Yes you can make the belly cut to low but that has nothing to do with the stretcher, if you take 1000 random coon with sizes M- 5x, and put them on wire you aregoing to get coon as little as 5.5 inches wide up to 9 inches wide, to me that is inconsistant and not a true representation of what the coon are. On wood ALL coon will be the same width and I don't think you can cheat the length near as much as you beleive. If you use cloths pins on wire you are doing the same as wood, just squaring off the skirt.

So in essence your telling me that Groeny is willing to lose money by not boarding? If boarding would increase his profit margin and was truly what his buyers want he would urge everyone to board when in fact just the opposite is true. It wouldn't cost him a dime to tell trappers to board their coon but in fact he urges not to board for the reasons I have stated before. As I also said earlier, no one on here has dealt with the volume of goods nor the amount of foreign garment makers they have, therefore its only logical to abide by the most experienced advice given.

If you wire a coon and try stretching it then yes you are going to be inconsistant on the width but if you put it on properlly then your not going to differ that much. So if you have a 30" coon and put it on the wire properly you are going to have a nice finished product same as wood in a 1/4 of the time. Two hooks versus 30 pins no contest. I not only put up hundreds of coon for my self a year but also skin for a fur buyer. I use wire for all my coon and never have I once recieved any negitives on my fur. This is a no win argument. Yes wood will let y'all stretch ur coon a size or two without loosing width and if your good with that fine. Dave is saying that when you use wood and do that then that's not right! Take two coon the same size put one onwire and one on wood properly and the only differance is that wire is faster. That's it! I've been handling fur for over 20 years and have done it with both and if you do it properly time is the differance.

Dave your only person i have ever meet that would be willing to NOT try to maximize profit just based on fact that you think its not right. Not to mention you keep bring on groeny there are alot of other fur people out there that may be what HE likes but it is not the whole idusty. If anything consisency is more of a money maker then anything and wire canont provide what wood can. I am not a huge trapper but i do know how to do coon but i will tell you i dont strech them same as guy down road. BUT when we use wood we are identical so there is where your helping the whole traping world is by consitency. Not to mention a standerd you keep saying the fur buyers can get use to and if there use to it then they will NEVER think they are cheated. And as far as his profit margin no he is not going hurt it and wire may help him BUT IT MIGHT NOT HELP YOU!

Groenwald buys boarded coons so he must be able to sell them and that may be to different clients. When he buys at NAFA he buys put up lots of coons and probably does not sort for put up choices. He has established a preferred market for his customers and he is promoting that advantage to his fur harvesters. That is a good business practice. Obviously the buyers at NAFA buy many boarded coons. If my coon are in lots of say 200 I wonder which ones they select for a ssample of the lot and do the buyers make bidding decisions based on put up choices? I am thinking not but I don't know.
I sold Groenwald boarded coons and wire coons and green coons. I can rember one year in the late 90s I took about dozen December wire stretched coons and they were really excellent quality and the buyer stated I should had several that were just short of the 3 xl size and with that quality it cost me 5-6 bucks a piece.
Next year I had them on NAFA sized boards and they were too narrow was the comments. I don't know if it hurt my prices but confused me enough to explore other options.

Bryce

i never said its better i said i can take a coon thats 34 inches and put it on wood and get 36 or more inches out of same hide .and no im not over stretching .i push a push pin and pull tight on the sides .i never said your way is wrong .but you sure think your always right and every body else sucks.i told the guy to try both and see if it worked like it did for me .i dont care wire or wood 3 inches longer brings me more money .so yes my wire are rusting away.and dave i dont care nafa fur harvesters local .ive never sold any where with out being told how nice my fur is.if i make more and buyer makes money i dont care what you think about my fur if i was screwing my buyers .whould they be so excited to let them bid on it every year.

as far as locals go maybe they dont sell on nafas scale.i know several buyers that only grade beaver and coon on 3 sizes.some years .depends how there getting paid.thats what my local that gets most of what i sell local told me he dont use wood cause that extra size makes him nothing .i put up my fur to nafa if i dont like local prices .i can ship and its there specs.

