Bigfoot might have some competition.
An elusive and lesser-known forest predator once eliminated from Pennsylvania was spotted on a trail cam outside Pittsburgh over the summer.
A fisher, an omnivorous and large mammal that’s part of the weasel family, was snapped by the camera while it walked over a grassy log in Murrysville in June — marking an extremely rare and exciting sight to behold.
Fishers, one of the few animals capable of killing and eating porcupines, were completely wiped out of the Keystone State in the late 1800s and early 1900s following years of significant deforestation and unchecked hunting.
Wildlife advocates reintroduced the large weasels to the state in the 1990s and brought nearly 190 fishers they trapped in New Hampshire to six locations in north central Pennsylvania — including one several hours away from Murrysville, the Murrysville Star reported.
The population has been steadily growing since the reintroduction but sightings are still rare as the animals are notoriously stealthy.
Bill Powers, whose trail camera caught the fisher on his Murrysville property on June 16, was shocked to see the beast when he finally uploaded the footage to his computer last month.
“I put the camera on an old fallen log in a remote area and kept it there several months,” Powers told the local newspaper. “I pulled the SD card this week and to my amazement, it captured a photo of a fisher in mid-June.”
He said he often leaves trail cameras — from his company PixCams — out in remote parts of the woods for months before picking them up and seeing what they filmed.
Finding the footage of the fisher was “like Christmas morning,” Powers said in a Facebook post.
“It’s super rare to see one in this area,” he said. “Kind of like finding a needle in a haystack.”
He estimated that the furry critter measures about 3 feet long. Fishers — which are sometimes inaccurately called “fisher cats” — are the second largest member of the weasel family in Pennsylvania and males can grow up to 48 inches long.
Fishers may be smaller than other predators in forests and wooded environments, but they are fierce and deadly beasts.
They often prey on rabbits, squirrels, mice, shrews and birds in addition to a diet of eggs, nuts, acorns, apples and berries.
They are also the only known North American mammal that’s able to kill and eat porcupines — and have even taken down a much larger Canada lynx in Maine, according to a 2018 study.
Despite their name, fishers don’t eat fish.
