Fishers are skilled hunters in the Maine woods, but they are not likely to pass up an opportunity for some free food.
They just may not eat it where it was left.
A determined fisher in this trail camera video posted on April 16 by BDN Contributor Allie Ladd shows just how persistent the animal can be. A deer leg is wired down, but the fisher wants to take it someplace more private to eat it.
Fishers are furbearers in the weasel family and may be trapped in Maine, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The trapped animals must be tagged with the state.
Fishers usually avoid open areas, much preferring forest edges with dense brush or other types of cover and the woods itself.
They are carnivores and have a varied diet, including snowshoe hare, porcupine, small rodents, upland birds, carrion of deer, moose and beaver, as well as fruits and nuts, DIF&W’s website on the animal says.
DIF&W recently found that fishers prey on Canada lynx in northern Maine as well.
They are usually nocturnal, but the lure of a free meal can pull them out of hiding during daylight and in the open, as we see in this video.
