A marten skinning post...

Many of the students and Trapping Club members have expressed that they 'think' they know how to skin a marten but aren't sure.  Although most of them have helped skin fox and beaver, among other furbearers, some have not had the chance to participate in skinning a Marten.  This post is mostly for that purpose - an archival post to help them check in, if and when needed.  No scenery pics or events out on the line here, just lots and lots of skinning pics.  I would like to thank Sarah for being an accompanying cameraperson, and putting up with me saying, "Can you get a shot of this?"....."How about one of this?...", and so on, throughout the process...  Some of the shots are possible with just one person skinning and shooting, but the majority are definitely not.

And so, we begin.  As with most facets of life in the bush, compromise, adaptation, and improvisation are necessary for success.  Like skinning all manner of fur in your kitchen, for example.  The first thing to do when skinning of course is to tie off to something from which your animal will hang.  Something solid and unmoving is preferable, as you will be putting pressure on it when pulling.  In this case, I tied off to my beaver fleshing board, which is conveniently mounted on the wall right next to our kitchen table.  :)  Kid you not, I was once complemented on our "homemade ironing board" by a dinner guest, and then promptly asked, "What is it, then?..." when Sarah and I told her over her plate of spaghetti that it wasn't an ironing board...  that memory brings back a belly laugh....

Anyway, here is the Marten, already hung.  I just use a simple loop on the end of each piece of string, through which you can pass the main length of string that is hanging down.  This creates a variable size, sliding loop that can be put over a hind foot, and will cinch down tight with the weight of the animal.
 



I like to start with just one hind foot tied up, and let the other swing free for a bit, as we will see.

When skinning for fur sale, not taxidermy, the very first cut I make is one that circles the entire back leg in a ring, just before the last joint of the foot (ankle).


After that first cut is made on each leg, I then get out my utility knife.  For the next step I like to use the 'hook-tip' blades, not regular straight razors.  They can be found in any hardware store or of course online.  These are a GREAT idea for anyone skinning ANYTHING.  They work like a zipper.


Now - what you want to do is, take the hook knife (or any knife you happen to be using), and make a straight line from the cut you made around the leg, leading towards the anus.  Such a line would follow the knife I am holding in this photo.


Here is the start of that cut with the hook knife:
  

And here is a shot after both cuts have been made, one from each ankle leading towards the anus:


***Important*** - I say "towards the anus" rather than "towards the base of the tail", for a reason.  In most cases, making this cut cross below the anus (as in, opposite side of the tail, toward the groin area) will extend the length of the fur on the back side, where it will be measured and sized.  If you cut right to the anus, or go above it (tail side), you will lose precious length that you can otherwise save yourself, and in the end, get more for your fur.  A 22 and 7/8 inch-long Marten skin will be graded a different size by NAFA than a skin that is just over 23 in., in other words.

So, now that those two cuts have been made, it is time to start skinning the two back legs.




After skinning the two back legs, you will come to a point where you need to cut above and below the anus in order to move forward on skinning the tail and pulling the skin down toward the body.
This pic shows the start of that, with the tail being held pointing toward the camera:


I make a cut straight across the base of the tail.  This cut connects the two open spots you created when you skinned out the two legs.


After that cut, you should see something like this:


Now, the tail.  Again, I use the hook knife here.  You will see two white ligaments that run up the sides of the tail within the muscle.  Use them as your guide, and make a cut running right up the center of the tail, evenly spaced between these two ligaments.






Once you have split the tail, then work along the sides of it with your knife until you can pull it completely free of the fur.  Careful!!  The skin is thin here!


After the tail is free, things get easier.  Just use your knife to skin the fur away from the groin area, careful to trim extra fat which usually accumulates here, and then its on to the simplest part of the whole skinning.  Now you can just pull down on the hide until you begin to approach the shoulder area.  It is there we will pick up with the pics.


Notice the cut on the front leg at the very bottom of that pic above?  When you start to get close to the chest, you will want to make circular cuts around the front legs, just behind the feet, same as you did on the back legs in the beginning.  The purpose of this will be shown later.  (*Reminder, this is only done when skinning for fur sale, and not taxidermy, in which case the feet/claws will be left on.)

