strategy for dealing with higher prices?

[coyote]

sounds like a dumb question (okay...it IS a dumb question), but how will you handle your line, and inter-personal relations with increased prices forecast for the coming season?

meaning...when someone who USED to trap asks you about prices, do you tell the truth, but talk up the high gas prices, etc?

how will increased price predictions affect your line? more stealth? start earlier? no change, etc?

I started trapping at the rock bottom of fur prices, so have no real experience dealing with these issues.

Thanks.

[ColdSteel]

I never tell the truth about fur prices.I lie llike a cheap watch.I tell them the prices they hear about are for the upper northern goods plus I tell them about all the long hours in the shed and hauling off the remains plus running sets in the sleet and freezing rain and busting ice to run my waterline.Add the high price of gas plus traps and lures and other equipment just to get started .After reading my post over heck I may give it up ;D

[Stef]

Does the prices will be strong next season?....

We just don't know yet.
We'll see what will happen at the auction in May and June and even if those next sales are good.... It doesn't mean that it will be as strong in December 2006.

Better say cheap ;D

[lynxcat]

coldsteel said:

I never tell the truth about fur prices.I lie llike a cheap watch.I tell them the prices they hear about are for the upper northern goods plus I tell them about all the long hours in the shed and hauling off the remains plus running sets in the sleet and freezing rain and busting ice to run my waterline.Add the high price of gas plus traps and lures and other equipment just to get started .After reading my post over heck I may give it up ;D

BOBBBY!!!! How'd you post under this name???

[trappnman]

One can only hope the prices continue- but frankly I'm pessimistic. I do think that- unless these last 2 sales are total busts, that the prices will open up next year a little higher that last fall.

Always remember that the trappers out there, have the potential to put a tremendous harvest on the boards.

I'll run my lines exactly the same. If we do get an otter season, and it sounds certain we will, I'll of course set some traps for them.

[ColdSteel]

Tman I hope you do get your otter season.IThey are my bread and butter on my line,I use to ry to avoid beaver with all the work involved but with the rising beaver prices I will try to catch some next year for sure

[trappnman]

while out gopher trapping, the warden stopped "what the heck are you trapping now?" he asked...LOL

he said they are just deciding on the limit .

[bobwendt]

lol, why would I slow down if prices go up? actually, with the $3-4 dollar fuel, prices aren`t up as much as production costs. Only change I will make is catch the freebie coons on canine and cat lines,if they hold $15 green.

[Mike Barcaskey]

I talk them down. Gloom and doom with as little info (lying) as possible
dont want to lie, dont want to tell about high prices

[foxtrapperwoman]

I might tell someone a high I got for a few skins out of a lot of them then tell them the paltry average and moan about gas prices. Now after thinking, I will just say foxes sell for 10-15.00 and coons are worthless and mink are hard to catch LOL. I also remind them that there are no fur buyers in the area anymore and I have to put everything up. Most of those guys don't even know how to skin a critter right.

Though I admit, I wish more foxes got cleaned up in this area, I lost more guineas again, 18 foxes being killed still doesn't stop it. There are just so many around this year. Problem is if I tell hunters to shoot every fox they can, most of these guys leave em lay or shoot with a slug gun. Sure some say they will save every fox to give to me, then I never hear from them again.

I know there is at least 1 fox still around and maybe a coyote too. I saw a huge very fresh turd on a walk last week and saw fresh fox tracks in mud after I had killed the female I trapped. I trapped a male fox who had chicken parts in his stomach, about 2 weeks before the female.

Good news is my fox trapping should be wonderful this next season, so long as mange or parvo or distemper doesn't go wiping the fox out before then. Like what happened about 3 years ago.

[bobwendt]

I just tell the truth if ranchers etc ask prices. I tell the averages at the state sales, which are about 1/2 what I get for hides. on live 100 dollar animalsl I tell them I net about 50 bucks each ( true). generally they say something like , "I figured you would have to get at least 2-300 dollars each to come out on it , after seeing how hard you work at it and the investment you have in it". then I realize I am just white trash. and I am, as far as trapping income compared to anything else a guy could do with the same effort and time financially. A more appropriate title for this thread would be "how you going to handle less low prices?" ,because they still are less than production costs in 99% of cases ,with no cats or otter. and they aren`t all profit either. how many guys you know catch over 100 cats or otter a season? And if they do it is 6 months balls to the wall, 18 hr days. maybe 10-12 bucks an hour. you can`t hire an illegal mexican roofer for any less.

