What to charge?

I do deer processing. A few of my customers know I trap. They want me to catch Coyote, beaver and raccoon. I was wondering what would be a fair price to charge? A price per animal caught. I am in Alabama.

As much as you can get. Simple enough, expect my invoice for consulting fees.

Seriously, it's a business. Figure your costs and mileage and labor and charge enough to cover plus enough to grow on. Don't forget your ancillary especially of insurance, marketing, licensing, continuing education, and just day to day living.

4.00

FYI, I'm an Alabama native. Eighth generation born and raised, spent almost four decades there. There's a reason I moved to Atlanta to trap animals. I suspect you're about to find out why.

Many times people aren't willing to pay much over the gas it costs getting to their property. You can always try to get a swap for hunting rights if you hunt.

It isn't a matter of how much to charge, but the rather what you need to charge. As soon as you begin charging a fee, you are acting as a business and as such are bound by the business laws in the state you are performing services in with licenses, insurance, sales tax, workers comp, etc.

As warrior stated, you need to look at your business expenses (including salary and profit) to determine what you need to charge as the mistake a lot make is paying the client for the privilege to work for them instead of having the client pay them. So if you're business expenses, salary and profit will be $1,000 and you've got one client, then the fee needs to be at least $1,000. If you've got 4 clients, then it needs to be $250 per client at minimum. The more clients, the lower the per client price becomes.

Thanks guys. The more I think about it the more I think I am turning something I enjoy into a job. Done that with deer hunting and now it's not as fun as it use to be. I am probably gonna ck these places out and take the best ones for some new trapping grounds. Again thanks.

We've all heard the old adage that making your hobby or pastime your job will ruin all the fun and in some cases that is true. It

certainly did not ring true for me. By turning my fur trapping into ADC work, I think I doubled the fun. If you've caught one

muskrat, you've caught them all. The same cannot be said of customers. The vast majority of customers are thankful they've got you to

handle their problems. And even the crabby customers can be funny. If you love what you're doing, it shows in your work and I have

had more than one customer scratch their head and say, "You really enjoy this stuff, don't you?"

Thanks Paul.

I charge a set up fee, per animal fee and a service call fee. If a customer doesn't like what you say he or she will let you know. My rates are based on what I want to earn not on making a sale.

I do the job right and expect to get paid accordingly.

Chuck

It really does kill me how many Landowners want you to trap but don't want to pay. Almost like they feel they are doing you a favor to let you trap there. I find this around here all the time on Deer leases with Coyote and Bobcat problem.

Thanks guys.

That's because many times they are doing it as a favor for fur trappers who aren't going to really make a difference predation wise

It's not the landowners that are the problem here. I have wealthy clients that own farms that they bought and they are excellent and

constant customers. I hate to use the "F" word here but I have to. It's us farmers that are cheap! We've been taught from the very

start that you don't pay someone to do what you should be doing yourself. ( Even if you don't know how ) Only after we've reached

retirement age and screwed up countless plumbing, electrical, and automotive problems ( And in all cases making the problem worse )

are we allowed to call professional help. And that usually means some shirttail relative that will do it for next to nothing. The

next fellow farmer that hires me will be the first. ( And then he'll want me to do it for half price )

Farmers are a price taker, not a price maker. Corn same price or less than 25 years ago, so there are consequences.

Whatever you charge... You will at sometime realize it wasn't enough.

When I first started I used my land navigator to keep track of Traveling time, Set-up time and millage. You will be surprised on how much time you can spend on doing this time of work. This does not count the cost of operating a truck and all the cost that go with it. Even if you are not doing this for a living, what is your time worth. I would start by at least making as much or more than processing deer. JMO

I too am in the same situation. I have been working on som beavers cutting down a guys trees and on some fox that are killing chickens. The beavers are close to home and are not out of my way at all. The guy handed me $50 the day I set traps and said we would settle up when I was done. I may have 5 bucks in gas and 2 hours invested. The fox on the other hand the land owner said he would give me $25 a piece and that sounds fair,but not sure ?