Now, at this point, after the front leg cuts are made, I put my knives down for a while.  This next segment is done entirely by hand.  The skin around the shoulders and chest is usually very clingy, and it is easy to make a hole if you use a knife, as the line of where to cut can be deceiving.  So I don't cut at all.  I push and pull with my fingers, sliding them between the muscle and hide to separate the two.  The next sequence of pictures will show this.  Just keep pushing and pulling, poking with your fingers, turning the animal to work evenly around its front and back side.  Very few, if any, cuts will need to be made with a knife at this point, and that will mostly be determined by the state of the animal (cold, still warm, partially frozen, etc).















OK.  We have worked our way down to the start of where the two front legs protrude from the body.

Here they are, in a belly-side view - that is, the leg on the left is the marten's right leg, and vice-versa.
Notice the membranes, still attached, that are connected to both the hide and the muscle on the body.  For those, you will want the knives again.

VERY carefully and lightly, you want to cut away this red, fibrous membrane from the hide so that it will stay attached to the muscle and pull away from the hide.  Like so:




Remember, the more 'stuff' you get off of the hide now, the less you have to trim off later, when the skin is on the stretcher.

Here is a shot of the membrane removal on the other leg:


After that, it is finger time again - no knife for a bit.  Keep poking and pushing and pulling, working your way completely around the body and both legs.  The 'clingiest' stuff will be between the legs in the brisket area, where the hide has to stretch over both legs and the chest.  Just keep digging your fingers in between the skin and the meat, and eventually you will keep making progress.
  



Eventually, you will see that you have pulled the hide down enough to see where the edge of the leg is.  At this point, you can stick a pointer finger in between the hide and the meat of the leg and push hard enough to poke through.








Now you are almost through with the legs!

Once you have poked through, it gets easy to work your finger between the leg and hide and free the leg all the way around, working toward the foot.


Soon you can grab the leg firmly, hooking your thumb in the crook of the elbow,  and pull, using the other hand to separate the hide from the leg.  You will feel the leg pulling through the 'tube' of hide as you go:





As you get close to freeing the legs, you will notice that the feet - more specifically the claws, which are now on the inside of the 'tube', are capable of tearing the hide as you pull.  This is where the cut you made around the base of the foot comes in.  The hide is already free there, so that when you pop the foot out of the 'tube', the leg is completely free.





Now, once the legs are free, it is time to pick up the knife again and separate the hide from the shoulders, and then go for the neck and head.  We are almost done!

As soon as you uncover part of the neck, you will notice two large blood vessels, one running up each side.  DO NOT nick these with the knife, or you will be blotting up blood (possibly wiping up the floor, even) the whole rest of the time.  BE CAREFUL around them and use LIGHT pressure with the knife in these areas!!!




Alright.  Now that we are through the neck area safely, we begin to see the head musculature, and not long after that, on a marten, you will notice the start of the ears.  These are given away by a pale, off-white, lumpy-looking area.  This 'lumpiness' is ear cartilage you are seeing under the layers of tissue.  You can confirm this by poking it with a finger, and it will feel spongy.  I am pointing to the ear cartilage in this picture:


After exposing a bit of this cartilage (I like to leave as much as possible on the head and NOT on the ear skin), you will want to hold the knife at an angle PERPENDICULAR to the head and cut down.

 Remember, cut STRAIGHT down into the head, at a PERPENDICULAR angle, or you might cut off some of the ear, which you do not want.  Once you are all the way through, the part of the ear that is on the hide makes a nice hole to put a fingertip in and can be used as a great 'hold' to pull with.

When the ears have been separated from their cartilage, it won't be long until you get to the eyes.  Again, you will notice a difference in coloration where the eye is lying.  In this pic, I am pointing to this 'eyespot' with the knife:


Now, same thing as with the ear - at a PERPENDICULAR angle, cut down into the head while pulling.


Soon a hole will start to appear, as though you are cutting a hole in the hide.  This is just the opening where the eye sits, of course, and you will see the skin start to separate from the eye as the eye now becomes visible when the inside-out skin pulls away from the opening.




Repeat on the other eye, and now you are down to the bridge of the nose and cheeks/lower jaw area.



When you make the first cut that lies along the lips, it will again look like you are cutting  hole in the hide - only you can see teeth through the hole.  This is normal, you are just removing the inside out hide from the jaws.  Again, this 'hole' makes a great place to hook a finger in and pull.


Do this on both sides of the jaw, and continue along the bridge of the nose to keep up, turning the head as needed to keep everything coming off evenly.


