I like mink and would gladly forfeit a few small fish to keep the muskrats in check...

Mink have to go if they invade your chickens though which reminds me of an awkward moment I had a couple years ago. Something was getting my mom's chickens, but we couldn't figure out what. I thought it might be a mink, but no sign. One day, she hollered at me that there something in the chicken house bothering the chickens. I grabbed a rifle and went to investigate. She said it was under a feeder and lifted up the edge. Out shot a mink towards the chicken wire screen door. I just managed to grab it by the tail as it was getting out the door. The mink didn't like that and started to spin around. It didn't take long for me to decide that might be painful so I slammed the door shut with my foot (had rifle in other hand). I was doing my best to hold on to its tail, keep the door shut tight enough it couldn't reach back and bite me, bring the rifle into position where I might shoot without hitting the house, and etc. A few exciting seconds, but the mink wound up getting away until I caught it in a trap later that night as it tried to get back into the chicken house. To this day, those few seconds still seems unreal. I've caught other mink in traps, but I've certainly never tried to grab one by hand (even in a trap) and have no desire to do so. Just got caught up in the moment of trying to keep it from escaping.

I saw four different mink as I mowed around my lake last year. After finishing mowing, I had a lot of geese take it over and also realized that I had wiped out the cover mink used for evading predators so I didn't mow this year. I didn't seem to have nearly as many geese either so what someone told me about geese not liking tall weeds/grass around ponds might be true (even though they land in the water?).

[Linked Image from i108.photobucket.com]