This is my president report from January. I do one of these for three national magazines every month. Thought y’all would be interested in it.
Greetings from Idaho,
Just got back from testifying at the legislature on our changes to the trap bait bill. With the help of the Idaho Sportsmen group and our lobbyist Benn Brocksome we hope this bill gets passed in next few days. In summary it will allow trappers to use inedible portions of game animals as bait as well as road killed deer/elk. This will be legal for predators, fur bearers and wolves. The 30-foot setback from exposed bait rule that has always been in place was not changed. This has been two years in the making and a ton of behind the scenes work from the ITA. It is very satisfying to see this finally pass. After testifying at the statehouse, I went to Nampa to testify on more wolf trapping/snaring changes at the fish and game commission meeting. The Idaho Trappers Association has many functions, but I feel changing trapping laws and protecting trapping are the most important things we do. Please let us know game laws that you would like us to look into.
I will give you a short breakdown on the fur sale because we are limited on space. I thought with the economy the way it is around the world the fur sold great. We had 17 buyers including the craft buyers. We had some eastern coyotes that brought the average down some but not a lot. My personal big batch of coyotes averaged $63 which I thought was ok. They included my early Oct coyotes. I know it was down a bunch from last January but $51 average on over 3,000 coyotes isn't bad at all, especially with eastern coyotes mixed in. It was not a great selection of bobcats so I think the average will be slightly better on bobcats in March. Red fox, otter, beaver, mink, horns, porky hair all sold extremely well due to craft buyers. The trap demos across 3 days were excellent and well received. The fish and game tagging bobcats and otter was much appreciated and our furbearer biologist Cory Mosby did a fantastic presentation. I want to thank our army of volunteers and staff. Rob Ryan, Bernie, Michelle, mom, dad, our ITA board, Hayden, Jared W., Dustin, Carlee, Clayton, RP, JD, Degmen, and too many more too list. We had more help than ever, and it made it a pleasant sale. It especially warmed my heart to see the Oregon and Nevada guys helping pack fur and helped do demos for us. My girlfriend Missy cooked huge meals for our staff both nights which was amazing. Our next sale is March 11-14th and will be the exact same format as January. If you have questions, please contact me. I have a feeling we will have even more fur than January which is great, I love meeting new trappers and seeing all the fur come in. I am planning on having it as a mini convention again so come on over even if you don't have fur to catch the demos, tailgaters, meetings, presentations, and all-around BS sessions going on. Here is the shortened version of the fur sale results. I took out skulls, traps, tanned fur and misc items for sake of space.