As you get close to the nose, the tissue will get cartilage-like again, and when it does, you can cut straight down into it, slowly.  Upon doing so, you will be able to see the two nasal passages in this cartilage.  In the next two pictures, I am pointing to this spot with the knife:




Don't forget to cut STRAIGHT down to remove the nose, not angled back into the hide:


Here is a pic just before the last cut of all, which will completely remove the hide.  The two nasal passages in the nose on the hide are clearly seen as two pink holes here:


The hide is free!!!!!!!

Now, to the stretcher.

Slide the hide over the stretcher, trying to keep it centered as much as possible.  Use the natural edge you have in the upper lip and nose to hook the hide over the point of the stretcher.

Once the nose is 'hooked' on the end of the stretcher, and the rest of the hide is hanging down over the stretcher, turn it as needed to keep it centered while working your way down from the head towards the tail, pulling as you go, to get every bit of stretch out of it that you can.




Get some pushpins ready, and when you get to the bottom, pull all the slack you can out and KEEP TENSION on the hide while you start to pin it down.  :)   I always stretch the tail side of the hide first to get the most out of this back side of the pelt, because it is the one that will be used to size-grade your fur.  This is another reason for that 'money cut' mentioned in the beginning.


 I like to just let the front legs stick out at this stage - when I turn the hide fur-side out, I will tuck in these 'stubs' and they will just remain inside the finished, dried fur.



Once you have a couple pins in there, you can relax a bit on the pulling  and let the pins do their job.  Add more as necessary to get your fur as even as you can, to improve the presentation.  Don't forget pins to spread the tail and rear legs as well, to speed the drying.


Now is the time, before the pelt dries, to trim all chunks of fat/membrane/tissue off the pelt with your knife.  I like to use more pulling than cutting when doing this, and in fact, I purposely use a dull knife for the job.  We can still make holes at this point!

Once the pelt has been trimmed, and had time to dry (which will vary greatly depending on weather, temperature and humidity of where you are drying, etc.), it will feel a little like parchment paper, and will even make a dry scratchy sound when you run a fingernail across it.  All 'moist' looking areas should be  gone at this point, with no visible coagulated fat or beads of oil.  Marten are one of the easiest animals to get good and dry, but still....this is important.

That said, now pull the pins and by grabbing the end of the nose, pull the skin off the stretcher.  Then tuck the nose down into the center of the fur, basically turning it inside out like a sock.  Work the hide bit by bit with your thumbs carefully so as not to tear it.  A properly dry pelt will crinkle at this stage, but is not quite so dry that it leaves a crease at a bending point.  Too dry means a chance of tearing when turning it right-side out.  When the pelt is fully fur-side out, it can be put back on the stretcher, same way, but now the skin side is in of course.  Hook the nose on the stretcher end and work your way down towards the tail, straightening and pulling as you go, keeping things centered.  Many marten, unless rather dark, will have a stripe of color down the middle of their back which can help somewhat with this.   Here is the marten we just skinned, fur-side out and back on the stretcher.  Note the stripe I was talking about:


This one was pretty large!  Here's how large.  Anything 23" long and up from nose to the end of fur on the back side is graded as a 2XL.  This guy (a male) was nearly 26" on that measurement!  In fact, from nose to tail, he measured an even 35 inches!!  One of the biggest Marten I've ever skinned.




There are many, many, tips and tricks a person will pick up along the way over time regarding pelt handling, including how to cut, how to stretch, how to pin, how to comb, dry, tumble, etc...could go on forever.  I am still learning every season, and I won;t go into everything here - but at least I have gotten you to where you can get your marten on the stretcher and dried successfully.



 

And the snow keeps on coming.....

Trapping done old school......An axe, a pair of snowshoes, and a pack on the back.....

After the recent frenzy of critter activity on the short little mini-line I have been running, things sort of dropped off a bit.  And then the snow came.  Relentless, every day kind of snow.  And it still hasn't stopped.  I've seen a few fox tracks here and there on my cruises along the river, but for the most part, all evidence of movement has stopped.  Every time I have checked lately, traps are inundated with snow, and drifts have obscured any evidence that might have been there of activity.  Yesterday was no exception, and I found myself with the idea of breaking trail farther back into one of the valleys from whence the wolverine came.  Breaking trail on snowshoes was even a mite rough, as this dry powder just drops you down in waist deep at random intervals, even with snowshoes on...the snow in the pic above is likely 4 feet deep +, and that is as much good as the snowshoes can offer you...

Looks like the next check won't come until this weekend - hopefully the traps get to snap on something before the snow that is now, still, falling recovers them again....  :)

A Family Blizzard Outing....

