Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Trapping Tree Climbing Mink?

My office window overlooks a pretty little crick, I looked out to see what the mallards were doing and I saw a huge squirrel up in one of the big willow trees. Looked a little closer and it is a reddish mink. I have seen mink go up trees which were leaning but this tree is as straight as a power pole. He/she was about 18-20 feet in the air and was obviously hunting. It ran around on the branches for a bit and then came down - head first - stopped for a minute or two and then ran down and crossed the creek to a brush pile.

Mink weren't real common in my neck of the woods when I was trapping but there were some, and I have never seen anything like this. Have I just lived a sheltered life or is this a rare occurrence?

Catch them sometimes in vertical marten sets, so yes.

YUP !! My Dad used to run coon dogs and would complain about mink in the tree

Thanks guys! I have learned yet another thing during this time of quarantine.

Pretty adept climbers, and when on the prowl they give everything a thorough look. Couple seasons back I was fishing in front of camp and had waded out about 20 ft from the bank. A mink came along the shore and spent maybe 20 minutes exploring every possible nook and cranny in camp. Even crawled into the drift boat and double checked every bag, wader, boot, or whatever therein.

Had one kill a great blue heron above camp a day or so later. The bird flew in and landed and must of just put down where the mink happened to be. Grabbed it by the neck and either choked or drowned it with about a 90 second battle. Mink was trying to haul it beneath a cut bank when I went up to see what the ruckus was about.

A couple years ago a mink had a litter of kits under the little bridge about a 100ft from my office. I got a real education about mink that year. The mortality of the kits is very high and she lost 3 of the 4 she had before they were half grown. The creek always had a population of huge bullfrogs and tadpoles. She cleaned them out. She also cleaned out the voles and baby muskrats in the nearby swamp and every baby rabbit in the neighborhood. I never saw her bring in a bird of any kind. I was always curious as to what happened to her kits. They just disappeared one at a time.

fishing a tributary creek to the Truckee River about 60 years ago . caught a nice brown trout about 16 inches long. suddenly had the fight of my life on a rod. Mink jumped out , grabbed that trout and fought me till the line broke. never forgot that.

He'd probably been waiting all day for you to catch a fish so he could mug you.

little sucker growled like a Rottweiler ! ticked me off. I could have sold that fish to a tourist for a couple bucks

I have seen woodchucks in trees before, and if they can do it, a mink surely can.

I had a large mink steal a stringer of trout that I caught. He took it under a cut bank and I couldn't get ahold of it. Must have taken it in a muskrat den for his fish dinner. I caught more trout that day. But from that day on I gill & gut my trout and they go in my Coleman cooler on ice. No more mink thefts after I hauled the cooler with me.

Probably a liberal democrat mink. Why work for what you can steal from someone else.

Yeah they'll climb trees and they're pretty good at it l. Even groundhogs climb trees too

Caught one mink in a Marten box. First wood chuck I ever saw was in a tree, they are pretty rare here.

FWIW when I was doing my trapping in college, squirrel was THE favored bait for mink,soooo....

Really?

We used muskrat and maybe some fish oil. If we found a toilet maker, I’d put a couple traps by it and some commercial scent we called fish oil…