When you see marten in large numbers they are on the move and abandon home range due to a small mammal crash.Many trappers make the mistake of trapping them hard at this time,but if you do your due diligence and record your adult to juvenile ratio during these events,you will notice approx. 80% adult marten and very few juveniles.
This is the time when maintaining bait stations late into winter(while spring beaver trapping)will give you a respectable catch the following year,when other trappers will have very few marten.One year in 2005 we had a very large amount of marten on the move.I could tell right away by the large size of these marten they had come down from the North around the Bay.
During that unusual event a lot of trappers overtrapped and had no marten for two years.I maintained several bait stations well into April that year,and stopped trapping early.The following year I took 40 marten by Christmas,and quit because of climbing adult female ratios in the harvest,and the next year I was able to harvest my normal 65 marten,when most trappers still did not have enough marten to warrant running their lines.
This was the first time in 40 years that biologists and trappers had seen a two year near absence of marten after a small mammal crash.Every other time the populations rebounded after one year of reproductive failure.
In order to manage marten you need to know the dynamics of the population whether there are 80% juveniles dispersing in the harvest or 80% adults abandoning home range due to a small mammal crash.Being able to differentiate will allow you to have a harvestable population of fur every year,without inadvertently depleting the carrying capacity on your line.
|