Minkenry Hunting Stories For Thioⁿbasabe'

[Minkenry 1,044]

fab amazing total respect for u and the mink , got to ask have they sunk there teeth into yet cause i am thinking they gotta bite like a pitbull !!! , keep the videos coming great watching

 

Oh yeah. You can't be around mink very long without getting bit! I've had them bite me to the bone! Last summer I got a new mink that was a full on adult, and a few weeks after getting her I started going gloveless, and then one day, WAM! She bit me so hard I heard her canines scraping the bone in my thumb!

 

Last January I bought this GIANT male mink that weighed over 2000 grams LEAN WEIGHT, and with a completely empty digestive system! He wasn't just big, he was SUPER aggressive! I named him Moⁿchushage which means "Bear Claw" in the Omaha Native American language. I was of course wearing these big thick leather gloves when I first started working with him, but that didn't matter, as he just bit right through them. Here's a picture of my hand after just one day of working with him....

 

 

 

Now remember, those holes and blood blisters were given to me through big thick welding gloves!

 

Here is Moⁿchushage the day I brought him home from the fur farm. He was SOOO FAT! Before I brought him home he weighed in at just under 4,000 grams (yes that's right lost almost HALF his body weight before he was in shape)!

 

 

Here he is the same day wanting to eat my face off!

 

 

My buddy got a baby by him, and she is JUST like her daddy! She isn't very big, but she has a temper that you DON'T want to mess with! Funny thing is, after a few months of working with Moⁿchu he actually became really nice to handle, and he became one of my most gentle and trustworthy mink. He's SUPER smart, and a real pleasure to work with. He still get's really crazy when he wants to eat, but he's really good at not getting your fingers when you feed him, and when he does he lets go really quick. Here's a video of the big boy catching a fish...

 

Edited October 22, 2013 by Minkenry

[onthehunt 40]

How much do these mink cost you, mate?

[Minkenry 1,044]

How much do these mink cost you, mate?

 

It depends. My GIANT male cost me $250, and I've bought babies for as little as $30.

[onthehunt 40]

All from mink farms? Quite surprising, since ferrets cost up to $300 over there!

[Minkenry 1,044]

All from mink farms? Quite surprising, since ferrets cost up to $300 over there!

 

Yeah, but I know the guys. If I didn't they wouldn't sell them to me for any price. But since we are buddies they usually cut me a deal.

[Minkenry 1,044]

We've been looking for muskrat in the canal by my house, but no luck yet. I've been waiting for them to drain this irrigation canal, which they just did last week. They fill the canal in the spring, then drain the water off in the fall, It drains down so that there are dry spots in some parts of the canal, and pools of water in other places. In the summer these canals are FULL of muskrat, but the water is cloudy and about chest high, so it's difficult to catch any muskrats in them while they are full. My hope was to catch the muskrats when they are left vulnerable just after the water is drained down and they are trapped in pools of shallow mid shin to knee deep water.

The first day she didn't work worth a crap, and I ended up just calling her back and feeding her up. But yesterday and this morning she worked really good, but not one muskrat! I don't know why they would have left their perfectly good dens, and all this food just because the water level has dropped a few feet. The areas we hunt still have mid shin to knee high water that stretches for a couple hundred yards of canal! I've seen muskrat live in shallower water than this, so why would these muskrats just leave? Anyway, still searching for any left over muskrat, but poor Thioⁿba hasn't seen a one! I saw one swimming around Sunday night when I took Thioⁿba for a walk on her leash (we don't go hunting on Sundays, otherwise we would have got the sucker!), then we came back Monday morning, and not a single muskrat to be found.

Today we did luck out and run into a colony of brown rats that were living along the canal. I saw a bird feeder in the yard that backs the canal, and it must be why all the rats were there. Man I love bird feeders! We saw 3 or 4 full sized brown rats jump in the canal, but they all escaped one way or the other. One of them was actually a pure black color! It was the coolest looking rat I'd ever seen! It was just as black as Thioⁿba! I really wanted to catch that one alive and bring it home, but it got away with the regular grayish brown ones. I'll just have to keep traveling down the canal until we find a good spot with muskrats still in it. Then give it a week or two and I'll come back and we'll hit that brown rat colony again. If I take Thioⁿba there again too soon we'll run all the rats off. A mink strikes terror into the heart of a rat like nothing else. You don't even need to catch any to clean an area out of rats. Just let your mink chase them around couple days in a row and they are gone! Maybe we'll get lucky and when we come back to that spot we'll catch that black rat!

Edited October 23, 2013 by Minkenry

[Minkenry 1,044]

Today I took Thioⁿbasabe' fishing in a stream near my friend's house. He has seen some fish in a pool in the stream, and wanted to see if she could catch them. She jumped in and caught the fish by surprise. She nailed one of the fish so quickly and easily that I just gave her a chunk of meat, and then called "Here here here!" where I saw another fish hiding. She was full of energy, and more than happy to go for a second fish! She went in and chased it around, lost it, chased it again lost it again. Then after searching for a little while she found another fish trying to hide in some rocks and she caught it and pulled it out.

