Damage control 2022

[MOPanfisher]

You didn't miss anything by not keeping the tails.  Several years ago a buddy gave me some beaver tails, I blistered them in the grill to loosen the skin, pulled it off, seasoned it and served it as part of a wild game lunch.  Nobody came back for seconds, basically pure fat and as it cooled it became the stickiest stuff around.  The hindquarters and back straps should be delicious, seasoned and fried/steamed in a skillet like a squirrel, although beaver gravy does sound a bit odd.

[oneshot]

On 2/5/2022 at 7:58 AM, fishinwrench said:

You made enough money trapping to buy a piece of real estate ?    Holy balls! 

Well yes back then $150 an acre made thousands off of furs.

oneshot

[fishinwrench]

What county(s) were you hunting/trapping in?  

I mean, I was alive during that time, and spent a lot of time in and around Beaver, muskrat, coon, coyote, fox habitat.  So I have a pretty good idea how many animals were available.

I know what it costs to do it, and I know what the rolled up and frozen hides were worth then.    To profit $2000.00+ legally in a season (or even 3 seasons) seems impossible.   

How the hell do you run a trapline so successfully ?   You should write a book. 

[tjm]

Back when we had a fur market, making enough money to buy a farm with fur wasn't all that uncommon. My 12 year old pal sold about $1,100 of trapped furs in 1963, shipped most of them to St. Louis and the rest to some place in Louisiana by Greyhound Bus. I help him a little now and then, so know that he was on his own mostly. That would be ~$9000 in today's money, and he never missed school.

Coons in some places in the early '80s were bringing $30-50 each and 1000 coons over three months is not only possible but Larry up in Iowa has done it season after season. Posted lots of pictures to the 'net of his operations. A few trappers consistently caught  about 600+ per year of red fox or coyotes when there was a market, a Waddell from Mo set out to take a 1000 coyotes a couple years ago and just made about 927 if memory serves. Out west when this country still had a big wool industry, damage control operators got paid more for trapping  pups in the dens than the adults fur would bring.

The guy in RI that  I mentioned quit carpentry to trap, told me that he  made a little over $7000 in two months trapping an urban area, his first season. He had one 'coon that sold for $70 locally, so more than that for the raw fur dealer when it got to NYC.

But rolled up frozen hides usually sold for about half what a stretched and dried hide brought. You couldn't ship rolled and frozen and the dressers don't want them green  either.  Hunted fur is usually worth a lot less than trapped fur.  So there are limiting factors. And not everyone will work 16-20 hours a day in freezing conditions for two or three months just so they can take the other nine months off. I sat in a buyers shed once when two old guys brought in right at 300 striped skunks and about 30 mink and a few odd  by catch  and the season wasn't over yet.

When the market died about '86-7  a local fur buyer here told me he had over $3 million in unsold  furs in NYC cold storage from the year before.

On the other hand I can't imagine enough broken boats for a man to make a living just repairing them. Yet many people seem to.

 

 

[fishinwrench]

1 hour ago, tjm said:

On the other hand I can't imagine enough broken boats for a man to make a living just repairing them. Yet many people seem to.

Living 100+ miles from any sizable water......a man can't.    That's why I asked what counties he was trapping in.  

Just seems that you would have needed to own alot of traps, and have had A LOT of land to trap on, in order to PROFIT 1000.00

And a WHOLE LOT of both to profit 2000.00+ 

Something tells me that the time and work involved could have been better and more lucratively spent cutting and selling firewood and ginseng.   Trapping and preparing hides isn't exactly easy work.   

[tjm]

 have you ever trapped full time, putting up the fur?

 

[Terrierman]

"$30-50 each and 1000 coons"   $30x1000=$30,000.  $50x1000=$50,000.  That was real money in the '80's.

[tjm]

1 hour ago, Terrierman said:

"$30-50 each and 1000 coons"   $30x1000=$30,000.  $50x1000=$50,000.  That was real money in the '80's.

Yes, it was. Several hundred trappers were  "getting rich" in those years. With the inflation calculation ~$42K-$141K in today's $$  But the 1000 coon number is from Iowa and I'd guess 500 a more realistic number for Mo, and we can go with the low end pricing   so $15K  still >$42k in today's money . For 2-3 months work, the rest of the year could still be used to repair boats or run a veterinary practice. 

Mo has ~33,830 miles of state highways with 10,400 bridges and most all that ROW is free to trap, all the National forest is open to trap, most Conservation areas are open to trap with a special use permit, nearly every farmer will allow trapping. Obtaining enough land isn't really a problem. Best I recall traps back then were less than $3, so with purchased lures @$1 a bottle $2-300 would set a line up. Pickup a couple of large freezers so you don't have to scrape and  stretch every night and use any car or truck as  the transport. All the money after the first week is  profits. 

 

[fishinwrench]

7 hours ago, tjm said:

 have you ever trapped full time, putting up the fur?

 

No, but I have buddies that worked it really hard.   They kept the hides frozen until an opportunity to sell at the best price came along.   

They had a couple of freezer loads of hides at one time....BUT they had been sitting on them, and accumulating them for several years.  Nobody that I knew continuously brought home truckloads of critters every time they ran their sets. 

In other words....the number of hours spent/per dollar made could have been topped by picking up soda bottles or selling wood.   

[Johnsfolly]

47 minutes ago, tjm said:

But the 1000 coon number is from Iowa and I'd guess 500 a more realistic number for Mo, and we can go with the low end pricing  

10 years ago I knew a guy whose uncle trapped along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and he would top 500 raccons a year. I used to live trap raccoons around our chickens and give them to this guy. He left our company and I was left to handle the coons myself. I usually set up the trap the night before the trash guys came. Still caught as many but I didn't sell the fur. No photos so it didn't happen 😉.