I am a very small ADC guy, I have all the permits but I still do not work for anyone with out a written contract. I do not lend out my trap also. For ever you are working for need to know what it will cost them in advance. If you are doing this as a friend and going to just charge according lee
that is different, only you can decide on a price. Where when doing the work for pay you have a standard that is expected to be met. When you do it for nothing they can not complain. LOL
You get a lot of calls when you work for nothing. That is what go me started.

You charge a fair price for the work that you do-don't gouge to get rich-fair pay for work performed and you will get all the work you can handle.Dont expect people to pay you for driving around if you arnt having any success in removing the problem.

Thats the problem. I dont really know what a fair price is.

Yes, it's a problem for everyone. If I told you to charge $150 for a house call and $50 per animal, half would say "too much and the other half "too little". You have to find what works for you and your area.

Have to find what works for you. Something that you are happy with and the customer agrees to.

Most of the people that might chime in and give you an answer are businesses. They have capital invested upon which they expect to earn a profit as well as their time. They have liability insurance and probably a hefty advertising budget. They might send an employee out to do the job upon which they have workmans comp and other benefits. They might spend hundreds or thousands going to conferences to learn more about their industry. Their jobs need to pay for that as well. We also don't work for a lot of farmers, as mentioned previously.

I just trap trouble beaver.......75.00 set up and 75.00 per head. Yah don't like the prices...get someone else...I don't care.

Gary:
If you use Nessmuck advice be sure and put a time limit on how long you will be at the job site.
It may take two days or two weeks. Who knows. JMO

If it takes you 2 weeks to remove beaver you are incompetent.You shouldn't charge someone else for your incompetence.

Boco:
This was just met to be an example.

But if the 2 other people were there before you were incompetent the price goes up.

This is always a hot topic for everyone it seems.... I did some training with a top knotch guy in PA a year ago and he opened my eyes to alot I was missing. If this is going to be your source of income you need to be paid for your time. For instance, he wouldnt go just look at jobs and hope to get them with his great people skills, he made a deal on the phone so every stop was money, nothing wasted. Charged for inspections etc... I used to be a per animal guy but after seeing someone elses buisiness (that is booming)it made more sense to me to look at every situation as a job thats gonna cost x dollars instead of getting caught up in chasing that beaver that the land owner failed to tell you they have shot at for the last 2 weeks for 75 bucks.Some folks are good at the setups plus per animal, not me. I do coyote control for several places and I charge per week. Most everything else is setup and 2-3 visits.So it would be like ...225 set up 115 per visit x 2-3 visits. You can put what ever numbers in set up and per visits that would be suitable for your area.

It depends. What needs to be trapped isn't as important as what damage, exactly, is being caused by animals, how hard will it be to stop this problem, and how many need to be trapped.

Anything that only deals with singles or doubles (for the most part) are going to cost more than animals that could be a high number. Example is a fox eating chickens is going to be much more pricey each than a whole gang of coons raiding a chicken house. Also, otters vs mink. If a fish farm is having trouble with mink, you could be talking about catching PILES of mink. If they're having otter problems, maybe you're looking at trapping 3-4 or so (maybe more, but you know what I'm saying). That being said, mink might cost $10-30 each vs $50-80 per otter. Does that make sense?


Beavers are a lot of work, and the damage they can cause can go into thousands of dollars. They can become spooked and harder to catch, so they're going to be expensive.

I'm not a highly experienced trapper,but I am about to launch my ADC business.
My thoughts on this:
I'm going to offer coyote control to cattle ranchers, primarily (ideally) and trap various other predators such as coon, possum etc for people with chickens, etc.
I will first have a conversation to determine how serious they are (are they willing to pay) and try to juxtapose a dead calf (loss of income) to the cost of killing a coyote. Same applies to poultry and whatever else is being damaged or destroyed.
Since this is a launch, I am leaning towards charging enough to cover costs but not necessarily making a profit at first.
As my success builds, so should my reputation and my ability to charge more for my services. BUT, a problem I see is, while my (hopefully increasing) ability to kill coyotes will spread by word of mouth, I expect that if I change a low price just to get clients, that price may also spread by word of mouth and I may get resistance when I decide to charge more.
I am planning to limit my travel distance to 30 miles from my home during the start-up phase.
I'm having cards printed to hand out when making contacts or for sticking into gate locks.