Keepem coming fellas. Thoroughly enjoy the stories

LOT'S of people became "trappers" when prices got that high. Plenty of competition out there along with theft like has been mentioned. I can remember selling red fox for $65-$80 bucks and my best buck mink went for $54 but $30-$35 was common . Coon were $35-$40 for good ones for a while. Rats $6-$8 bucks was common. Gas prices low, profits high. I worked while going to college skinning rats for a nickel each which in actuality was paid a buck an hour which was the going rate for odd jobs back then. There were a lot of fur buyers everywhere also which made selling furs easy.
I remember walking out the door one night and hearing a scuffle up the tree by my pile of rat carcasses and when I looked up there were 4 coon that I had disturbed in the tree. They quickly were turned into $120.00. The good old days!

I took my first lot to Ezra Vincent in Chippewa Falls, I walked down into his basement with my fur set in on the workbench, closed the door and this beautiful black fur was hanging there. I flipped it up and asked Ezra what it was. He says "house cat" paying six dollars apiece for them, Bring all you catch". Same price as rats and was catching some in coon sets so made a few extra bucks rather than using them for bait.

One of the things I learned from Charlie Dobbins was to keep a note book Record what you caught what type of set ,lure , ,trap was use at each set . An as you had time put you info in an organized manner I started trapping in the 60,s and did not start my notebook until about 1980 .I do have some general info from prior years but started with more detail in the 1980,s I can look back and tell you what I caught ,where etc I also have some notes about supplies I purchased and prices I received for my finished pelts It is just a 3 ring binder with basis notes .Nothing fancy and not real detailed or time consuming to keep track of But now 50 plus years later a gold mine to me as far as remembering my journey as a trapper .Charlie Dobbins often said let the animal show you what it is doing . Keeping a notebook is a big help to becoming a knowledgeable trapper .

Bought a new GMC pickup truck with fur money in 1980

There were 8 fur buyers in the small town 25 south of where I grew up. There was a local bar owner who said he would pay $25 for any coon. I loaded about 30 dinks, roadkills and blues and he bought them. He never came back for seconds!

Sent some silver tipped coon to agent Jim Metsler in West Burlington Ia. to be forwarded to North Bay auction in Canada. This was in late 70's I believe. one brought $90 and another in the $80 range. Could not believe it then and still don't today. What would that be in todays $. $150-$200?

Another thing I just remembered Trapping as a kid and teenager taught me about responsibility .Traps that I put out must be checked each day. Not when I decided i could While in the later years my friends where partying I understood that my alarm was set to go off early in the morning So hunting and trapping was more important than partying with friends .

I wasted a lot of the fur boom by going to college classes! Still, could fill up a 20 gallon gas tank on my dodge for what I averaged on one nutria. Nutria are what I targeted as they were somewhat plentiful. You had a hard time finding any farm with river or slough frontage that didn't already have someone trapping it. For our crummy Willamette valley coons I was averaging $20-$25 which was dang good money.

70's-80's not many coyotes east of I-35. Easterners flocked to the west for high dollar coyotes and cats. Camps all over, for months at a time. Most trappers had the same location and set mentality, so if you saw a good-looking spot chance was everyone else thought the same. Lot of 2 track intersections, saddles etc. with 2-5 guys setting dirt holes in a 100' circle. Just like bridges for coon.

The 70's was an interesting time in trapping.Besides the good fur prices,it was also a time when trappers here were perfecting the new more efficient methods of harvesting fur.

Something no one has mentioned is the quality, or lack thereof, of a lot of the fur handling. There were a lot of the local fur buyers who would buy in the round, but if you wanted to shop them around much you needed to put them up, and a premium was always paid for well put up furs. Of course every Tom, Dick and Harry who managed to come up with a beaver and a couple coon had heard what the old guy two ridges over, who had been putting up his fur for sixty years, got for his best super blanket beaver and his top coon. They then thought the fur buyer who was offering them a quarter of that for their carcass goods was ripping them off. So they would throw them back in the back of their truck and take them home and skin and stretch them in a couple days.

