When going to college in the Adirondacks, trapping took up my spare time when I didn’t have classes. Raccoons, fox and muskrats were the major furbearers caught with a few mink, skunk, weasel or beaver here and there.

One day, while cutting through a balsam fir swamp, I saw a set of unfamiliar tracks in the snow. Checking some books in the library that night, I determined they were fisher tracks, an animal that is not common even in the North Country. The trapping season was open for them so I decided to give them a try. Besides, a female pelt was worth about $40 at the time.

This member of the weasel family is dark brown with a moderately bushy tail. They weigh around 10 to 12 pounds for most males with 20 being tops. Females only weigh five to seven pounds but their fur is finer.

I learned they were long ranging nomads and frequently took porcupines for food. In fact, they were considered a major control for the “porkies.” Being very agile and quick, even in the trees, they are known to catch squirrels.

The next weekend, I went home with a classmate who lived in Ogdensburg and was also a relative of one of America’s famous old trappers E.J. Daily. He spent all his years in the Adirondacks trapping and making trapping lures. We had visited E.J. before and I could not wait to ask him how to catch a “fisher cat” as the locals called them.

He told me to locate a spot where someone had dressed out a deer and set a trap there as fishers home in on these places. “Kill a porkie and drag him along your trapline from set to set and then set a trap where you leave the porkie,” E.J. said.

I did as he said, and though it took a few weeks, I caught my first fisher cat. In fact, I later caught a second one. One pelt was sold but the other still hangs on the wall as a reminder of my trapping experiences in the North Country.

How does a fisher kill a “porkie” without getting full of quills? Because he is so fast he can dart in, bite his head, which does not have quills, and get out before the tail slaps him. Once the “porkie” succumbs and becomes fairly disabled the fisher will roll him over attacking him his unprotected belly. The fisher doesn’t always escape the quills though. One of the fishers I caught had several quills in his face.

How effective are fishers at controlling the porcupine populations? In Vermont, fishers had been absent for decades and “porkie” damage to trees was rampant. They imported some live-trapped fishers from Maine and released them around the state. Within a few years, the porcupine population was back into balance with its habitat again.

The reproduction habits include delayed implantation that puts their peak of mating season in March only about a week after the female gives birth. An average of three poorly developed young are born in a hollow cavity high in a tree. The young don’t open their eyes for almost 50 days.

At present, there is a trapping season for fisher in the Adirondacks and Catskills and they have been expanding their range in the state. Occasionally one is seen in central and western parts of the state. Several years ago, I got a quick glimpse of an animal running into the woods near the Town of Belfast on my way back from camp. I was not positive but my instinct told me it was a fisher. The value of fisher fur has jumped in the last few years with the price being around $70 to $90.

Not many people know about the fisher and very few folks have gotten a chance to see one in the wild. I’m glad I saved one fisher pelt to hang on my wall as it reminds me of the North Country and a unique animal that is not found in this part of the state.

To get sportsman’s news and info into The Great Outdoors, call Doug Domedion at (585) 798-4022 or e-mail thejournalregister@mail.com.