It was a bit of a struggle getting the second fish, so I fed her up and we went home. I was pretty proud of her, as this was the first time I let her take a double and she did great! One fish was 457g (1 lb) and 13 3/4" (35cm) long and the other was 528g (1lb 2.6oz) and 15" (38cm) long. Good sized fish for a little 840 gram mink!

Edited October 24, 2013 by Minkenry

[Minkenry 1,044]

Mmmm mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm what a tasty dinner my little mink provided! Those nice fat rainbow trout were DELICIOUS!

 

[Minkenry 1,044]

Thioⁿbasabe' and I went to the same canal we've been searching for muskrat in this morning. I didn't plan on really hunting, as we haven't seen a single muskrat. I just wanted to scout out the canal further than I already have, and in the opposite direction. I brought a dead rat along, and was planning on finding a good spot after I was done scouting, and drag it around to lay a trail, then hide it up in one of the many abandoned muskrat dens for Thioⁿba to find and cache.

As Thioⁿba and I walked along the dirt road that follows the canal, I noticed some muddy water near the entrance of a muskrat hole. Thioⁿba had checked this hole just last week, but that muddy water told me something had just recently moved around in the mouth of that hole.

With out even putting my waders or boots on (I still had my doubts that there was really a muskrat there), I released Thioⁿba on the bank opposite from the mouth of the hole, and she immediately swam across the shallow water, and entered the muskrat burrow. I sat and waited for a moment, and then all of a sudden there was a muskrat!!!!!

I quickly climbed the bank, un-clipped the straps on my back pack that held my rolled up waders and boots, I put them on as fast as I could, and then jumped back down into the canal. I saw the muskrat come out of the burrow again, and then another. There were two! Thioⁿba then came out, and chased them back down in the hole again. The water in this part of the canal was shallow. Maybe only a few inches. There was nowhere these muskrats could hide! "We've got them now!" I thought to myself, "What a perfect set up for a first kill! Shallow water, only one burrow system to hide in, smaller than average muskrats, this is a PERFECT set up for Thioⁿba to kill her first muskrat!"

As the muskrats ran in and out of the burrow system, followed by my mink, I quickly realized that Thioⁿba was totally intimidated. Her prey drive made her chase them when they ran, but she lacked the courage to actually capture one. So I decided that if she wasn't going to catch them, then I WAS!

I needed a couple muskrats to take home and train her with anyway. She obviously needed a confidence booster, and an easy set up in a controlled situation back home was just the ticket! Now I just needed to catch both of the muskrats by hand, and we could go home to start her training.

I didn't have anything to catch the muskrats with, except my own bare hands. No gloves, no net, no live trap, nothing. I've caught many a muskrat bare handed before, but this was a little tricky. The water may have only been a few inches deep, but I sunk up to the middle of my shins in the mud with every step I took. This made it so the only quick forward movement I could make was through the air. I couldn't run after the muskrats, because my feet stuck in the mud with every step I took. Instead I had to jump as far as I could and pounce on them like a fox catching a mouse in deeps snow.

As I'm sure you could imagine, this pouncing quickly covered me in sticky mud. After my first miss, I took of my coat, so as not to get it any more wet or dirty than I already had. Now I was in my t-shirt and waders, trying to pounce on the muskrats as they ran in and out of their burrows being chased by Thioⁿba. Finally one of the muskrats escaped up stream and into a second burrow system. "No worries" I thought, "we'll come back for you later."

I went back to the original den system where Thioⁿba was still chasing the muskrat around, but not really trying to catch it. The muskrat saw me and didn't want to go back in the hole because it knew Thioⁿba was waiting inside for her, so it just sat facing the hole. I pounced and grabbed it's tail, but lost it, and the muskrat dived in the hole. I positioned myself above the hole, ready to pounce when it came flying back out, and sure enough, it ran out the same hole again, and this time I nailed it!

I quickly carried the muskrat by its tail over to Thioⁿba's carry box, took her towel out, and put the rat in, locking the door behind it. I then picked Thioⁿba up and carried her over to the other den system up stream where the second muskrat was hiding. She disappeared down the hole for a while, and I waited for the muskrat to come shooting out the back exit hole, like the last one had.

I waited and waited and waited, but no mink and no muskrat. Finally I started to get worried, and began digging up the den with my hands. I got a few feet in when I could hear what sounded like a mink gasping for air, while attacking a muskrat (the first several feet of the muskrat burrows were mostly, or completely under water, which would make her gasp for breath while fighting the muskrat). I thought "Crap! She's got it and I've been sitting out here on my butt instead of helping her!" I then thought for a quick second about what I should do, then said, "Well if you're fighting it baby, I'm going to come in and fight it with you!" I plunged my bare hand into the hole and almost immediately felt the flat teeth of a muskrat comp my thumb!