BTW when i strech on wire i use cloths pin pull them down even on wire so if you think that wood is only way to get that lenth you can get it with wire as well just have to know what your doing

Groeny is making the profit off the no value-$2 pile.

Groeny is making the profit off the no value-$2 pile.


There you go the truth rears It's ugly head.

Yep I can see a pile of groneys zip tied finished coon next to a pile of my boarded coon and I can see why he dosen't want to display them to his buyers. LOL

And the next time he down grades you for a nick or cut In a coon ask him how his machine fleshed coon come out. It's not pretty.

I just might take you up on that race dave.

When you use wire how do you do the tail or do you just let It roll up and never dry?

For wood users. Do you use staples or push pins to anchor your hides? Every one knows what a pain It Is to pull stapples and push pins are bad to. I have a system that eliminates the use of staples and 95% of the push pins.
PM me for a huge time and money saving tip.

Beav likes wood and so do I

WOOD BOARDS thats all I use lol

Exactly!

Than why have you sold to Groeny Bankrunner?

My coon averages on wire are right in the ball park with those using wood so I'm not losing a dime.........Like I said before, if wood is better why isn't Groeny urging furharvesters to use wood? Because wire retains a truer size where as many using wood do not.

Seems to me a lot of people here are only looking at the length and how much over strethcing and thinning of the fur that does. Well to my way of thinking over stretching is a two directional thing, sideways as well as length ways. If you don't have wire bent correctly the wire puts constant tension on the pelt at all times and thus to my way of thinking can cause fur density loss from the sideways tension. Wood does not put pressure on the pelt until it drys from the sides. As it dries it should have a tendency to shrink tighter and remain as dense as it was when it was put on the board.

It was interesting the last years I used my # 5 wire I bent them so they were the same size as the NAFA and or FHA dimension wood boards and held them together with strapping tape and thus they functioned almost exactly like wood. I did not get told they were too narrow but the ones on wood were?
Everyone has their own idea of what someone is trying to pull over on them. Maybe we as trappers have earned that status. Hopefully through our Trapper Ed programs we can work to minimize that culture or thought process.


Bryce

From what I have read hear it doesn't seem fair to say one way is better than the other. I'm going to see for myself and send in some of each on different invoices and compare the averages.
Thanks for all the opinions guys.
Chad

stretcher.wont get you any more. like i saidstretch one on wire .then measure it.take it off stretch it on wood .then measure it again see if you gained length or the next size .and to make sure you dont over stretch like so many on here are worried about .when you pull the sides down grab about 15 or 20 hairs and pull them down surely 20 hairs will not over stretch the leather.if you gained a size in lenth its worth more money .if you didnt gain a size put it back on wire.no the same sized coon on wood does not bring more than the same size on wire.but if the wood makes that coon the next size bigger yes you get more.one more thingfor all you guys that say im over stretching my fur.please explain to me how im over stretching the hide any more than you do pulling it off the carcuss or the presure on the hide from scraping.i think my thumb and one finger on the side pulling straight is not putting as much torch on that hide as grabbing the hide and using 200 pounds of your weight to rip it off does.or a skinning machine

Sounds like your one of the guys boarding coon the right way Mark. I know of guys that use vice grips and pull down as hard as they can and staple in place with a staple gun. That's NOT the right way to board a coon! Also know of guys that make their opening cut way down past the penis into belly fur. That's also not the right way to do things. The more we can do to handle our wild fur the right way maybe we can slow down buyers from turning more and more to ranched goods.

Dave Plueger, do I have to go to confession and confess to putting up coon on boards and getting extra length and profit?

Does Groenwald feel dishonest for all the profits he's made on fur he's bought over the years? Especially those he made huge profits?

Yes, yes you should. Now for repentance you might as well just send all your coon to me. LOL

Your right. Silly me. Since when should a business man like Groeny make a profit? Here I thought he was just buying fur out of the goodness of his heart to help all us trappers survive.