Figured that we should take advantage of this three day weekend we had here in Russian Mission and get out there. The Russian Mission Carnival was postponed this year, but we still had Monday off from school in anticipation ...And, of course, there were traps to check as well...and so, on Saturday, with the added bonus of the borrowed Bravo, we were able to make it a family affair.  Trouble was, the weather was not so grand.  :)  As in, windchills forecast to be as low as -26, and white-out snow conditions.  Not a good time to take your 16-month old out with you, you say?....   Nonsense!  :D   And it wasn't his first time - by a long shot.  He is Alaskan born, after all.  And he lives like one.  And, now he can officially say (at least, once he learns to speak, he can...) that he checked traps with his dad and mom before he was 2 years old.   An enviable, and yet quite normal statement - in this family, anyway.   First time I ever wore a backpack with Diapers, baby wipes, baby's water bottle, and baby-lunchie-munchies out on the 'line...but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Accordingly, we fired up the Bravo and the Ski-Doo Saturday morning, and we were off.   Conditions be damned.  Here is a shot of Sarah and Warren as we were leaving the village.  Warren is held on Sarah's chest in the Baby Bjorn, dressed in his winter gear, and then covered with one of Dad's parkas, zipped together with the one that Sarah is wearing.  Alaskan Bush riggin' for ya.... but it worked.  At a time and in a place most people would call us crazy, - we were having a blast.
 

 Kind of like last year when we took Warren for his first snowmachine ride ever to Kako, for his first Easter service.  Only the weather was a little better for that trip - and the trip was shorter....

 Here is another shot that SHOULD show you a lot more of our surroundings - buuuut....all you can see is swirling snow back there, instead.


Nonetheless, we made a fun trip out of it.  And Warren got a good nap in on the way downriver, too.  Yes, despite the many-decibel roar of the snowmachine(s), he was out in no time.
 


 ...zzzzzzzzzzz......  !!!

We got there to find that the traps had experienced a high rate of fouling due to - guess who? - the swirling, drifting snow.  One of the trees with the 110 on it in the flowerpot had about 4 inches of snow stuck to it, effectively blocking the trap opening.  Not that anything was likely prowling around in these conditions anyway, but we wouldn't have seen their tracks even if they WERE out and about. Fixed up the sets as best we could, and moved on.

While checking the Gulo set, Warren stopped to take the time to taste the snow...and made his first ever snow angel...





Love the HUGE looking-paunch dad is sporting in this one thanks to all the gear under the coat...  hah hah!


When he was ready, it was time to head back home, the entire round-trip taking about three hours.  About halfway back, the skies started to clear....isn't that how it always goes?

The first check of the Gulo set....

So.  One of the hardest things to do when trapping is to wait to go check your sets.  Though you can't help but want to be out there checking every possible moment of every day - you generally can't.  That doesn't stop me from losing sleep and going crazy when I have a set that I just 'feel' is going to connect, or has a good chance of doing so.  The first ever Gulo set was no exception.  As the tracks were so fresh, I thought that there was just a chance, no matter how small - that the wolverine was close enough to the set that he /she may smell the lure and come back.  For that reason I thought a two-day check wait would tell me whether that was a possibility or whether I would likely have to wait until they next 'make the rounds'.  Waiting from Monday til Wednesday was one of the hardest things I've ever done in trapping season.  :)  But, at last, the time came, and I headed out to check...

To start with, I had marten visit every set I had out for them!  An incredible two days, for sure.  Must have been a lot of movement during/right after the snowstorm of Tuesday - based upon track evidence.   I mentioned in the last post that I would get pics of the marten sets, but I had brought the video camera this time (in case of a wolverine visitor).

The first segment of this video shows one of the marten remakes, with flowerpot, as they had visited the coni-mount sets, bypassed the trap and got the bait - and even chewed on the wing, too!  Hah!
Anyway, this clip shows the remake and the tracks which tell the tale.  If the text is hard to read because of speed, just pause the clip at the right time.  After the clip of a marten set is the footage of the wolverine check - AS IT happened.  A moment I will never forget.  :)  There will be more fun stuff below.....


Here's some pics of the day as well:

A shot of the bucket investigator:

Sure glad it was a perfect neck-catch instant kill, and it didn't crush any ribs - would have had green belly for sure with these warm temps.

The Marten-slaying Klondike Call.  Thanks to Dobbins Lures!!!!  A fantastic lure that works for most anything up here.


