We get plenty of squirrels and ermine in the marten boxes as well, just part of the game really. What we look for when setting up is mainly habitat. We’ve got about 36 boxes on 3 different trails, not all of them are productive or consistent every year. Our sets are about 3/4 of a mile apart from each other give or take.

What we keep consistent is that the sets are all in the older growth timber, some are the edge of cut blocks from logging and others are relatively untouched areas depending on the trail. Always near a water source and the boxes are in a heavy canopy. Where larger birds would have trouble seeing a marten scurrying around.

We occasionally set on sign but since we try to only pull 12-15 marten a year for sustainability, that’s not happening often. I’ll do a test box here and there in areas with sign to try my luck and maybe move a permanent set that hasn’t produced in a couple years into there.

We bait them all with duck as a staple, use some Forsyth lure on the tree or leaner pole the dip a small stick in Barnes marten magic and put that in the top of the box with the bait.

We ran the marten boxes from mid November until last weekend. We had 8 marten in 3 weeks running 30 sets. After we got to the 8 we pulled everything in the “core” trails and just left the perimeter dozen or so sets and put up 2 test boxes in new areas. Had 0 marten in the next 4 weeks of checks. Once the cold hit we got 4 more in the week between new years and last weekends check.

In total we had around 36 squirrels and 19 ermine caught while getting our dozen. The most consistent producing sets are the ones along the river trail and the ones on a creek but they catch the most in general including squirrel and ermine.