Got a call from the land manager on the property I trap on. They are having trouble with animals chewing the lines in the sugar bush. Only in certain areas of hy ground in oak stands. Not squerals they say fisher and wolf's and fox. Anyone have any ideas on what they are interested in. This is mostly on the one inch pvc main line.

We see the same thing in New York State in the sugar bush sap lines.

The fisher are attracted to the sugar maple sap in the lines.

The fisher are probably in those oak stands mainly for the acorn mast crop
but also have a sweet tooth for the maple sap.

Fisher are notorious for having a sweet tooth.

w

Walleyed they water and isopropyl alcohol to flush the lines is it just the residual sugar in the lines attracting them? And why only in the hy oak stands and not all over the bush randomly? This is a large operation that covers about 3or4 square miles.

We have about 150 trees on gravity lines and our issues are squirrels and raccoons. We also use buckets on another 350 trees and those get hit by coons. Don't know about fishers as we have a very limited number of fishers.
We work to manage squirrel numbers. You get one hole in a line and it can really cut back on sap yield. We go through and flag holes early in the run and then splice and fix. These are the softer 7/16 inch lines. We don't have any 1 inch PVC but that has to be real issue when those get chewed up!

Bryce

I answered your initial question in my above post.

Reread the third (3) sentence of my reply.

w

Here we see squirrels chewing the lines.
Those oak are a major food source for those squirrels and probably hollow spots are their dens
Time to do some major squirrel hunting IMO

Wallyed I didn't realize that until I posted my reply. Half asleep.

Turtledale not much of a squeral problem we have mostly red and flying squeral here it's mostly fisher damaging the lines. Like wallyed said the large oak stands are probably attracting the fisher and they are just taking advantage of the low lines in that area. He also said there's a lot of turkey's in there looking for acorns another fisher magnet. I am going to stop by on Friday on my way home.