He also noted that the bodies of the two earlier victims weren't torn up as he would have expected from a coyote attack, nor were there multiple bites as there would have been after a cat fight. This fisher is caught in a foothold trap. When the state began its lynx study, it did not figure that fishers would be a predator of lynx. The only clues in both cases were a puzzle in themselves. At each site, they found the tracks of a fisher, a member of the weasel family and close relative of the marten.
Fishers eat snowshoe hares, along with a variety of other small mammals, birds and even martens.
They're also infamous as one of the few animals that can successfully attack a porcupine. Their ingenious method is to attack from above while a porcupine is climbing a tree, biting its vulnerable face, according to the Encarta Encyclopedia. Then the fisher turns the stunned porcupine over and attacks its unprotected belly. Fishers also cache their prey, coming back to eat it later. McLaughlin found another clue pointing to the fisher when he took the skulls of various predators and compared their teeth with the bite on the kitten's neck.