Good lines and young trappers can produce 300 in a season,per line,some old guys can do half that,but dont forget all the other fur besides.No one here only traps one species.
For example when Paul Milette trapped 1013 beaver one winter he also trapped and put up 300+ marten 50+ otter 50+ lynx 20+ wolves and a bunch of other fur.I believe he trapped 4 registered lines close together.

I know when I trapped more back in the day,I would run 5 lines a week on a weekly check,and poor day would be $600 and a good day would be $1800.I took two days a week to skin.

Best daily catch from one line on a 10 day check I heard of here was 77 marten.The guy ran 10 day checks because he was trapping registered lines far apart from north of LK Huron to North of Hearst.
I'll put it another way,I'd sooner skin 10 marten than one coon.
When rats were 10 bucks lots of money could be made in certain areas(not here) because of concentrated numbers ease of skinning etc.
One to one a marten is better though,just as easy to skin as a rat and worth 10 times more.

Finncoon averaged $52 USD. at SAGA, not $5[/quote] my point was it had nothing to do with being certified those unsold mink were also certified!! supply and demand drives the market

"Despite recent growth, it’s become almost impossible to make a living solely on the trapline in the Canadian wilderness. That reality set in long ago for Henschell.

Gone are the days when someone like Ray's late father, Alex Henschell, could survive on fur sales.

Alex Henschell trapped into his 80s throughout the Whiteshell along the Manitoba-Ontario border, 120 kilometres east of Winnipeg, where Ray traps to this day. In one trapping season in the 1930s, Alex Henschell earned enough to buy a 65-hectare plot of land in River Hills, 100 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, where he built a home and started a family.

The going rate for an average beaver pelt in 1930 was about $25, which translates to roughly $350 with inflation in 2017. Alex trapped more than 100 beaver some years, among about two dozen other species.

Ray Henschell now makes barely enough to cover the cost of fuel he and Kotowich burn through on trapping trips. They trap marten, mink, muskrat and more, but the average beaver pelt went for less than $11 in Manitoba in 2015-16.

The younger Henschell recalls selling a single lynx fur for more than $800 (more than $3,000 today with inflation) in the 1970s. Lynx sold for an average $54 per pelt at the February 2017 North American Fur Auction, but Henschell didn't trap any lynx this year.

After subtracting the cost of gas for his snowmobile, ATV and truck, Henschell made $700 on furs in the 2016-17 trapping season."

I wouldnt totally agree with that,t costs very little to live off the land in the Canadian wilderness.Some gas,some propane and some basics is all you need.Fur can still pay for that.Not many people live full time in the Canadian wilderness anymore but do spend a good bit of time living there for recreational purposes.Lots of people today live high on the hog so trapping wont buy you a new truck every couple years like it did a few years ago.Got to get smarter marketing fur these days to keep the income up.
First step is learning how to grade fur.
In 1930 there were almost no beaver-I dont think you could even trap them until around 1940.

It's a small world when you compare trappers and how you know them . Mr Henschell works at the local waste management depo now. There was a sever wind sheer that went through his line and flattened most of it. It will take 40 more years to come back to production now. they have a substantiual water line with muskrats and was effected by hydro development after 1930. The drought this year the wild rice fields were dry, but the rats built huts in the mud- every 50 yards was a hut, but getting to them was impossiable.

Beaver were not in Manitoba till after 1960 and they were not allowed to trap them till 65

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/docproject...has-very-little-to-do-with-fur-1.4531508

the family own 3 different lines in the whiteshell provincial park

January routes are now posted on GFW page based on state

"But can you make a living?
Jane Dragon, a Chipewyan Elder living in Fort Smith, N.W.T., began trapping over 20 years ago with her husband as a way to be on the land and supplement their income. But doing it as a full-time job would have been impossible, she says, especially before the creation of the GMVF program.

“We were part-time trappers. He had a full-time job and so did I,” she says. “I think if we had had to live off it, it would never [have made] enough money to do it.”

When asked if the traditional economy in the N.W.T. could survive without the program, Rossouw hesitates before giving an emphatic “no.”

“I believe just the cost of shipping to market, especially out of regions like the Sahtu, they couldn’t do it,” he says.

Even in the record profit year of 2013, the average income per trapper was still only $3,759, in addition to the $951 of government support that each trapper received – not nearly enough to address the high costs of living in the North. Today, with a market lull, the average income per trapper is closer to $2,000."

Them indians want pop and chips from the NWco store.
You can live on the land easy enough as long as you live within your means.
Flying around all over the country for shopping trips costs a lot of money.

Ralph Bice's Father remembered the trappers coming out of the bush to Minden in the spring with their fur in the 1880's.If a trapper had one or two beaver it was really something.Ralphs father came out with 4 one spring.

They did have lots of mink marten and fisher.
beaver were just coming back here in the 1950's and highly regulated.
There was a black market for beaver pelts here at that time.Trappers would arrange to meet buyers from Quebec on the rivers to sell their illegal beaver back then.
I spoke with an old trapper in the old age home in Timmins back in the 90's, he told me how they would travel upriver from Kap and Hearst and trap,and nail their pelts to large poplar trees in the bush to dry,then pick them up on the way back out to meet the buyer.

NOT !!!!!

w

Thank you for posting more routes, GFW. I updated my calendar accordingly and will consider stopping in.

Thanks for the update, Northof50.

Someone had to bring this thread back to reality AJE

That's the truth for everyone. People waste money on processed food and garbage from China.

Boco remember a trapper fm Eagle River Wi trapping in the northern most areas of Mn for illegal bvr. He started out nailing pelts to big trees but black bears started ripping them off shredding them. Trapper went to willow hoops to stretch bvr and hung on wire or rope high in trees to keep bears from getting his pelts. Trapper also had private rondezvous with fur buyers when coming out of the woods at end of season to sell pelts.

There is a book out there I read many moons ago back in my museum collecting days, it's title was something like
" How to poach 101 ways in federal parks " it was written by some former officers that worked in the federal parks in the USA.
They got all the stories together and published it back in the 1950-60's