SABLES: CHARACTERISTICS, FUR, BEHAVIOR, TRAPPING, REPRODUCTION

SABLES

a sable

Sables (Martes zibellina) are a species of marten — small omnivorous mammals — that primarily inhabit the forests of Russia, from the Ural Mountains eastward throughout Siberia, and are also found in northern Mongolia, eastern Kazakhstan, northern China, North Korea and Hokkaido, Japan. The word "sable" originates from Slavic languages and entered Western European languages through the medieval fur trade. [Source: Wikipedia]

Siberian sable martens are the source of expensive and sumptuous sable fur. They are found almost exclusively in Siberia. Other kinds of sables and martens include the American marten, Chinese sable, American sable, baum marten, Japanese marten and stone marten. Sables are members of the mustelid (or weasel) family. Sable fur ranges from light to dark brown and is softer and silkier than that of American martens.

Sables don't breed well in captivity although some are raised on farms and ranches but farm-raised sable is regarded as low quality. They are generally hunted or trapped. and their pelts often sell for more that $1000 a piece. The most valuable fabric in the Renaissance was Russian sable. Worth more than Persian silk, Indian calico, French-worked damask, it was sold mostly from warehouses in Arkhangelsk, northern Russia. Czar crowns were trimmed with sable.

Sables resemble pine martens in size and appearance but have more elongated heads, longer ears, and shorter tails Their lifespan in the wild up to eight years but is thought to be generally much shorter than that. On fur farms individuals have live up to 18 years. It is estimated that two-thirds of wild sables die before they reach the age of two years.

Sable are found in dense taiga forests, flatlands and mountain regions. They do best in the spruce and cedar forests of eastern Siberia and the larch and pine forests of western Siberia. They avoid barren high mountain tops and are is mostly terrestrial, hunting and constructing dens on the forest floor. Sables are not endangered. They are designated as a species of least concern on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and have no special status on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). [Source: Jeremy Bates, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) |=|]

Mustelids

sable range

Sables are mustelids (Mustelidae), a diverse family of carnivoran mammals, including weasels, badgers, otters, stoats, mink, sables, ermine, fishers, ferrets, polecats, martens, grisons, wolverines, hog badgers, honey badgers and ferret badgers. Mustelids, make up the largest family within Carnivora with about 66 to 70 species in eight or nine subfamilies and 22 genera. Skunks were considered a subfamily within Mustelidae, but recent molecular evidence has led their removal from the mustelid group. They are now recognized as a their own single family, Mephitidae. [Source: Wikipedia, Matt Wund, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) |=|]

Mustelids inhabit all continents except Australia and Antarctica, and do not live on Madagascar or oceanic islands. They are found in diverse terrestrial and aquatic habitats in temperate, tropical and polar environments — in tundra, taiga (boreal forest), conifer forests, temperate forests, deserts, dune areas, savanna, grasslands, steppe, chaparral forests, tropical and temperate rainforests, scrub forests, mountains, lakes, ponds, rivers, streams. coastal brackish water, wetlands such as marshes, swamps and bogs, suburban areas, farms, orchard and areas near rivers, estuaries and intertidal (littoral) zones.

Mustelids vary greatly in behavior. They are mainly carnivorous and exploit a wide diversity of both vertebrate and invertebrate prey, with different members specializing in certain kinds of prey. Most mustelids are adept hunters with some weasels able take prey much larger than themselves. Many species hunt in burrows and crevices; some species have evolved to become adept at climbing trees (such as martens) or swimming (such as otters and mink) in search of prey. Wolverines can crush bones as thick as the femur of a moose to get at the marrow, and have been seen attempting to drive bears away from their kills. Mustelids typically live between five and 20 years in the wild. |=|

