Interesting info for NH/West Virginians.

[nastygunz]

From Eric Orff, well known retired NH biologist, I didnt know this!
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"Let’s go back four decades to 1968, when this state’s trappers live captured 25 fisher, which were traded by the NH Fish and Game Department for 25 wild turkeys from West Virginia. This was this state’s first effort at restoring a wild turkey population. Fisher had been wiped out of West Virginia by the mid 1800’s by loss of habitat and unregulated hunting and trapping. West Virginia wanted to restore the balance of nature and return this mystical animal. Fisher were nearly eradicated in New Hampshire as well, but a small remnant population was protected in 1931. By the 1960’s the fisher had returned to this state and were again trapped. Although this state experienced one of the worst record snows that year, which seemed to have doomed the newly transplanted turkeys, fisher have thrived in West Virginia and have even expanded into some of the surrounding states."

[FinsnFur]

What do you think about this Bill? Your the only one that was around in the 1800's arent you?

[Bills Custom Calls]

  As I am reaching for my magnifying glasses so I can read look at what is being said


First off I can't remember why WVA Would trade 25 of their turkey's for a few fisher can't them hillbillies catch fish on their own  :roflmao:


What the hell is a fisher

[FinsnFur]

It's in the weasel family. Cute lil suckers

[alscalls]

See hear BACON NUT......  

[Bills Custom Calls]

I guess I forgot that you folks in WVA do have the internet now  :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

[nastygunz]

Speakin of West Virginny.......I was just watchin the travel channel with the bizarre food guy, andrew zimmerman, and he was in cass, and helvetia, WVA, eatin all kinds of squirrel dishes and possum n coon....just like growin up back in VT

[Frogman]

I've never seen a fisher in WV.  We do have lots of turkeys though!!

Jim

[nastygunz]

On the WVA DNR site it says you can trap 1 I think.
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John Harrigan: Fisher cats at home in West Virginia

By JOHN HARRIGAN
Woods, Water and Wildlife
Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009

This is a continuation from last week's piece on the famed fisher (aka, "fisher cat") swap with West Virginia for the live-trapped wild turkeys -- the beginnings of what today is New Hampshire's turkey population of 40,000.

What I really wanted to write about this week was wind power, but I don't want to invite angry mobs with torches and pitchforks. So, fishers. Next week, wind.

The burning question frenzied readers want answered is, "Well, OK, so the turkeys took hold, but what about those fisher cats in West Virginia?"

Ted Walski, New Hampshire's Mr. Turkey Man, said he really didn't know, but I asked him to dig up some names and numbers and get an update.

The 1970-71 exchange involved 31 New Hampshire fishers for 31 West Virginia turkeys. Walski and cohorts released the turkeys in Deerfield, Nottingham and Pawtuckaway. That effort failed, due largely to unsuitable habitat (few active farms) and one of the hardest winters on record.

The next attempt, in 1975, involved turkeys released in the Keene/Walpole/Swanzey region. That one took hold, and subsequent transplanting of the offspring repopulated most of the lower half of the state.

Meanwhile, back in West Virginia, the New Hampshire fishers evidently felt right at home and busily went about doing what fishers do best (after killing things), which is making little fishers and extending their range to find more stuff to kill. Of 55 counties there, Ted learned, 22 now have fishers in such abundance that controlled trapping is allowed, and the surplus population has even moved ("invaded," fisher-haters would put it, and there are indeed fisher-haters) into Maryland. That state, to date, has not asked for federal disaster relief.

Addendum: From 1996 to '99, 175 New Hampshire fishers went to Pennsylvania in a successful reintroduction project. Ditto for Connecticut, where Nutmeg Staters are now in their fourth trapping season.

For those who are wondering "What's a fisher cat, anyway?," it's a.) a baseball player; or b.) a larger member of the weasel family, slightly bigger than its cousin the marten but smaller than a Great Dane. In addition to apples and berries, it eats mice, moles, voles, shrews, frogs, rabbits, partridges and, as a preferred cocktail snack, free-roaming house cats, which is one of the reasons we keep a spare cat.

Alas, contrary to stubbornly held legend and lore, fisher cats follow that old dictum about no predator out-eating its own food supply, and thus are not to blame for diminishing numbers of snowshoe hare and partridge (for the real explanation for that, Google "habitat loss and degradation").

Neither are they particularly mean, nasty or vicious (for that, Google "wolverine"), although one of my favorite throw-away lines, when speaking to a particularly convivial group, is to advise woods-bound guys to be sure to wear the cast-iron model of a certain piece of apparel, because fisher cats, as we all know, go straight for the private parts.

John Harrigan's "Woods, Water & Wildlife" column appears each week in the New Hampshire Sunday News. He can be reached at Box 39, Colebrook, NH 03576; or hooligan@ncia.net.

[nastygunz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_(animal)