I was sent some old trapping material and this 1910 scrap book and letter were in it. This young man wanted to be a trapper, he has long since moved on, hopefully to a better trapline

.My Experience in Trapping
By E.D. Schmidt

This is the first year that I had any good luck in trapping furbearing animals to amount to anything. The first couple of week I dug out a skunk in the grove ten 2 muskrats and a skunk along the creek. In the valley I got rats they were medium size got 50 cents a piece and skunks $3.50 a piece then snow fell got nothing, started trapping again south of house in clover field a large no1 narrow and a narrow stripe skunk, first one $5.25 other $4.50, down at tule ditch caught musk and mink, $1.00 for first and 4 for mink and 5 muskrats along creek 75 cents and 50 cents and 90 cents a piece, get $26.15 got 4 more muskrats at 50 cents to $1 a piece
End of first time.

Very nice! Was this kid from Iowa or Indiana ?

Thanks for sharing

I see what he did. He had a old buggy catalog from Elkhart Indiana 1910 and put his stuff in it . What stuff he like was close to the same era . Smart kid !!!

That definitely has character and is quite the treasure. I bet he would be amazed that in 2019 trappers are reading it.

that's pretty neat I have one of those old stevens pump 22 hammer guns. I turned down 3- 22 crack shots for it. They was my great grand pas guns! Ill be the second to inherit them. my grand son will be the third!

That young man had a vision, he may have went to WWI, maybe thats why the scrap book was never finished.

The material came to me from Iowa, and the envelope that he wrote was from Iowa, the carriage plant I think was IN.

Joe, you are amazing, a true historian, thanks for doing the calculations as it keeps things in perspective, as to value added.

I've looked at the scrap book a couple times. It's a time-capsule of sorts. Very cool. Must've been quite a kid. Makes you wonder so many things about his life and how he lived it. Those were very different times.

joepen. That truly is amazing that you came up with all those figures. Did you use a calculator? Tell the truth now.

When skunks were king, the coats made from them did not have to say made from skunk. They used all other exotic names. They trapped them, hunted them with dogs, dug them out and would even dye a cat to sell as a skunk. The best were the all black ones with just a white patch on the skull. The more white the less money. If read alot of old HTT and Fur New in the teen and 20's you will find a lot about skunks and alot of about WWI, pre depression and the depression. There are some pretty sad stories buried in those articles. But that was then, you find that EJ Dailey was a skunk wizard was before he became a fox wizard, same with Dick Wood. History is fun, I remember reading an article by J Thorpe building a deadfall as a kind, I guess he broke his toe trying to set it with a couple other kids. Even he was a kid with hopes and dreams once (RIP).