I went up top just looking for tracks monday morning, cut a couple fox and a coyote but no fisher or cat this time, did see fisher and cat tracks last snow but someone had beat me to them.

Nice!

Out the bathroom window

Cool report, Hippie.
Never have I seen a fisher in the wild here in PA, except last October, in my urban back yard in the city of Harrisburg. We were sitting around the fire pit at night, talking, and we could hear this strange clicking sound in the big pin oak in our back lawn. I had a headlamp on, so I pointed the beam up to the clicking sound and whoa, it's a big male fisher scurrying around the tree looking for sleeping squirrels, I guess. His claws on the bark made that strange clicking sound, and he was incredibly fast. Eventually he had inspected the whole tree and came down to the lawn, where he stared at us and then walked over to the utility shed and laid down under it. Despite trying for years to catch a fisher in a trap, and having seen their tracks all around our cabin and our trap sets and our baited cubbies for years, I had to wait to actually see one in PA in my back yard in a city. Makes me wonder if the fisher population isn't getting to be like the overly healthy bear population here...we have had two large bears on our block in the past three years, as well as a monster buck in our back yard two years ago. Never mind the pair of coyotes and the pair of red foxes living full time in the park across the street, and which routinely patrol our back yard.

Don't mean to hijack the post but one time in Oct while squirrel hunting it was a late summer like mild day I dosed off for a short nap When I opened my eyes a small garter snake had stopped to see if I was on the menu as part of todays special It was laying about 1/2 way between my hip and my knee It was very small sp it posed no threat to me as it slowly moved to a different spot in the woods But I was now awake

I figger it went after the turkey and sent them off the roost. It headed to where they came sailing down over from.

According to the PGC, fisher don't eat turkey.

Riiiiiight!!

Awesome!! Fishers are nice trapping animals!

Great memories that will stand out for sure. Thanks for posting Lug.

Yes, it was interesting that PGC studied the stomach contents of fishers and found no turkey meat in them, long after the fishers had already eradicated the wild turkeys in northcentral PA. Our cabin is one mile from Wolf Run Natural Area, where fishers were released. We watched our wild turkey numbers go from three big flocks to two to one flock and then down to individual birds in about ten years, to now we have no turkeys at all. None, despite awesome habitat that should hold them year round.

My camp is in Potter near Shinglehouse. We had an outstanding turkey population up until about ten years ago when it started to dwindle. There's maybe a quarter of the birds there used to be. There are thousands of acres of great habitat right out my door.

There are also a lot of fisher in the area.

I would bet if they sampled the stomach contents earlier in the year things would be different. Like other predator's fisher are opportunity hunters. During the late Spring and early summer months I see some hen turkeys with their broods all summer coming thru our place off and on. Sometimes it will be 2 or 3 mature hens with their combined broods I assume. It may be they feel their young may be better protected with more hens in the group to spot predators.

This happens every year. I count the young very closely each time I see them and / then log date the info on my calendar.

We have had a high mortality rate on a few flocks / broods I have monitored. I realize that hawk, owls and other predators take a few randomly. That is just the cycle of life.

But I would bet they would find turkey remains in fisher at that time of year. Most likely the mentioned stomach samplings were collected from mostly in season harvested animals and likely some road kills.

By the fall time of year, a fisher's diet would have transitioned to other prey species as well. But in the Early part of the year, they climb like a squirrel all year round. So, roost busting is an acquired learned skill and most likely an instinctual trait and a very productive one at that. I know Bcats do this also.

I have seen one in my life up a tree after a squirrel. Right time, right place situation.

If I hadn't heard the bark scratching and some falling bark pieces to the ground as I did, I most likely would have never witnessed the pursuit. That squirrel would not have made an escape had it not been for a nearby tree branch. It leaped over to it about 10 ft away. It nearly near fell to the ground. It did a little trapeze swinging act around that small extended branch where it landed on it.

Had it been a lone tree with no close trees, I believe that squirrel would be in that fisher's scat over the next few days. It may have jumped to the ground possibly to escape at that point.

It wasn't a flying squirrel, just a typical grey squirrel.

I am in the woods about every day in the Fall and Winter, I see about a half dozen of them a year. Ive treed a couple on deer drives. I’m starting to believe they out number fox and coyote in our area. Lots of tracks on the logging roads once we get snow. Not hard to fill your fisher tag here.