Fishers

Courtesy of Pennsylvania Game Commission

A Fisher Meets A Fisher

Two summers ago, along with my best fishing companion, Sneakers, I was returning to the house from an early evening of fishing on Mill Creek. It was getting close to dusk, but visibility was still good. It was, all in all, a pleasant summer evening and Sneakers, as usual, was checking for signs of rabbit on the trail back to the house.

Even though I’d fished the Boyd hole on the way upstream earlier, I decided to pause there to take a last look for rising trout. Sneakers by then had, in fact, picked up a rabbit track and was off the stream trying to bring the critter around.

As I approached the hole, which, by the way, is not overly large, perhaps a half dozen yards wide, I noticed movement on the far bank at the water’s edge. Over the years I had become accustomed to meeting all sorts of wild life on this stream running check-to-jowl with US 6 a few yards away. It was at this very hole a couple of years before, in the evening just as the sun slipped below the mountains that I became aware that something was watching me as I laid out the first few casts. I figured maybe Dan Boyd himself, not wanting to disturb me, was standing behind me in the gathering darkness. When I turned to look, it was a “B’, but not Boyd. There stood a very large black bear, silhouetted against the setting sun, staring intently at me. I’d encountered bear before on other streams, but this was different. He seemed just a bit too intent, too devious. The only thing I could think to do was to stare back. It seemed to do the trick as he shortly lumbered away.

So, the movement I noticed this time didn’t concern me much; I figured it might be a raccoon, mink, fox, opossum, or any other of the many wild creatures that roam up and down the Mill Creek bottom. But as I watched more closely I realized I had never seen anything like this animal before – anywhere!

The animal was dark brown and when it became aware of my presence it stood up a bit on its hind legs revealing some lighter, almost white patches on its neck and chest. It was about the size of a large house cat. Its head had a weasel shape and its ears stood straight up. The nose was sort of “pointy.” The legs were short and unlike a cat or muskrat, its tail was bushy, though not overly long.

As I studied this visitor to one of my most popular holes he began to work his was along the rocks on the far side. It was then I realized that it was a fisher. My main concern from then on was that I didn’t want Sneakers anywhere near him. I had heard that pound for pound, fishers were quite vicious. Fortunately, Sneakers was many yards away chasing his rabbit and the fisher moved downstream where he disappeared into a root mass of a large pine tree on the bank. A few days later I related the incident to Dan and he confirmed the sighting by telling me he had seen it too.

Don’t ask me how I knew it was a fisher. As a boy I had read a lot about wildlife. I was also vaguely aware of the Game Commission’s program to re-introduce the animal to the wilds of Pennsylvania. It was mostly, I think, a process of elimination – it definitely didn’t fit with the other wildlife I was accustomed to seeing along the stream.

But what puzzled me most about the encounter was how did it get here, here in my own back yard, so to speak? Fortunately, there is a lot of information on the current Game Commission website about fishers (type “fishers” in their search engine section). I was able to learn from the website that the first fishers were released in 1994 into several wild areas of State Forests, Game Commission game lands, the Allegheny National Forest and Kettle Creek Valley. The Kettle Creek release, a female and her three young, in 1998 was the most recent release documented. That would make it the nearest documented release to my sighting. And, apparently, according to the information on the website, there have been no more releases since.

One possible explanation may lie in the fact that fishers “do travel extensive distances over land,” and “maintain low population densities and a large home range,” according to Thomas L. Serfass and Denise Mitcheltree writing in “Wildlife Notes” on the Game Commission website. “Home ranges may approach 30 square miles for males and about 12 square miles for females,” they report.

There is, of course, no way to know for sure how the fisher I saw got here. Kettle Creek is about 40 miles distant, as the crow flies, so in a period of 6 years of reasonably successful reproduction it is possible that the one I saw is a descendant of one of those released in Kettle. I’d like to think that it was out prospecting for a suitable range for itself. However, I have not seen it since, nor have I heard of any one in the area reporting a sighting.

Fishers, because of unregulated trapping and timber cutting in the 1800s, were eliminated from the state by the early 1900s. Today large tracts of suitable forestland and regulated trapping suggest that populations of the species can be restored. Writing in 2005, Joe Kosack, Wildlife Education Specialist, states that “fishers have reclaimed more than a quarter of Pennsylvania and there’s no reason to doubt that the species won’t continue its incredible recovery.

The good news is that because fishers are solitary, opportunistic predators and maintain low population densities it is not likely that they will become a nuisance species eliciting the wrath of the ordinary taxpayer. Indeed, the name is even in appropriate, as they do not hunt fish like otters and ducks. Their main diet is mice, shrew, squirrels, chipmunks and porcupines. They will also scavenge – road kill, and in deer season, gut piles and deer carcasses, for example. They’ve never had a bounty placed upon their heads; indeed, their fur is considered valuable.

It’s reassuring to learn that the success of the re-introduction of fishers is mostly because our habitat has returned somewhat to the condition it was when they were driven out. Establishment of viable populations will provide you and I the opportunity to see one of North America’s rarest and most interesting furbearers. While those of us who frequent the outdoors in the course of hunting activities criticize the Pennsylvania Game Commission from time to time, I feel that in this project they deserve a “Two Thumbs Up!”

Sources - all on Game Commission website: www.pgc.state.pa.us/

Serfass, T. L. et al, 2001. Fisher reintroduction in Pennsylvania. Final Project Report,
Frostburg University, Maryland 221 pp.

“Fishers,” by Thomas L. Serfass and Denise Mitchelltree, Feb. 2, 2004

"Reclaiming the Commonwealth," by Joe Kosack, Wildlife Education Specialist, Jan. 28, 2005