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Post by ksboy2 on Jan 10, 2012 13:56:54 GMT -6
that right there is just funny... now days he don't worrry cause uncle sammy subsidizes his field... let the coon have it.. i still get paid
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Post by seldom on Jan 10, 2012 13:58:34 GMT -6
Well let me tell you what it's like in my neck of the woods right now and it's very reminiscent of the "boom" period and I've got a dang good memory!. I'm getting calls from rat and coon trappers for the past three weeks asking if I'm done on so-in-son's property? Or, if I trapped rats and or coon on so-in-son's place or just coyotes? It's literally been decades since I've observed so many people in the ditches and swamps!! The coon hunters I know are running 7 nights a week marathons and have been since the middle of December! Property owners have been calling as well telling me that they are getting asked weekly by different rat trappers for permission to trap. One old boy told me that he has started a list of names to call if I don't trap the rats! Property owners are telling me of entire families trespassing the length of ditches across sections instead of the usual ROW trespasser trapping rats and coon. When the big public marshes around Saginaw Bay get safe ice it'll be elbows and a-holes and chit will happen this year on them! Perhaps there is a lot of people out of work.I don't know.Actually I've seen more trappers this week than about all season.This is sure no fur boom.With the price of fuel and living in general to equal the fur boom heydays a coon would I bet have to be a hundred dollars.Our seven dollar rats now look like they would be equal to maybe two three dollars rats in the 70s in spending power.In looking some charts I'm a little low on those numbers.Looking at it the fur boom was just unbelievable.It's funny today when coon get close to 30 bucks these yahoos come out of the woodwork and most of them make very little money. This is Central MI and yes, there are a ton of people out of work! Sucking on the government tit and are trapping for the first time. That being said, there are also a hell of a lot of people who do not think about, understand, nor correlate the value of the $. They hear $10-12 rats, $30 coon and holy chit, bar the door Katie!!! I don't remember my hourly wage in the early 80's but I do remember precisely my wage in 1974 as a 2-carded journeyman pipe fabricator/welder for Dow, it was $5.54/hr when we went on strike. Yes, this isn't a fur boom as we trapped through back than but apparently to many that didn't or were still waiting for there daddy to man-up, it apparently is! |
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Post by thorsmightyhammer on Jan 10, 2012 16:17:22 GMT -6
Seldom, most jobs now days dont pay chit.
If you can go out right now with no snow and drive a car trapping rats and do 150 rats a week thats better than working
If i could get a license I guarantee you I could go out to the dakotas and to better trapping rats than the avg factory job will pay.
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Post by seldom on Jan 10, 2012 16:38:02 GMT -6
Seldom, most jobs now days dont pay chit. If you can go out right now with no snow and drive a car trapping rats and do 150 rats a week thats better than working If i could get a license I guarantee you I could go out to the dakotas and to better trapping rats than the avg factory job will pay. I agree Steven, we have no snow now at all in my area which has the big rat marshes and ditches open or at the very least, with unsafe ice. Last year at this very time I had all ditches froze to the bottom so my mink BE's never were available to set with 14" of ice! Accessability is as huge factor as prices here. So I reiterate, most folks trapping now never experienced the previous boom so the $$ look great to them and appears to be "their fur boom"! |
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Post by bblwi on Jan 10, 2012 17:20:52 GMT -6
It might be a good laugh on this forum but the subsidies during the late 70s and early 80s were a much larger percent of the total revenue per acre for corn, beans, wheat and oats than they are are today. We had 10-15% set asides with payments on all acres planted or not planted. Now an acre of corn can be worth 50-60 nice coon.
Bryce
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Post by thorsmightyhammer on Jan 10, 2012 19:07:42 GMT -6
Bryce are you including the crop insurance subsidies and ethanol and bio diesel mandates?
Seldom, there is no such thing as unsafe ice as long as the water isnt over your head.
