Great thread thanks for starting it.

The memories come flooding back, I don't think most people today can understand what it was like to have several options of where to sell your furs, swap stories and just hang out with other trappers during the season, all within a half hour to an hour. Great times they were.

X2, THANKS

X3, neat thread. And don't forget the extra competition on the line that was around back then, thousands more trappers afield. These new guys have no idea what 3-5 trappers under the same bridge/location was like.

Ralph Watts, north of Luverne, MN.

It is funny that you bring that up in this thread. Hard to believe but beaver were a lot more scare back then. I had a spot where I had to walk in a mile to trap a big dam and surrounding rat sloughs. A few days after I set it up I noticed that someone else had walked in about as far from the other direction and now we were both trapping the same dam. It would have been fine except that he started having empty traps and was talking around town that I was stealing beaver from his traps. The way I wanted to settle it was stupid and would have just caused more turmoil. Instead, Harvey, my fur buyer took the time to explain to him that the problem was more than likely the fact that he was staking 1.5 coils for beaver without even a drowning setup. Things settled down and no one ended up in trouble. Imagine now days walking a mile through the woods to get to a dam and still be 2 people trapping it!
Jim

Bernie , your the reason I started this thread when I heard about River and what you and your family must be going through, it brought back a flood of memories to me thinking about old times like they where yesterday. Pretty much what you just posted is what had gone through my mind. At our age you can just see how short life is and how important family and acquaintances are
Rich

Might be Ray is gone , I don't think Ray and Pete Smith ever teamed up. The last year I sold to Ray was when things fell apart he was buying for Hudson Bay, he made the coon market that year and I think he lost enough money that he quit. Last I knew he was in Florida. Here in New Mexico its gonna be a different fur market as we lost Mike Goodson who was very competitive , nothing stays the same. The auction we ran in Oneonta had buyers from Europe all up and down the East coast, I never thought the market would fall apart so fast, it was like overnight, after the crash I shipped for years, I have a check for something like thirty cents from the OTA for some fox and coon they finally sold!

In 70s sold to a few different people in NW Mo. they did not last long. Inmost of 80s sold to Mark Morris in Louisiana Mo. heck of a nice guy . Never talked till we agreed on prices. Then talked my ear off. He come up and hunt ducks on the wetland I worked on. When I got promoted to a area farther south I still sold to him. The trip was a highlight of my season. Sold to him till he gave it up. Building had old wood floors and heated the building with wood stove. Good times

Johnny Schultz in St.Marys Ohio. Spent many a day in his fur shed talking BS!

Some of my best memories were The Southern Indiana Fur Takers 7C Fur sales in the late 70's to the mid 80's as a kid and as a young man. There would be hundreds of trappers there selling fur and many fur buyers bidding on lots. I still have some receipts from back then from buyers that most have passed on. I know of a couple that are still alive. Ron Bloebaum and Don Wolf. Red fox bringing 85 bucks, rats 8 bucks , coons 40, mink 40. These sales would last all day and sometimes pretty late in the night. Fond memories I'm sure I will never see these again.

Sold my first stuff............in the early 70's and for years after........to Blaine Richardson in Elderton, PA. Then once or twice to Rod Heasley in Templeton, PA. And after that, Russ Lambing of L&S in Plumville, PA.

Long time ago...................

I sold to a fella called Red in Acme, PA. He also had a fishing bait and tackle store.

In the late 70's early 80's we would go to a guy near Dunbar. The guy, according to my friend was "miscounting" his rats he was bringing in. So we stopped going to him and would drive the extra 25 miles to ole Red. We always went ice fishing near Champion and would drop off our rats and such on the way past. When we came back thru he would have them skinned and graded. He'd pay us in fishing gear. One day we went in and told us we'd get a lot more for our furs if we had them at least skinned. He taught us how to skin, scrape and put up rats and a few other critters. Once we got good enough he asked if we wanted to skin for him. He paid us $4/hr. We would go up twice a week and skin everything he had bought during the week. One day I had a fox shot in a trap. There was still a piece of and ear laying there when I got to it, the rest the person had taken. For some reason I kept that piece of ear. I was telling Red about it. He was so mad. Two days later a fella brought in a fox that was pretty beat up. He came back to the little room we were in and asked me to show him the ear. He matched that up to the fox this guy had brought in. He walked back out and started yelling at the guy for taking fur from a kid. He told him if he ever stepped foot on his place again he'd shoot him.

A couple years later, after the crash, I was in there buying some fishing supplies. In walks this fella. Next thing I know Red stands up walks around the counter and puts his pistol in this guys face. Says to him; "I thought I told you we don't cotton to thief's around here." The guy instantly turns white as a ghost and backs out of the door. It turns out ole Red had a thing for remembering faces, even after years of not seeing someone, and recognized him as soon as he stepped out of his truck. I asked him what he would've done if the guy had denied it. He got a little smirk on his face and said; "I woulda shot him twixt the eyes then told the cops he had tried to rob me."

