Sightings of wild mammals are generally rare, and when they do occur it’s usually just a quick glimpse of the tail end of the animal as it flees at top speed. So my recent encounter with a fisher was doubly unusual. I was walking downhill on a sloping section of forest road (Hammond Hill Road in Hammond Hill State Forest for those who know the area). That part of the road is straight so I could see pretty far down the hill, and I suddenly realized there was a dark animal moving around on the road far below. I froze, not sure at first what kind of animal it was and hoping it wouldn’t realize I was there. It didn’t–in fact it actually began coming up the hill toward me. As I got a better view of its elongated body, short legs, and long fluffy tail I realized it was a fisher. I watched as it moved in a completely relaxed manner–apparently unaware of my presence–and marveled at its beauty. I was afraid if I made a move to get out my camera the fisher would take off, so I didn’t dare try for a photo. But here’s a good photograph of a fisher obtained from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (https://vtecostudies.org/blog/walk-with-the-fisher-on-outdoor-radio/).
The fisher continued to move uphill in my direction at a steady bounding gait, with an occasional pause to look around. When less than 50 feet separated us, it suddenly realized I was there. It stood up on its hind legs, stared at me for a few seconds, and then bounded off into the trees.
Of course I immediately went to look at the tracks. Because the snow was dry and fluffy most of the prints weren’t clearly defined, and the cloudy conditions made things even harder to see–and nearly impossible to photograph. But there was a spot farther down the hill where the snow was firmer and the track details showed up better. A set of four prints from that part of the trail is shown in the photo below (direction of travel from right to left). The pattern
resembles the bound of a cottontail rabbit: the two front tracks are narrowly set behind the rear tracks, and one (the left front) leads the other. The rear tracks are more widely separated and almost even with each other. Typical mustelid structure shows in the prints: the five toes are arranged in a lopsided crescent and the middle pads form a smaller crescent behind the toes.
That was only one of several different gait patterns I saw as I backtracked along the fisher’s trail. In true mustelid fashion the animal had been very flexible in the way it placed its feet. Rather than showing the rather poor photos from that day I’ll illustrate two of the variations I saw with shots that I took on other days (the direction of travel again is from right to left). As in the opening shot the four tracks in the photo below are well separated, but the rear prints are staggered rather than even with each other, and one is positioned slightly behind the leading front print.
In the next shot the left rear foot came down on top of the left front, leaving a pattern that looks at first like there are only three tracks. But in the heel area of the middle impression there’s an inner ridge and a wider area of disturbance to its left, showing that two feet did actually land there.
In addition to those two there were other variations–changes in the leading front or rear foot and slightly different placements of the second and third feet to hit the ground–but to my eyes the fisher’s bounding movement appeared to be uniform and unvarying. Except for momentary pauses it moved steadily uphill with the gently arching leaps that are so typically mustelid. One difference did stand out, and that was a variation in the leap lengths: the four-print patterns that matched the one shown in the first photo were separated by slightly longer distances than the patterns shown in the second and third photos. The fisher apparently wanted to move faster, and I suspect that the more even placement of the rear feet in the first photo delivered more power and enabled longer leaps. But there were many variations in the patterns that didn’t involve any changes in leap length, so there must be other factors that cause a fisher to vary the way it places its feet. I can only imagine the subtle interactions that go on between the animal and its surroundings. I hope that with further study of fisher trails, and maybe even some additional encounters with fishers, I’ll be able to understand more of the puzzle.
beautifully detailed prints. In the photo on the right (direction of travel to the right), the right rear track is at the bottom of the frame, and the right front is just above it. The other two prints are at the top, the left rear just behind the left front. The toes and middle pads show up nicely in both front and rear tracks. The heels of the rear prints made impressions, and the paired heel pads of the right front track can also be seen.
arranged almost identically except that the left front track is just below the left rear. There’s a similar amount of detail, with toes and middle pads clearly visible in both front and rear feet and the paired heel pads showing in both front feet. I had hoped that if I found really detailed tracks I would see features that would separate chipmunks and southern flying squirrels, but to my eyes there are no appreciable differences between the tracks in the two photos. The dimensions are similar as well: both sets of prints have a trail width (the distance from the right edge of the right rear print to the left edge of the left rear print) of 2 inches, and the length of the front track is 9/16 inch for the flying squirrel and 5/8 inch for the chipmunk, not significantly different. So how did I know that the tracks in the first photo were made by a southern flying squirrel, while those in the second belonged to a chipmunk?