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Post by seldom on Jan 10, 2012 20:28:50 GMT -6
Bryce are you including the crop insurance subsidies and ethanol and bio diesel mandates? Seldom, there is no such thing as unsafe ice as long as the water isnt over your head. That's right but you go in over your waders a mile in on foot alone and you've got frigin trouble! In addition, unsafe ice means the marsh trappers can't use their board sets without going through(4' of water and 2'-3' of muck). The ditch trappers have trouble setting with ice that is just not quite strong(just a little beyond sag) enough to support their weight. Unsafe equates to unusable and vice/verse! |
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Post by mustelameister on Jan 10, 2012 20:32:09 GMT -6
Seldom, there is no such thing as unsafe ice as long as the water isnt over your head. Wrong. |
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Post by trappnman on Jan 10, 2012 20:44:06 GMT -6
10 years ago, I'd fall in or step in over my waders- the big dunk as we all know it- a couple of times a year- plus going through what I knew was only ice over waist water that should have held me but if it didn't a time or two-
and my silliest mistake- walking logs over creeks in cold weather- you only have to slip once or twice to cure that habit-
I have to share a couple fo my silliest fall ins-
one was when I was standing on a shelf of ice, maybe 2 feet wide, but thick, working on a trap. Frigid weather. Water about 4 feet deep. As I was standing on it, it cracked, and tilted a 45 degree- as I fell face forward, no way to break my fall, I could only think Sumbitch, this is going to be cold!
Another was more thna a few years ago- had beaver that dammed up a creek, casuing it to back flow a 5-6' culvert into a ditch in a corn field, and the dammed up the ditch as well, and had 4-5 check dams in that ditch- the culvert was now completely submerged. water about 4 feet deep in ditch and surrouding aera- yo ucould wade it if oyu were careful.
so I checked it out, went back to truck to get traps, etc- and then arms full of you name it, I crossed the fence to the ditch, and started wading out from the bank, thinking about the sets, and was walking on that goofy culvert without knowing it, and stepped off into space as it were, into about a 6 foot pool- went under like a cork-traps, stakes shite everywhere on bottom. got a grapple hook, and retireved all traps, stakes a lost cause as misc items like hatchet, etc.
I did slay the beaver there-
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Post by bblwi on Jan 10, 2012 21:31:45 GMT -6
Crop insurance is sold and subsidized to lower the payments the government makes to farmers during disasters and it has saved considerable monies. On a percentage basis of gross value of the corn and the yield per acre today and you take off the 40 cents per bushel ethanol subsidy the blenders credit is still there but that is a big bennie to the ethanol producers not the corn guys because it keeps Brazil's cheaper ethanol out of the USA or higher priced. When you look at the total percentage of the revenue per acre to a field of corn in 1980 that tax payers made compared to the percentage of the total revenue today that the tax payers make then in 1980 the public cost was higher for sure. If you got paid 10-15% of your base today at current market prices today the subsidies would be 250-400 per acre. That means that corn alone would cost almost the total farm subsidy per year now let alone soybean, wheat, peanuts, rice, barley,oats and food stamps.
Bryce
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Post by thorsmightyhammer on Jan 10, 2012 22:46:04 GMT -6
I've only went through a minnimum of 50 times this year.
Last winter was worse, this winter the ice is the best its been in years up here. Like I said just dont go where its over your head. Sounds simplistic but true.
One thing a man should do is always wear waders. I've not worn mine much lately but the ice is superb and there is no snow so the bad spots are pretty distinguishable. Soon as it snows the waders will go back on.
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Post by hotandry on Jan 16, 2012 9:00:36 GMT -6
The boom years were something else. 79 thru about 86 but it started to decline about 82 or 83 on some items.
The truly amazing thing was just about all fur, except beaver maybe, went sky high. Land fur was king but the water fur wasn't far behind. Trappers from all parts of the country could make a good living. And many did. It was before coyotes took over the East and red fox guys in NY and PA made a killing. Coon guys in the mid west had a field day.
$20,000 to $30,000 was common. I made 33k one year. At the same time you could buy a brand new 4x4 truck for $6,000 and a house for 30k. Gas was around $1 a gallon and then went sky high to $2 one year then came back down.
The competition was crazy in some places. In remote areas of the west, not so much. Was dangerous to be far out in the boonies before ATV's, cell phones, gps, etc. And those winters were cold and snowy and frozen.
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