A marten remake, with the 'killer' lure, the product of a good set, and the 'insurance' I carry on the line.  Always remember to set your firearm down.  Whether or not you set it down in the picture is up to you.  :D


Here's a shot of the remake at the wolverine bucket set.  Marten set complete with hanging wing at right, wolvy bucket front and center, and there is a bedded Sleepy Creek 4.5 longspring in the 'flat area to the left of the bucket, where the critter 'trail' goes around the tree to the left...


We'll see what happens, but we should be ready for anything now.....

As for the catches...The marten caught in the bucket set happened to be a female, and so I saw an opportunity for us to  dissect the little beauty and use it as a learning tool, in the hopes of seeing an example of their "delayed-implantation", or their ability to have eggs fertilized in mid summer during breeding season, but not implant to the uterine wall and begin developing until around February.  When a female is caught, I find it worth checking to see if developing young can be seen in the fallopian tubes.  That said, if my catch rate goes up to close in on 100% females at any point, I will pull my traps from that area, because you are technically pulling 2-6+ marten from the area every time you catch a 'pregnant' female, obviously.  Think for the future. :)

To illustrate the topic of developing young in the uterine horns, check out this picture, taken from Trapperman.com, courtesy of "Family Trapper".  It shows four young forming in a female caught in March of the year, some time back:


Anyway, we dissected my marten female in science class this morning and found some interesting stuff out about her...

First of all, All that dark matter at left was from her stomach, which was stretched about as large as any marten stomach I've ever seen. It almost would have held my fist!   And she was STILL hungry enough to go after my set!!!...evidently....


Inside all that stuff, which appeared to be entirely a mouse/vole/shrew diet, we found some teeth, a LOT of fur, and not many identifiable bones...but there were two 'hands' in there:
Left...


And Right:


Also, this was a fairly young female, as evidenced by the sagittal crest.  If you can't see any bone between the head muscles on top of the skull, you have an adult marten. The more bone you see, the younger the marten is.  So, with our young female (headshot later), I don't know if she was entirely viable, but we DID find what appeared to be a developing young inside her uterine horn:


Cool stuff, and the kids seemed pretty interested, too.

Here's a shot of the head of our "Sabre-toothed" female :D  Note the huge span of bone in-between the head muscles on top - she's a young one.....


Not to waste any opportunity involving a trapped animal, I placed this skull into the Dermestid beetle tote - should make an EXCELLENT specimen, with nice sharp teeth - and they're all there, too...  :)

Next check will likely be this weekend.....can't wait....

Gratitude and Expectations.....(with pics) :)

As of recently, I have become a fan of Ray Wylie Hubbard, one of the country music 'outlaws' from the time of George Jones and the like.  Though he is still making music, I came across one of his past tunes called "Mother Blues".  Within the lyrics of this song are the words,  "The days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, ...well, I have really, good, days.....".  I mentioned this to Sarah, and she keeps reminding me of that idea at various times when I need to hear it....yesterday was a good example of just that, and I have to smile that she told me those very words as I was on my way out the door...


So, this weekend,  I had gotten the idea (speaking trapping now) to head to an area I haven't been back to since moose season last fall.   My thought was that if the nice weather kept up, I would cancel the after school study hall a day or two this week, and head out, traps in hand.  Yesterday, the weather stayed beautiful (above zero and sunshine), and I decided to carry on with the plan.  Heading out the door immediately after school, I raced home, loaded up my machine, added some oil, got that spiritual advice from Sarah, and I was off.  With gratitude for the opportunity.  :)  This winter has, if you have followed along, not been my most productive on the trapline, and outings have been valuable and few.  So I resolved to just enjoy, and not expect.

On the way down the river, I stopped to take a pic of an "ice sculpture", courtesy of the Yukon River:


I continued on, weaving around the clusters of ice that positively cover the portion of the river I was traveling down.  On that stretch, it is either a minefield of jagged clusters of broken ice chunks, or a flat, windblown sheet of bare ice.  At one point when I slowed down to check on some tracks and tapped the brake, I immediately fishtailed on the windblown ice, went into a spin,  and slid into a towering spire that I thought would surely give my back a jolt - but it was painless, and the machine didn't tip over, so on I went.

Upon arriving at my general destination, I began to feel the old familiar excitement I always get when out 'prospecting' on the trapline.  Giddy, almost.  When I cut the first set of likely-looking tracks, I swerved over and got a closer look...sure enough, it was indeed a set of Marten tracks.  He had come down off the bank and then leaped up onto an overhanging limb, hopping along in that meandering way they always seem to have.  Amused, I took some pics before following up the track to investigate.