Some of the stories he would tell a couple 13-15 yr olds about trapping out west in the 50's and 60's were colorful. Probably something that would get a person in trouble for now.

Once I moved further north in PA I sold to Gary Sunderland. I liked Gary. He taught me a lot about catching coyotes.

pm to you

Smeal Hide & Fur in Scribner NE. Harry Smeal did The Market, best guess” in the trapper for years.

Sold to Harry in late 70s and early 80s, then later on his son Bob took over. Bob would go bowling on Wednesday night and Harry would take over and didn’t believe in the new color grade for coons. Sold a lot of coons on Wednesdays back then. LOL

The first fur I sold went to Levi Fox in Salem,Ohio . He always treated the Young trappers well. A few years later I sold to Bob Umsted over near New Albany in Mahoning County .He lived right next to my trapping partners home . He told me of some new trapping spots and my trapping partner and I caught a lot of fur in those spots to sell to him . We found out that he was selling the fur he bought to Fox in Salem ,and that he payed us the same price he sold them for to Fox . Just one of those nice guys helping out a couple of kids. When they opened the first beaver season in Ohio I met R.L.Thomas from Wadsworth ,Ohio . He was trapping with some of the other Ohio Trapper Assn. Officers on land near my line .I showed them several other places in the area that had beaver problems . I sold fur to Thomas ,and he showed me a lot of new ways to set traps for Mink and fox . I introduced him to Umstead and he bought all his fur for a lot more than Umstead had been getting . Umstead was one happy fellow .I Sold some fur to a fellow in Columbiana , Ohio ,but can't remember him name off hand .He lived on Pearl street . For some reason I remember that .For the last 40 or so years I have sold to Rick and Rodger Baringer in Berliin Center ,Ohio . Always enjoyed taking my fur up to sell, and always felt I was treated fairly .I count them as friends .I did ship to NAFTA twice . Hit it perfect the fist time and got a 15 dollar average on my rats the year the South Koreans broke the market . There will not be another price like that payed for rat in a very long time if ever . I was lucky to get in on it .71years lots of buyers. Most long gone now . Never felt cheated by any of them.

Grew up a few miles from Chelsea. Not familiar with Larry, must have been before my time. I did sell a lot of fur to Ludy Sheda.

My grandpa helped me put up the first ‘rats I caught on boards he helped me fashion from some old wood shingles. Old Ludy oohed and aaahed over how nice they were and what a great job I had done with them. Then he asked me what I stretched them on. When I told him how grandpa helped me put them up, he walked over to a pile of wire stretchers and grabbed a dozen. He handed them to me, along with 3 or 4 bottles of lure, and told me use these next time. Then he paid me for the rats- probably double what they were worth.

Over the years I witnessed Ludy doing same kinda thing with young kids several times. Always appreciated that.

That was Ludy all right.

When I first starting trapping muskrats and skunks as a kid of nine or ten (late sixties) my dad would take me to Charlie Winters near Reinholds PA. Charlie had been dad's fur buyer when he was a kid. There was an article on Charlie in FFG about a year or so ago.

As a teenager through my twenties I sold to Mountain Baumy (Baumbach) in Kutztown, PA. Two or three times a week he'd park his truck at the local beer distributor and sit on the tailgate buying whole critters and fur. He'd share a shot of whiskey a cookie with you before making any purchase.



When my youngest daughter got me back into trapping John Epler was the first buyer we went to. We took our Cable Restraint Certification classes at John's shop in Orwigsburg, PA. He always treated us fairly as well.

After John I sold for a number of years to Dave Rodgers, Rodgers Hides and Supplys in Honeybrook, PA.

Who was the big fur buyer around Gap PA?

First buyer I ever sold to was Harold Smid in Elmira, Oregon. He was paying me $3, $2, $1 for carcass nutrias. I was about 16 then and I could fill up a 20 gallon gas tank for two nutrias. I was hooked. He kept asking me where I was catching all these nutria and after I told him where he went to the landowner and asked permission to trap the same duck club. My permission was rescinded since I was just a kid.

I was pretty ticked at what I felt was a very under-handed trick so I went down there and stuck sticks in all his traps one day for revenge. LOL

Sold a lot of fur to Goldberg either directly to Irwin or his buyer Dick Stewart at the buying stations at the Holiday Inns along the I-5 corridor in Oregon.

In later years sold a fair amount of beaver to George Sovy up in the Tacoma Washington area. He always seemed to pay more at the OTC sales than at his home shop. But he was a real nice guy. I one time told him (over the phone) that I was picking huckleberries and saving my money to buy 3 dozen Belisle 330's. A week later three dozen Belisles showed up drop shipped from the factory. George just assumed I would pay him when I had the money.