Paul,

What animals do you have to put down?

Saber-toothed tigers, T-Rexes, and pterodactyls, are the only things that come to mind. Oh yeah, black bears are not welcome in the

city of Milwaukee. This does not mean I can't kill almost everything I catch, it just means I don't have to.

The states like Minnesota that don't want you to "double dip" blow me away. Our DNR recommends throwing dead animals in the garbage.

This is because there is practically nothing in the garbage dump that makes more methane gas than dead animals. So the company that

you pay to collect your garbage, sucks out the gas, turns it into electricity and sells it back to you. Talk about double dipping!

I would complain but these waste management companies are also good customers. ( They can afford it )

It is extremely hard to impact the commodity markets through volunteer agreements that individuals will reduce or cease production until prices go back up. It is probably illegal if done a certain way. The reality is that people will always "cheat" on such agreements. Even the oil producers cheat on OPEC. We have so-called trappers that steal from each other- would they agree to reduce what they send to market?

On the other hand, I think we could add some stability to the market if we were able to encourage domestic fur sales, but fashion is really hard to control, if not impossible. The best we can hope for is that some genius will discover a use for fur that doesn't require a woman to decide she looks good wearing it. Maybe we could get the pro football players to wear more, especially since Americans worship football.

But more to the point, I fleshed my first beaver skin last night and it was a (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) of a lot of work. I can't imagine how hard some of you trappers work putting up beavers and coons. At 57 years young, I could not begin to make money at trapping. To me it is a sport/hobby. I wish I could find young people around here who wanted to put up fur-- they are few and far between.