I quickly pulled my hand out and thought, "Sweet! She's got it by the butt!!! Now I just need to grow enough balls the reach in again and pull it out by it's head before it turns around and gets her!" I was about to just reach in for a second time, when the thought came to me. Put my coat back on, and grab at it with my sleeve shielding my hand. It was far from safe, but much safer than just reaching in with my bare, completely exposed hand!

So I ran and grabbed my coat, and ran back and shoved my hand back up in the burrow. Sure enough my plan worked! Instead of grabbing flesh, the muskrat grabbed my coat sleeve. This bought me just enough time to grab the muskrat's head, and pull it out of the hole.

To my surprise Thioⁿba came out with the muskrat, but not attached to it the way Missy always did. I guess she'd had enough fighting with those big old muskrats, and figured I had it now anyway. I put the second muskrat in the box, and we headed home.

I checked Thioⁿba over when we got home, and she had a few bites under her chin, and one of the muskrats had a pretty big hole in its face. After Thioⁿba had a bit of a rest, I took the injured muskrat and put tape over it's eyes and mouth so it couldn't get her again, and tossed it in her cage. She was hesitant, but excited. After she realized the muskrat wasn't going to lunge at her like before, she quickly jumped on it's back and gave it a kill bite to the back of it's head.

After caching the muskrat in her box I fed Thioⁿba as much meat as she wanted, and she promptly went to bed. This muskrat weighed in at 780 grams. Pretty small for a muskrat, but the biggest wild game Thioⁿba's killed yet. It also had an empty digestive system, and I could tell it had been doing a lot of traveling. So before they drained the canal, I'm sure this muskrat probably would have out weighed Thioⁿba, who by the way was 836 grams this morning.

I can't decide whether or not to give Thioⁿba credit for this kill or not. I did help her a lot, but she did work really hard for it, so I think I'm going to count this as her first muskrat. She's not getting any credit for the second one though, as I barely think she deserved credit for one!

Here's what my thumb looks like....

Take a look at these chompers! Got to give mink some serious respect for going after these suckers!

Edited October 28, 2013 by Minkenry

[pointer 543]

Well done and another brilliant write up of a days hunting.

[skycat 6,172]

Just love reading about your hunting with mink

[Moe 108]

I take my hat of to you mate that realy is something special you're doing , keep it up and keep the posts and vids coming.

[Minkenry 1,044]

So I haven't been hunting with Thioⁿba lately for a couple different reasons, one of which is because I've been to busy and the other is because I have been hoping to get some muskrats to use as starts, to build up Thioⁿba's confidence. She's still super intimidated by muskrats after her last encounter with them, and refuses to catch them. Unfortunately I haven't had any luck getting her some live muskrats to use as starts, so I decided to take Thioⁿba out hunting so we can net our own starter muskrats. After all, it doesn't take much courage to chase a muskrat out of its den. Any mink can do that.

So we went to a lake by my house to catch some muskrats. The first several hours we didn't have any luck. We found some muskrats, but they were in places that were close to impossible for us to net them in. Thioⁿba was working really well, and pulled some interesting stunts I've never seen a mink do.

One thing she did was she went in an above water entrance to a muskrat den, then came out the under water entrance that was clear out away from the shore, in around 4-5 feet of water, and instead of surfacing, she swam around under the water, found a second den entrance, and when down it. I've seen Missy come out of muskrat holes clear out away from the shore, but I've never seen her stay submerged, and look around until she found a second entrance, then when back in the tunnel system! That took some SERIOUS breath holding ability!

Finally after quite the long stretch of being unsuccessful, Thioⁿba decided to dry off and take a nap. Then after her quick nap, we put Thioⁿba back down a hole.

Then all of a sudden I saw a muskrat swim out, and I netted it. I ran up on shore and put it in a carry box. Then came back and Cade had his net near the muskrat's escape rout, but wasn't paying attention and he let two muskrats get past him. While he was running around trying to catch the rats he just missed, I put my net in the escape rout of the den, and netted a SECOND muskrat out of the same den system. I was supper happy to now have two muskrats to use as starts for Thioⁿba!

After that, we were trying to get one of the escapee's, and I saw Thioⁿba do something else I had never seen a mink do, but always wondered why they didn't. She was watching a duck swimming out on the lake, and then all of a sudden she dived under the water, and swam submerged to the duck, and attacked it from underneath the water! It was the coolest thing I think I've ever seen a mink do! The duck flapped half way across the pond with Thioⁿba attached before it finally shook her off.

It was an all round exciting day! I am quite proud of my smart little mink!

[Mole man Kent 26]

So cool mate. And it's amazing how your mink have homing instincts. Does this come naturally to the mink or was it more through training. If you talk to most of the guys on here ferrets don't have that much homing ability and will go wandering. A friend of mine who I used to go ferreting with trained his ferrets from kits to come to the jingle of his car keys.

[Minkenry 1,044]

No, every mink I've had seems to start homing after just a couple weeks, sometimes less. I had a male that the only way I could take him on a walk was if I carried him a good mile from home, and then put him down. He would then sprint the entire way home. It was quite the exersise for both of us!