Southern flying squirrels have flaps of skin (patagia) that connect the front and rear legs all the way out to the ankles, so they move differently from chipmunks (and also from tree squirrels, for that matter). The front tracks of a bounding southern flying squirrel are set almost as wide as the rear, and they are usually in front of, or occasionally between, the rear tracks. Because of the skin flaps, flying squirrels are not as fleet-footed on the ground as other small rodents, so their leaps are shorter. Compare the southern flying squirrel bounding trail in the photo above (traveling from bottom to top) with the next photo of a trail made by a chipmunk (traveling from top to bottom). 
In its normal traveling bound the chipmunk consistently places its rear feet ahead of its front, and its leaps can be much longer than those of the flying squirrel. Of course chipmunks do sometimes make short leaps, and they do sometimes place their front feet between (as in the second photo of the blog) or ahead of the rear. That kind of pattern in a chipmunk trail is an indication of a break in the rhythm, while it falls withing the normal bounding pattern for a southern flying squirrel. (By the way, neither of the bounding photos came from the day I took the close-up shots, but they illustrate the trail patterns I saw that day.)
For an animal the size of a flying squirrel even a few inches of soft snow can be enough to change its gait pattern from its normal bound to a double-register bound like the one in the photo at the right (direction of travel from lower right to upper left). The relative positions of front and hind prints no longer apply, but trail width can still be measured, and this trail had a trail width of 2 1/8 inches, squarely in the range for the southern flying squirrel. A chipmunk trail would have had a similar trail width, but the trail pictured above was made during a long stretch of cold weather. Chipmunks wait out winter’s coldest periods in a state of torpor in their underground refuges, while flying squirrels come out regularly even in frigid temperatures.
The mink is one of my favorite animals, so I’m always happy to find tracks like these, from a Tracking Club outing a few weeks ago. The marks made by the toes (5 on both front and rear feet) are small and oval or tear-drop shaped, and they form lopsided crescents around the middle pads. The claws may show as tiny pricks or as pointed extensions of the toes. The smallest toe lies on the inside of the track and farther back than the other toes, and it doesn’t always show. The mink that left these impressions was fidgeting around on a patch of stream side mud (the water is visible at the upper left) and the clear prints are mostly from the front feet.
Here are the two front and two rear tracks of a mink arranged in a pattern often seen in mink trails. The first track at the lower right is the right front, and the last one at the upper left is the left rear. In the center of the photo the left front is on the left and the right rear is on the right. The animal was loping from the lower right to the upper left, and the order of footfalls was right front, left front, right rear, left rear. 
A mink traveling 
on stream ice a few winters ago left a string of similar four-print patterns. In the center of each grouping the left front print is slightly behind instead of ahead of the right rear, but otherwise they’re a good match with the previous photo, with the same direction of travel and order of footfalls. Notice how the four-print groupings are separated by spaces with no tracks–a characteristic of lopes and gallops. When I see trails like this I can picture the mink doing its easy, ground-covering lope, its spine curving and extending with each landing and take-off. I couldn’t find a video of a loping mink that I liked, but I did find one of a fisher (closely related to the mink) doing the same gait. Watch it 
places for finding mink tracks, especially if there are roots or debris piles where prey animals can hide. The patch of sand visible in the center of this photo captured the tracks of a mink that was hunting in the surrounding tangle of logs and branches, deposited by a big flood several years ago.
But minks are resourceful when it comes to finding food. Last spring I was walking by an old log landing and I noticed a drying mud puddle. I’m always interested in mud so I went over to take a look, and to my surprise found mink tracks around the edges. There was a small pond nearby, but otherwise not much water, and I didn’t understand why this place–just a big area of bared mineral soil with a few mud puddles–would interest a mink. 
But the tracks were plentiful and very clearly mink. In the photo on the right the mink tracks run from lower left to upper right, and the big prints in the middle belong to my dog. As I moved around the edge and pondered, the mystery resolved itself. 
A leopard frog leaped from a grass clump into the water, then another one jumped, and then several more. Some enterprising mink had discovered the puddle, perhaps just as the tadpoles were transforming into frogs, and made use of the easy dinner. There were still plenty of frogs left to spend their summer feeding in the surrounding forest, overwinter deep in the soil, and then mate and lay eggs in the puddle next spring.