Is there a bounty on Nutria in the State of Louisiana? Is there a market for Nutria meat? I read that the avg. wt. of a Nutria is about 15-20 lbs.
Thanks in advance!


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Last I heard there was a $5 bounty on the tails. Not state wide though, just certain areas of the state.

Thanks for the reply!

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I have caught nutria a little over 20 lbs but the average weight here is more around the 10-15 lb range.

(And the really heavy ones are usually females with about 5-6 lbs of babies inside of 'em).

Given the mostly depressed fur market, have nutes slipped as well or are they about the same as usual, Pac NW version of those critters. What is a finished pelt from a bigger one up there bringing...?

I will let you know as soon as NAFA sends me my bad check for the ones I sent up there 18 years ago. It might be a while.

Yeah, but yours are from Virginia! I think there's a Chinese or hippie commune connection in the demand of Pac NW nutes. Last I remember, the 26 inches and better and good bellies were in the $2.50-$5 range, but maybe I'm hallucinating.

There used to be a nice little market for nutria and there could be again but not enough are being pelted to get any serious international interest.

Back in the day H.E. Goldberg was the dominant player in PNW nutria, and maybe WissMiss can correct me but I think he used to buy 10-20,000 a year. I was getting $13-14 averages in the peak years. These days I only see 1-200 at the OTC sales and they are selling in the mid $2 range.

On occasion a buyer will have somebody interested in a small collection for some project and they will approach somebody like me and offer me $3 or $4 if I can catch a couple hundred. I always politely turn them down.

The sheared belly fur on nutria is really beautiful and on our section it is quite dense. It takes dyes readily and the leather is thin enough that garments made from it aren't too heavy like beaver can be.

Looks like the bounty is up to $6 per tail, still only for the coastal region. Go to nutria.com for all the particulars.

As far as selling the meat, there are markets if you can find them. Just like coon meat, there are folks that will buy them for their own use. I have seen it served in restaurants. I used to sell carcasses to alligator farmers. There is now a company that is making dog treats out of the meat. They have a very interesting website, marshdog.com.

I agree with beaverpeeler, nutra rat fur is very beautiful. One of the nicest coats I ever saw was a full length nutria with a coon collar. The rats were chocolate, they may have been dyed, but I caught alot of them that color in north Louisiana. A professor at LSU wore the coat whenever it got cold enough, which was not very often in Baton Rouge. But both her and the coat were so good looking as to stick in my mind these 35 years later.

I was in France in fall of 1978 and about every third woman I saw was sporting a nutria skin vest or coat.

That was a great time to be a trapper. I as a senior in high school and I killed alot of rats that year. Never got the kind of averages you mentioned, more like $8-$10 for the fur, but also another $1 or $2 for the carcass. But rats were easy to catch, sets were quick to make, also they spend alot of time sitting on logs and they float when you shoot em. Best of all they were quick and easy to skin.

Sort of sad, we now have this critter is multiple parts of the country that's not native but isn't going away. It has been shown to be a useful natural resource with a nice looking worked fur and also a useful source of meat. You would think that various governments (states, even the feds) could put a little seed money into creating more industries based on renewable natural resources such as nutes and other furbearers. But I guess it wouldn't benefit the various special interests that run politics and thus policy around the country.

I can't understand why the greenies don't get on board with critter-base natural resources except maybe that most also believe animals are the same as people. I never really understood that philosophy until last year when South Dakota had the nest predator bounty in the spring and I spent a couple hours reading through an anti petition that was circulating and getting people world wide to sign it. Some of the most vicious comments I've ever read, multiple dozens calling for graphic violence against the trappers and our governor. Mostly because these goofs actually thought we were the equivalent of killing their grand mother. Out there, just crazy out there...

Nutria are one of the most destructive mammals in our marshes. I do not know what the marshes are comprised of in South America, nor how heavily they are knocked back by predators there, but they go pretty much unchecked in our bigger marshes and skin our marshes down to next to nothing. Where there are large populations of nutria, muskrat populations become depressed.

They are very aggressive towards their little cousin the muskrat. It isn't just food competition but they actively dig out and kill nesting muskrats and their young.

Bounty on them only applied if they were from south of I-10 , that may have changed or stopped.

Anybody ever enroll in the bounty program? Is it a zoo down there with guys trying to trap them?

I called a few years ago about this subject and it’s typical Louisiana politics if I understood them right.
Nutrias are an invasive species, well on public land you are limited to 5 I believe, but only in the coastal area. If you own land or lease land you can harvest as many as you would like and receive the bounty on the tails. So I figured whoever made that law had a relative that owns a lot of land in the marshes.