Sable Characteristics and Behavior

Patrick E. Tyler wrote in the New York Times: “The sable, resembling a cross between a cat and a weasel, is a cousin of both the weasel and the mink. Basically a carnivore of northern climes, the sable feeds on pine nuts, mice and even squirrels and prefers to hunt at night. Sables are well camouflaged and equipped with sharp claws and sharp teeth to defend themselves against predators. They are also agile and can escape quickly into trees. Known predators include eagle owls and eagles.[Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000]

sable pelts

Sables range in weight from .7 to 1.8 kilograms (1.5 to 4 pounds). They have a head and body length ranging from 35 to 56 centimeters (13.8 to 22 inches). Their tail is 9 to 12 centimeters 3.7 to 5.7 inches) long. Sexual Dimorphism (differences between males and females) is present: Males have a body length between 38 to 56 centimeters (15 to 22 inches) and weigh between .88 and 1.8 kilograms (2 to 4 pounds). Females have a body length between 35 to 51 centimeters (13.8 to 19 inches) and weigh between .7 and 1.56 kilograms (1.5 to 3.4 pounds)[Source: Jeremy Bates, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) |=|]

Sable are terricolous (live on the ground), arboreal (live in trees), diurnal (active during the daytime), nocturnal (active at night), motile (move around as opposed to being stationary), sedentary (remain in the same area) and solitary. They use their sense of smell and hearing to hunt for small prey. Sables have been observed hide in their dens for days during inclimate periods such as snow storms, or when they are being hunted by humans. Although potentially vicious in the wild, accounts of domesticated individuals have described sables as playful, curious, and tame if taken from their mother at a young age. [Source: Jeremy Bates, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) |=|]

Sables are primarily carnivores (eat meat or animal parts) but are also recognized as omnivores (eat a variety of things, including plants and animals) Animal foods include small mammals such as mice, squirrels, bird eggs, small birds and fish. Among the plant foods they eat are berries, cedar nuts, leaves seeds, grains, nuts and fruit. They store and cache food. Sable are eat vegetation when their primary food sources are scare. When weather conditions are severe sables consume cached food inside their den until they can hunt again. |=|

Sable Mating, Reproduction and Offspring

Sables employ engage in delayed implantation (a condition in which a fertilized egg reaches the uterus but delays its implantation in the uterine lining, sometimes for several months) and engage in seasonal breeding. The breeding season is from mid June to mid August. The gestation period is 25 to 30 days; including delayed implantation, it ranges from 250 to 300 days. The number of offspring ranges from one to seven, with the average number being two to three. [Source: Jeremy Bates, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) |=|]

German lady in a sable coat

During the mating season, males have been observed creating ruts, or shallow grooves in the snow about one meter long, accompanied with frequent urination. Mating time varies according to geographic locality. In areas where other sables are scarce, courting rituals involve running, jumping, and "cat-like rumbling" between males and females. In areas where male ranges overlap competition for mates mean violent fights between males. |=|

Sables enters heat in the spring. After insemination the blastocyst does not implant into the uteran wall of the female. Implantation occurs about eight months after mating. Young are altricial, meaning they are relatively underdeveloped at birth. Parental care is provided by both females and males. Males protect the females' territory and have even been observed providing food for nursing mothers and their litters |=|

Newborns weigh between 25 and 35 grams and average 10 centimeters in length. The are born with closed eyes and a very thin layer of hair. Sables open their eyes between 30 and 36 days after birth and leave the nest shortly afterwards. Seven weeks after birth, the young are weaned and are given regurgitated food by their mother. On average males and females reach sexual or reproductive maturity between two to three years; males do so between two to three years.

Sable Fur

The Siberian sable marten is the source of expensive sable fur. An average skin of genuine Russian sable is worth several hundred dollars. A hat can cost over a thousand dollars. Coats cost several tens of thousands of dollars. Quality coat made from wild sable sells for $100,000 or more. The outer hair of the sable is used for the best quality artist brushes. Each hair is evenly tapered so the brush comes to a fine point when dipped in water or paint.

