Through the season. Any difference?

Sure

I would say in this rat market the answer would be NO. But normally your later In the season caught rats will bring more money.

Last season I got no difference in price on them. I trap them for the whole season also.

Yep.

I've trapped a refuge..some lakes have nice big well furred rats, another lake a mile away will have scrawny poorly furred little rats. It's all in the habitat apparently.

Today It’s timing. Maybe it always been that way? Days gone by they used fuss over them better rats.
Today I ain’t sure if they can tell the difference.

As long as we are in some type of a trade/tariff war with anyone in the word who would actually buy the fur we can produce, there will be no fur market. Along with oil being cheap it is going to be a very long time before anything has value. The fur has virtually no market within our own county, and may not again, so we need to learn to negotiate some type of a trade deal, not dictate, if there ever will be a market for what we can produce. And i too trap for fun no matter what the price. But politically to keep being able to do what we do there needs to be a dollar value to our activities. Ask any fur farmer, we have a few as neighbors that were until this year, and they'll explain the current world fur market.

And back In the day the buyers met the trappers as they came out of the Horicon Marsh and bought them on the spot.

In this market the only real value is increased size. So in normal years one would catch a higher percentage of smaller or younger rats earlier in the season and thus one's average would reflect more say large or xl rats instead of 2xl rats. If you have a trapper you know who ships fur there are many more grades and sizes and thus you can note the difference between the sizes and grades. For my last several seasons of selling, size differences have been 2 to 3x times the grade difference. I trap several areas late on the ice as that is the only way one can trap in those areas.

Bryce

These days size trumps grade, you'll get more for your rats by waiting later in the season and letting the smaller ones grow up.

Yes those late caught march rats are the best of the best BUT we here In WI don't have a true spring season. So those late caught rats may be of better quality but your access may be limited and the number s may be less do to access to that population.
So maybe 400 semi prime rats caught during open water conditions may bring you more money then 200 top of the line rats.
I do all my ADC rat trapping after our rat season ends and It's during open water conditions and those rats are the cream of the crop.

When muskrats are in demand good winter rats bring substantially more than thin furred fall rats. Unfortunately wild fur has been pushed, mainly to the Chinese, as a cheap alternative to ranch fur instead of marketing high quality wild fur as something special.

I'm not speculating there will even be a fur market this year. If trapping heavy, I'd make sure I had plenty of freezer space on hand.

Location has a lot to do with rat quality. Most of my end of Oct rats go right in the winter rat pile.

The last two seasons I have been surprised by the number of smaller rats we were catching in December-February compared to 3-4 seasons ago. I don't know if with all the flooding we had the last two years if most of the early litter rats were lost or the rats actually had more later season litters. It was not due to food shortages in my opinion.
During the very high priced year or two for rats I averaged a tad over $12.50 net of sale with the very best rats going for $19.50 gross. Back then there was about 2-3 dollars for each grade and size.

Bryce

$12.50 net $19.50 gross for one rat ????
I would like to see how you came up with those numbers.

Expensive trapping Beav

Guessing he means average with a top of 19.50.

Sounds like rats well have a market for them but cheap, was posted, always seem be demand for them but not much in price, I thinking coon well be bought to , but very low price, auction safe to ship to , without fear them go bankrupt ? They could sell someday, better sit in freezer

You would be better off spending your time fishing and hunting this fall Instead of trapping. You can eat those fish and the critters you hunt but you can't eat rat and coon hides.
I'm going to spend my time In the boat and In my deer stand.

$12.50 net $19.50 gross for one rat ????
I would like to see how you came up with those numbers.
Sorry for the confusion my average on a couple hundred plus was $12.50 net of commissions. My top few rats were $19.50 gross. That year 150 plus of the rats were caught in open water.

Bryce