Thanks for that insider info wissmiss, i had several different place's i sent different stuff, figured each had some sort of niche market as they paid more than anyone else on certain items, why i never liked the NAFA approach, don't like having all my egg's in one basket.

Exactly-that is why we are at where we are with commercial species.

Jtrapper, I used to watch Goldberg's buyers at the buying stations going through my stacks of nutria. They measured the size and then put them into piles of 36", 30', 26" etc. Measurements were taken on the belly from lower lip to bung (we used to laugh at the poor sobs that didn't leave the lower lip on because they always lost 2" per pelt). Then they would grade the belly for holes. Backs weren't even looked at. Also fur was not looked at, or the color of the leather. That is how southern goods sometimes got mixed in with PNW nutria.

Back in those days I occasionally caught shiny pure black nutria. Didn't help your price one bit. Even though we tried to argue the point. LOL

Back in "the old days" wild fur was graded much more precise and exacting, HBC had North America divided up into (19) different sections of beavers, things like heavy leather, frost scraped, different colors, textures and more accurate weights all came into play and allowed exact matching of skins, which also saved time with the manufacturing process. The Chinese have come to regard wildfur as a cheap alternative to the much better quality (in their eyes) Ranch fur. IMO quality wildfur needs to be marketed as something special, unique and better than ranch fur. Until that original grading process starts again wild fur may remain as nothing more than a cheap alternative.

Does anyone have the final prices for the sale. Did not send any thing to sale but donated a little so am curious.

Two years ago I caught 4 pure black Nutes. All in the same trap and run over five days. Blacks I skin tail and feet as I sell them as wall hangers. They are much more common then yellows or whites(not albino) but still pretty rare. We get quite a few that have really dark backs. I prefer those for my crafting because they are what ladies say pretty and women are 75 percent of my customers. The back on a nute is as important to me as the faces and tails on most other critters.

If you have a good craft market at your sales making sure the faces have good eyes, ears and some times bottom lips can add quite a bit to your fur check. Tails need to be split and fleshed well also. Tails without nail holes might add a little also. Not sure how easy or hard that might be as I do not trapper dry and stretch any thing I use. All are salt dried. No need to stretch.

Peeler alot of my nutes had to be put on otter boards, we get some monster sized one's down here. Leather is always jet black on all ive ever put up. No clue what anyone would use those wirey backs for, nastiest fur ever invented, lol.

No idea why you would skin the tails out either, same as a possum tail.

Just recently there is a tiny market for tail-on nutria so that guys can have wall hangers. The tail gives it more character for that purpose.

Belly fur is pretty nice on nutria at east from our section of nutria. Trapper, you ever catch any coal black nutria in your country? Ours are almost silky. Haven't caught one in over a decade. Used to catch several every year.

Never seen a black one, all of our's are ground hog gold color, lol.

I still don't get the tail deal, even for a wall hanger.

It used to be that they sold breeding pairs of nutrias of just about any color phase you wanted, just like ranch mink. Most of them are all mutts now but I have seen the occasional silver, gold, black and white. Even a few kind of reddish ones.

All the color variations come from recessive genes. The more natural color is the dominant gene. When they were pen raised they were bred for the recessive colors. When they were released or escaped the dominant Gene's took over. Super rare for those recessive Gene's to get together anymore.

The Nutes we have here are also decendents of cross breeding 3 or 4 different subspecies of South American Nutes. The southern Nute if I remember right is from a single subspecies. The southern climate tends to do to Nutes like it does all critters there and makes for thinner under coats.

I got a tanned white one a friend got me, until then it was the only one id ever seen. Never knew they did a breeding program on them nasty things like they did mink to produce different colors, learn something new everyday but sadly i forget 3 things everyday so it never does me much good, lol

The K. Falls sales results are now posted on their website: oregon territorial council on furs

The only nutria and beavers that didn't sell were the ones I took home. LOL
I also did about $4.50 a lb better than the sale avg on castor.

Thanks. Price on Eastern Bobcat seems very high?

Eastern bobcat = Eastern Oregon bobcats. Not eastern US nobcat.

The State of Oregon is divided in to 2 different bobcat regions. Because there is a distinct difference between the 2 types of cats when it comes to fur quality. There are also 2 sets of tags. East and west.

In order to fairly show cat prices, OTC uses 3 categories.

Bobcat - pelts from any state other than Oregon. Could be Idaho or Maine or Georgia. All lumped together.

Bobcat - Eastern. Pelts from Eastern Oregon. East of the Cascade Mountains. Heavy fur. Better color. More spots. Big money cats.

Bobcat - Western. Pelts from Western Oregon. West of the Cascade mountains. Ugly stepsister when it comes to quality. Reddish color. Casty bellies. Much cheaper prices.

That should explain bobcat prices on the sale report.

Thanks again.