Sables has been hunted for their fur for a long time. They have been harvested at rates of 300,000-400,000 pelts from the wild and 10,000-20,000 pelts from fur farms per year. Their numbers have been greatly reduced because of extensive hunting. Hunting is only allowed by licensed persons now and fur farms have been established to allow wild populations to grow. These measures have allowed sables populations to grow and repopulate areas they inhabited before they were overhunted. [Source: Jeremy Bates, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) |=|]

sable-trimmed Monomakh's Cap in the foreground and Kazan Cap in the background; Monomakh's Cap is the chief relic of the Muscovite Grand Princes and Russian Tsars; it is a symbol-crown of the Russian autocracy, and is the oldest of the crowns in the Imperial treasury of the Kremlin Armoury; the Monomakh's Cap is an early 14th-century gold filigree skullcap composed of eight sectors, elaborately ornamented with a scrolled gold overlay, inlaid with rubies, emeralds and pearls, and trimmed with sable; The cap is surmounted by a simple gold cross with pearls at each of the extremities

The winter fur is longer and more luxurious than the summer coat. Fur color ranges from light to dark brown in different subspecies with individual fur color being lighter ventrally and darker on the back and legs. Individuals also display a light patch of fur on their throat which may be gray, white, or a pale yellow. The prices pelts fetch correlate to the upper coat's abundance of glossy blackness.

Sable fur surpasses all others in silky density and luminous hues of beige, brown, gold, silver and black. On sable from the Barguzin region of Siberia, Helen Yarmack, a former mathematics teacher who has become one of Russia's leading fur designers, told the New York Times: ''This sable has such a special energy and mystery in addition to being so light and warm and sexy that it is no wonder that a century ago there was a law that only the czar and his family could wear this sable.'' [Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000]

Sable Fur Production

Patrick E. Tyler wrote in the New York Times: “After a decade of chaos and collapse in the Russian fur industry, boom and bust in the retail market and fierce opposition from animal rights groups internationally, the one great constant about the fur trade has been Russia's monopoly on the most sought-after pelts in the world, the kind Mr. Karnilov was holding by the nape of the neck: those from the Barguzin region of Siberia. [Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000 ^]

“In the calamitous post-Soviet economy, Russian hunters have become the mainstay of world sable production, reversing the balance from Soviet times when sable farming produced a majority of pelts. Now hunters, who head out into the taiga each fall, outproduce Russia's crumbling fur ranches by more than four to one, Russian fur industry experts say. ^

“Hunting cooperatives have been cut adrift from state financing, and now hunters sell their pelts to public and private trading companies that collect the national fur harvest each year and transport it to St. Petersburg for auction. A professional hunter today gets almost nothing from the state, except the exclusive right to hunt on huge swaths of pristine wilderness. ^

“Just north of Moscow, the largest and most successful fur ranch in Russia, the Pushkinsky state farm, has just completed the slaughter of 15,000 sable by lethal injection, representing about half the 30,000 farm-grown sable slaughtered in Russia this year and sold at international auction to fashion houses in the United States, Europe and Japan. ''This animal is still considered a national asset and a national monopoly,'' said Pushkinsky's general director, Yevgeny N. Kazakov. But he and other Russian officials assert that European fur companies have conspired to break Russia's lock on the species by secretly buying as many as 100 animals from bankrupt former Soviet fur farms in the Baltic states. It's a plot reminiscent of the Soviet-era novel ''Gorky Park'' by Martin Cruz Smith. ''It isn't decent what they have tried to do,'' said Mr. Kazakov, referring to the European raiders, ''but as far as I know, it hasn't worked out because 100 or so animals'' is not sufficient to establish a sable population with genetic diversity. ^

Sable Hunters

Reporting from Arzoma Klyuch a few hundred kilometers from Lake Baikal in Russia, Patrick E. Tyler wrote in the New York Times , “Wearing a hat made from pelts of hunting dogs that had disappointed him, Valery T. Karnilov, a strapping former cattleman, had been stalking the foothills of the Sayan Mountains for only two weeks this winter when his huskies treed the first trophy of the season, a growling Barguzin sable with creamy golden fur and black tail. [Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000 ^]

“The sable monopoly has helped to sustain an extensive hunting culture in Russia. Today there are at least 10,000 licensed professional hunters, who in Soviet times worked in the same socialized collectives as farmers and factory workers. As many as 200,000 amateurs — and not a few poachers — have swelled the ranks. In the season, from October to mid-February, they will shoot or trap up to 250,000 sables, along with millions of squirrel, mink and a host of other fur-bearing species. ^

