What you fail to understand imho is cost of production. A world where there are no roads and low fur densities. I think i would be amazed at your animal densities and you would be appalled at mine.

We do have relatively easy trapping access and high critter populations in the Southern US.

I guess the best is always going to be more difficult to get to.

I consider the higher prices we get as hazard pay for dealing with the difficult conditions

Ice or cottonmouths/gators?

I'm not sure which I'd choose if I had a choice.

I would probably trust ice more than the cottonmouths.

Don't forget heat stroke

Roads go through good fur quality areas too. Just no roads where I live. Boco has roads. Imagine if you had to make a trail through every forrest, swamp, lake, river, and creek to get anywhere. Things periodically thaw here too. Some places only freeze when it is negative and open back up when it gets near 20. Trees are falling everyday across your trails and snow and wind wipe out your trails and rivers and creeks open or cave in on your trails. Trapping is the the easy part. Trail breaking and cutting is the endless part.

Everytime a market heats up we start seeing junk come into the supply and it gets jammed into the mix.

The hatter market needs underfur it doesn't care about color or slight damages but it needs underfur to make felt.

Summer beaver and early flat beaver just screw up this market.

They could just buy from a reputable fur buyer who knows how to sort. If they buy junk because they don't know what they're doing and trying to save a buck that's on them.

That’s what I was thinking. But at FHA, they were paying good money for poor grades of fur. It’s was graded kinda junky but they wanted it. Did the buyer not know early beaver don’t have much wool?

Key word is "did". I was told some rabbit pelts are starting to show up in the felt market again
So the need for beaver pelts for felt is backing off some and that combined with buyers balking at the prices theure having to pay for beaver hides are gonna be factors in the downturn of the beaver felt market.

Well see..time will tell

If beaver market drops....then it sure didn't last long.

Typical...

Yall see Schroeders beaver report in FF and G?

Nope. What does it say?

Are there any beaver trappers employing the sell early and often strategy, moving carcass or green beaver as they catch them, that would be willing to share current prices?

Ttt

MBcoonman did recently but he hasn’t chimed in, cashed in his spring beaver for a nice price. Buyer told him not to tell anyone what he got, but it was fair comparing prices to the last auction. There’s gotta be more guys selling.
For Métis, there might be this option again this year…
https://www.mmf.mb.ca/red-river-metis-fur-company

How do they figure market value.
Do they go by the previous years auction sales avg per species like they do to calculate royalty?

I plan to take mine to Matt Carlson in the next couple of weeks.

I guess. I tried to get more info from Jason White, he runs it for RRMF, but got no response or returned calls. I don’t have a card, my wife & here cousins lost theirs (too far removed from blood line) but everyone around here know some.