Two Fishers Meet in the Winter Woods
By Jack Beaudoin
Fishers (Pekania pennanti) have a reputation as the northern forests’ ultimate misanthropes. These mesocarnivores are so territorial that within six to eight months after their birth, young fishers are unceremoniously pushed out of their mother’s home range to fend for themselves.
This forced eviction leads to some of the most impressive “marathons” in the animal kingdom. While the average fisher disperses approximately 12 miles from its birthplace by early autumn, University of New Hampshire’s Rem Moll noted that some explorers go much further. Moll, an associate professor of wildlife ecology and management, has been applying quantitative methods and geospatial modeling to better understand fishers, among other mammals, over the past decade.
“It is remarkable how far they move for a small animal,” Moll said. He recently documented a female that trekked at least 73 miles (straight line) from Durham to Lincoln, New Hampshire, in just two weeks – a long-distance record. Another study in the 1990s recorded a 66-mile movement in Massachusetts.
So, with home ranges that can span up to 30 square miles, fishers rarely cross paths by accident. It takes a specific, biological imperative to bring them together – a moment that arrives in the winter woods of late February and March, in an encounter that is exceedingly brief and unromantic.
“During the breeding season, the males start running around looking for a female,” said Jacob DeBow, a regional wildlife biologist with New Hampshire Fish and Game, who was 15 when he spotted his first fisher and has been spellbound by them ever since. “They spend a short amount of time together. They breed pretty quickly, and then he’s onto the next one. His only job is just to move genetics across the landscape as widely as he possibly can.”
Published in Northern Woodlands (The Outside Story) on March 2, 2026
