Mink in Suburban water sheds....

[trappermike220]

I posted this over on pafurtakers a week or so ago, but I did'nt get a whole lot of opinions.How do mink react to pollution and human devolpment near creeks, I have asked trappers before if mink were on every creek, they told me just about.Well I'm trying to get a nice line planned out and right now its just hit or miss type trapping. How many of you have observed mink populations in more populated areas?

[DaveM]

I dont know about pollution, but there are small creeks that run right close to houses that have mink. I think having cover along the banks is more important than the proximity to civilization.

[Steve Gappa]

Agreed. Used to trap mink in downtown Rochester.

[oldmink]

Mink are apt to show up most anywhere. I have one location where a small creek flows right through an apartment complex. Portions of the creek are open, other parts flow through pipes. However, right where it leaves the complex is a grown up patch of trees and weeds and I make a couple of sets in there every season. My sets are a few mere yards away from the lawn. While I don't catch mink there every year, I do catch enough for me to keep putting sets out year after year. But I have noticed from tracks in the snow that when mink travel this stream they do so by passing through the apartment complex.

I do not think streams in urban areas and streams with a lot of pollution are prime minking areas but all do have some mink activity from time to time.

I, myself, generally do not waste much of my time seeking out or making sets on such streams. I feel by concentrating my sets on more pristine waterways with less human activity greatly increase my chances of taking a mink.

I am not out to take every last mink. I don't mind having some 'slip through the cracks' so to speak. I call those seed for next year, knowing those mink will eventually move to the type of waters I concentrate my trapping efforts on.

Several years ago in the middle of the afternoon I was stopped at a red light on a very busy road outside Hershey, Pa. There is a shopping center on one side of the road and a row of fast food joints on the other. A stream who's origins came from the hill a mile to the south flowed right up to and beneath this busy intersection. I was sitting there waiting for the light to change when I saw a mink investigating a drainage pipe from the shopping center's parking lot. I made a mental note of that of course but knowing that stream flowed into big water a quarter of a mile away I made my set there rather than at this busy intersection. I only bring this up to show you that mink can and do show up in populous places. I have also seen mink tracks along the old canal flowing through the now largely abandoned steel mill in Steelton, Pa. Talk about pollouted water!

All this being said however, I would not concentrate my sets along such waterways unless these were my only options.

[BK]

The Wife and I made a trip to Fleet Farm in Stillwater Minn. last week end.They have a couple ponds there geese nest on in the Spring as you drive in.
Well I bought some turkey junk I didn't really need,and the Wife continued to shop so I took a little tour of the area . Mink tracks all over, real busy going under the ice I can't think any minnows would live there,and I would be hard pressed to catch 6-8 rats there.
My point is the nonstop traffic and the street lights didn't seem to bother them a bit.

[Wright Brothers]

I know of a place, directly down stream of a sewage plant. Stinks sometimes, is on two peoples safety zones, and has lots of minnows and stocked trout. Lots of mink sign. I asked permission and was politely declined, and was told an older fellow all ready traps it, without permission. I wont trap it because of permission, and because its the older guys established line. I would like to meet him. In populated areas practices are different than the big wide open.

Thats my condensed thoughts since you posted that topic Mike. If critters are there you will see the sign if you look often enough.

[renny1]

I have seen lots of mink around sewage lagoons, and that is a form of pollution, as it used to dump into a huge 7000 acre duck marsh. Industrial waste often contains PC B's. Poloyclorinated Biphenols. PC B's will severely reduce or stop reproduction in mink. I have never seen where mink are afraid of human activity.

[Adirondack-Jim]

I'm guessing you may be surprised if the water is clean enough to hold food (fish, crayfish, frogs...). If there's food you'll probably find some mink.

Used to trap mink in downtown Rochester

Steve, I'm about an hour away from Rochester, did you live here at one time?

Jim

[trappnman]

I grew up in Winona, moved to Roch in 64, moved away from Rochester in the late 70s, but continued to work there until the late 80s. I lived on a small farm by the old IT on south 52.

Trapped and hunted about every inch of Olmsted county. Still do part of it.

85 moved back to the river, and I'll never leave (unless its to retire in WY LOL)