Upon following him, I only made it into the willows about 50 yards before finding a couple other crossing sets of tracks.  Often, these can be tracks of the same marten, but either way, it increases your chances, and it was just what I was looking for.  I quickly placed two sets in , using the coni-mounts and hanging wings, with a little Klondike call for lure and an added bonus of nailing down a chunk of stinky moose scraps beyond the trap for eye appeal.   Unfortunately, this was my first stop and I felt like I needed to get rolling, so I didn't take pics.  On my next check I will take some - hopefully of a catch AND a remake - but no expectations, remember? :)

So on I went.  I began to approach a familiar beaver lodge I remembered from this fall, and about the time I was thinking "I should have passed it by now...", there it was.  I wanted to pass between the lodge and the bank, rather than on the water side of the lodge - because the ice in front of the lodge can be very thin due to the air bubble trails they leave in going to and from the lodge to the feed pile.  At any rate, even standing on these thin spots can be enough to go for a swim, let alone going over them with the added weight of a snow machine.  I headed over to my right, then, in the name of safety, and it was then that I looked down and had immediate brain failure.  I, somewhere deep down, knew what I was looking at.  I have stared at enough pictures of them to 'be ready' when I come across them. And yet, my brain was in denial.  It must have taken me thirty seconds to figure it out and get back to the land of the living.  Something had come out of the treeline, meandered over to the beaver lodge (off-camera to left in first pic below), stopped to sniff/dig around, and then came bounding off the pile of sticks to end up making tracks just off to the right of where my snowmachine ski now was.



The tracks were only minutes old.  And the Something that made them was none other than a bonafide Wolverine!!!!  The King of weasels!  My own personal (trapping) Holy Grail.  And there he was.  Or, should I say, had BEEN.  I don't think I have been that excited since youth.  It was almost like getting buck fever.  The giddiness level was rising as I grabbed my Wolverine bucket loaded with bait, 330, lure, wire, axe, and AR-15.....just in case he was slow enough for me to spot.  :)  Carrying all that stuff made travel through the waist deep snow difficult, to say the least, especially with my back situation - but I said to myself ,"Likely only once in your life are you going to come across Wolverine tracks this fresh AND happen to be carrying the gear to do something about it.  Bad back or not, you are not screwing this up....Any pain you feel due to this is WORTH it!!!"  ...and I still feel that way, as my leg tingles writing this...   Indeed, many people will not come across ANY kind of wolverine tracks in their lifetime, PERIOD.  So, off I went, wincing and post-holing in the deep snow and carrying what felt like a ton of gear for just one set...  But I had these tracks to keep the adrenaline flowing, and I was on a natural high:






I struggled along, following the tracks, heaving deep breaths but telling myself over and over that this is what trapping is all about.  You're supposed to earn it.  And then there's that advice about gratitude and expectations.  I wasn't expecting this, but I damn sure was grateful for the opportunity, and wasn't going to pass it up.

About a hundred yards later, I had worked my way into some deeper spruce instead of the willows out on the fringes.   When I got into this denser forest, the sign really got crazy.  Everywhere I looked, alongside the Gulo tracks, there were Marten, Moose, Squirrel, and Ermine tracks, and they  were crisscrossing and leading all directions.  A 'natural funnel' sort of spot, if you know what I mean.  More on that later...  at any rate, I had found the spot for my set. 

Here is a pic of the bucket, with trap set.  This is with the bucket set upright on the ground, looking straight down - not in position - just to show the set-up.


Here is a shot of the bucket in place, with supporting sticks in place.  Though I had begun wiring it in place here, I was not done completely, and of course needed to add more sticks to the cubby to block approaches as well.


Here is a closer shot, once the cubby building itself was done:


And here is a shot of the area.  Note the cubby at left.  In this pic you can see the Wolverine tracks (at right), as well as numerous moose, marten, ermine, etc.... as I was saying earlier - a natural funnel.


On the way out, I took this pic of the sunset out by the beaver lodge where the craziness began.  A great end to an incredible evening.
 

 Is this what happens when you keep your gratitude higher than your expectations?... I can only hope - because though I can't expect to ever cross paths with that animal again...and don't.....I will be laying awake at night for the rest of the trapping season, hoping that I get the chance to know what its like to be grateful to have caught a Wolverine in my lifetime.  I am already plotting where to put the next set to interrupt him/her on their next time through the area.....