I will tell you about my attempts to trap that fisher when I realized that I had a harvest tag.   

This is my third year of trapping fishers, or should I say my attempt at trapping fishers. I had yet to be a threat to them, but I never had a fisher patterned like this before. It was time to act quickly and my excitement increased the more I scrambled to find my trapping gear. 

The fisher had come in four nights in a row and there was no telling how long it was going to stay in the neighborhood. Fishers are territorial nomads with a reported range of 10 to 15 miles. I had to get ‘em before the food cache ran out and it moved on to other parts of its home range.   

The first night of trapping the fisher literally stood on top of my cubby box trap. 

Here's an interesting side note. I was curious as to why I didn’t get a single photo of a coyote, raccoon or opossum at the site where I had field dressed my buck. After researching more on fishers, I learned that they will spread their scent around a major food cache to ward off other scavengers. Because fishers are so mean and they fear nothing, their scent alone is threat enough to keep other animals away. 

The first night I was wrong in assuming that all I had to do was lay a cubby trap out. I thought that the fisher would go in for the venison scraps and BOOM (mic drop), my trapping season would be over. In hindsight, the fisher had all it could eat right in plain sight so why crawl into a cubby box for the meal? That gave me an idea. I needed to get to Red Wing. 

My plan was based on the fact that because the fisher had consumed venison for five days in a row, a sudden change in the menu might be enough to entice the critter into my trap. It had been dining on a steady diet of “turf” so a surprise entrée of “surf” could be exactly what the fisher wanted. I loaded up the boat with walleye gear and headed to the river. I caught exactly enough for two meals: one meal was for me and one meal of walleye backbones and innards was for the fisher. After cleaning the fish, I hustled out to the woods to rebait the trap with the hope that St. Hubert (patron saint of hunters and trappers) was paying attention and was on my side.  

Bright and early the next morning I headed out to the trap site. When I saw that my trap was sprung with my very first fisher I fist pumped the air in celebration. I was now a worthy adversary of a critter that I have come to both admire and respect.   

So that wraps up a story that started three weeks ago with an archery buck, a river outing in Red Wing, two walleye meals, and a successful end to my trapping season.

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