“And though Russia's hunters are suffering the economic dislocations that have befallen almost every post-Soviet institution, tens of thousands still respond to the call of the wild. ''For 20 years I worked as a bus driver, but as I sat there every day behind the wheel of that bus, all I did was dream about coming out here to the taiga,'' said Anatoly M. Kurkin, 42, who is spending his second season hunting with Mr. Karnilov, 37, on a boreal landscape of mountains and valleys near this bend in the river called Arzoma Klyuch, or spring. ^

''We come out here for our souls,'' said Aleksandr I. Shevchenko, the chief hunter who supervises Mr. Karnilov, Mr. Kurkin and four other men who lease the rights to hunt on a half-million acres of taiga. ''I used to live in the city and I had a chance to stay in Irkutsk,'' the provincial capital, ''and become a manager,'' he said, ''but I just rejected that life because my soul calls me back to the taiga.'' ^

“With unemployment as high as 50 percent in many Siberian villages, hunting can seem an attractive profession. And there is always the occasional well-paying foreigner to be guided into the taiga to hunt bear or reindeer. Mr.Shevchenko, 44, has led Norwegians and Germans into the Russian wilderness, where he cuts an unusual figure wearing a tank helmet lined with dog fur over a tunic and knee-high felt boots. He drives a homemade all-terrain vehicle that can reach the remote hunting camps he supervises. In 20 years of walking the taiga with a rifle, he has seen almost everything, he says, and though he kills animals for a living, he also shows a reverence for nature. ^

Sable Hunting

Patrick E. Tyler wrote in the New York Times, Under a canopy of cedars and fir trees in the middle of the Siberian taiga, Mr. Karnilov took careful aim with his small-caliber carbine. As the dogs bayed to keep the sable frozen in fear with dagger teeth bared against the human predator, the hunter felled the animal with a single shot to the head. The best marksmen aim for the eyes to avoid damaging the fur. ''I knew he was mine as soon as I saw him,'' Mr. Karnilov said as he showed off his prize to visitors who reached this one-hut camp in mid-November” on “the Oka River about 230 miles west of Lake Baikal. By that time he had already bagged a second sable. [Source: Patrick E. Tyler, New York Times, December 27, 2000 ^]

“Here on the banks of the Oka River, the stars seem to hang lower in the rotunda of night sky that stands on a circumference of deep blue ridge lines. And the river runs through it all, a slash of jade green rippling between collars of ice that soon will shutter the stream until May. This is where it all begins for the most expensive wrap on the planet. When a woman bathes herself in a $100,000 sable coat from a salon in Milan, Paris or New York, she is not wearing ''ranch'' fur from sables raised in cages, because by far the most exquisite specimens of sable are still found only in the Russian wild. ^

“In the rose-colored morning light, the hunters moved stiffly against the chill, 20 degrees below zero. A layer of frost lay over the dogs, who curled back-to-belly for warmth. Mr. Karnilov quickly built a fire to heat the dogs' breakfast of squirrel meat and noodles, as the staccato code of a woodpecker echoed through the forest. When the snow becomes too deep for the dogs, the hunters set traps. At night, the hunters gather in a 12-by-12 log cabin, and while the dogs sleep outside so they will not be spoiled for the cold dawn, the woodsmen make tea spiced with pine needles and cedar moss, prepare barley stew on the wood-burning stove and tell stories of the sable tracks they have seen, of bears they have bested or fled from, of the wolf pack around the next bend — and how hard it is to find a good dog in this world.

“At the end of each season, the hunters take a census of sable, mink and other animals to help regulate the quota the Ministry of Agriculture will set for hunting licenses the next year.” ''The population of sable is estimated at 1.1 million animals and if we take 25 percent a year from nature, that leaves 75 percent as breeding stock in the wild,'' said Mr. Chipurnoi of the fur association. But hunters report that greater pressure from amateurs and poachers is reducing the sable population in these areas. ^

''In the 1980's, they were going to build a dam and a hydroelectric station right upstream from here, but thank God perestroika came along and they abandoned those plans,'' the hunter Shevchenko he said. ''Then they found diamonds just downstream from here and they were bringing a drilling rig upriver eight years ago, but the barge sank and they abandoned those plans too,'' he continued, then added, ''I think that God is protecting this river.'' With that he made the sign of the cross and sipped his tea.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated June 2025