[thorsmightyhammer]

I dont think the increased fur prices are going to effect me as much as the increased production costs.

If gas stays at 3 bucks a gallon I am going to have to be like a farmer and get an operating loan lol.

Just going to have to become more efficient I guess.

Bob I think that if the beaver market holds I a good trapper in a good beaver state can do better than all but the hundred otter and cat guys. Biggest problem is they cant take the pounding very long(the beaver that is).

[ColdSteel]

steven49er,I agree with you on the beaver and I am a otter man.In all honesty I don't set for beaver unless they are causing problems for a farmer.I catch anywhere from 175 to 225 every year in about a 6 week period and I don't even try to catch them.In years I have sold in the round for 8 to 10 bucks but with beaver prices like they are now that will have to stop

[bobwendt]

my home county, hancock county indiana, never was great beaver country like parts of the south or the north country, just average beaver quality and probably never more than 100 beaver a year total taken out of the whole county by all trappers combined. about ten years ago the county hired a beaver trapper year round at 50 bucks a tail, summer or winter, as the son of a guns get everywhere but where they should and clog up farmers drainage, so the farmers crab. he did right smart a year or two and now turns in less than 10 head a year I imagine. if it weren`t for a couple larger creeks flowing from other counties I imagine they would be exterminated here. If we had them, I would definitly catch 100 or so in the spring after all other trapping opportunitys were over. may still do that next year on a big river boat line in another county. even our scruddy beaver should do 35 dollar average finished. be 2 weeks hard labor and probably $500-1,000 out of pocket expense to gross $3500. still no great shakes for the houirs and labor. now steven, he can probably do 500 head at 50 bucks, coldsteel 500 head at 30 bucks. just different parts of the country. It`s hard to trap beaver plumb out, but you can sure hurt the hell out of them in about 2 seasons of burning up all the easily available ones.

[ColdSteel]

Bob you are a smart man,There is alot of truth in burning up the easy ones.I have done that in alot of my spots.I block as many water sheds as I possibly can to catch otter and when I do this the beaver will come but to keep the catches up a man needs 2 strong lines to run every other day and keep moving to keep the beaver numbers up.I could probably do between 4 to 5 hundred in 2 months but it would be tough I am not sure I want to do that many ;D.I am hoping the grey fox come on strong I want to land trap and water trap because I get excited fox trappping.I don't get excited about looking at dead beaver and otter in 330's

[bobwendt]

I always did think a beaver in a 330 looked like a used truck tire someone threw over the bridge. I had a few big beaver years in tn and ms way back. just no thrill in it for me and I need thrill more than money, lol, and dead tires in 330`s.

[ColdSteel]

Never heard it put like that before but to me running land traps is alot more fun than checking my 330's.There are so many creatures you can catch when you dig a hole and bury a trap.Kinda like opening up a box of chocolates you never know what you may get ;D

[thebeav2]

I'm sure if I didn't spend time working the live market. I could double my beaver catch and probably catch another 30 or so otters. But I really love matching wits with the canines. But with live market competition( the locals trap year around) I just may spend more time In the swamps. Nine beaver equals the same money as one otter.

Gary

[bblwi]

How will I trap this fall. More and hopefully a lot more.
Different areas and for a wider variety of species.
As to telling a former trapper what fur is worth. Why not tell him straight up. Say coons and he has not trapped for 15 years. If he remembers $20 coon averages with green pelts and early caught with the road kills included and he hears of a $16 average put up at a big auction house with later goods let him figure it out. $2.60 gas versus 1.00 gas, buying traps, finding a much tougher grade and 15 years older, why lie. He will find out anyway. I never found anyone that appreciated being told false and or bad information.

Today that 50 year old making $25 per hour on overtime in the fall can make way more working extra hours than he could trapping $13 coons. When coons were $26, gas 1.00 and his job paid $8 it made sense to trap.
The guys that come and go whenever they hear of the price increases are the ones that never understood averages for the most part anyway. They would hear of the $25 coon and wonder why 80% of their coons sold for $7. They heard of the $4 rats and were mad when their average was $2.35. Some people never do get it and not just in trapping.

Bryce

[foxtrapperwoman]

Here ya go bob, look like an old tire?