Go to a local fur auction, or even go by the local fur buyer and peruse what he allowed you to. There was A LOT of horribly put up fur, guys who didn't have a clue what they were doing but had heard of the high fur prices, hacked off hides with holes in them, slipped, grease burned, and totally unfleshed, stretched on all sorts of stretchers in a variety of dimensions.

There were also some really, really good fur handlers. And the money to be had made it worth their time to really do their best and if you were lucky enough to be around one of them it was amazing to see what they started with and compare that to what went on the selling block. I've seen them take multiple damaged (what most would consider destroyed) animals and skin them out, piece them together and make one nice hide. . . heck I've done it myself a few times. I learned from a couple of those good fur handlers that polished their skills in the 70's and early 80's boom years. If you have an "unsalvageable" skin off any sort of valuable animal, it went in the freezer, because they might need it for parts sometime.

And you learned how fur buyers were worse than used car salesmen, you learned how to dicker. It became almost a game with some, but a game where you could lose or gain some serious money. There was a local fur buyer who would go through your furs and always pick out one or two and flip them to the side, "If they were all just like this one," he would say and offer you a real high price for those one or two furs and then a much lower price for everything else. He was of course figuring the averages in his head and generally paying a little less than other fur buyers on average, but those "one or two" high dollar furs out of every lot sure bought him a lot of furs, and the trappers would go home and brag about their high dollar cat, coon, or otter and what they got for the rest of them was forgotten or never mentioned. I remember as a kid one year my dad pulling one over on him. He took all his furs in to him and as usual the buyer picked out a couple and offered a real high price for them. Dad sold him those he had offered the high price for and picked up the rest and took them home with him. Then he had grandpa take the same furs by there, and then my mother (who the fur buyer didn't know), and then a couple of friends. All told those same hides were taken to the fur buyer either four or five times, and every time there was one or two that, "if they were all just like this one," and were worth the high dollars. I don't remember if he ended up buying the whole batch eventually or if dad sold the leftovers to another buyer, but I know he bought about five times as many high dollar cats out of that years batch of furs.

Coongrease Solo was what they called him when he was buying fur in Fort Collins Colorado. Walk into that shop and there might be a pile of shot green belly coyotes and a skinner with a can of raid for the fleas. Now John Solo is an antique furniture appraiser on Antique Roadshow.

Bucky Fur Buyer in Pinedale WY - You Ketchum We Stretchum. That was his motto.

Old Liebsohn and Aldana fur barn in Idaho Falls was right across the street from McDonalds. We'd go in there to sell fur once in a while from Jackson. One time he took a rat pelt and smacked it on his table. A few fur beetles fell out. Education for us kids. Wasn't too long and that fur barn was bulldozed and a Burger King went up.

Boco you are right that period of time got a lot of people started in trapping and putting up fur .It did not always go well But for those that wanted to learn the art of trapping and also fur put up it was a whole lot more information available on how to do it .It was also a time of innovation on methods and gear .For several years I used an oversize kitchen spoon to scrape coon hides Life made a turn for the better when I got a good fleshing knife .Many of the improvements on traps such as swivels and other trap modifications made for better catches and better animal friendly traps . It had its bad side with the trap thieves etc But it was a great way to spend time outdoors doing something that was so rewarding beyond the money made

That was me! Sometimes I was a lil blurry of a morning but my passion kept me going.

bearcat2 we had several traveling buyers and while standing in line I saw some of that sorry fur handling. Some would show up with rotten rough skinned fur that was way past any use.

Bodycount I used to sell to Jim Messler back in the day as well as Meshmen in West point. There was another from Missouri that was a big buyer as well. It didn't take long to find out which buyer to sell coon to as well as the one that wanted canine. Beaver you were better off shipping by far and most times you did better if finished and dried. I was young and didn't want to wait as I was always broke and needed the gas money to continue on.

Back then I had no mentors to show me how to put up fur and anyone who was good at it was tight lipped about how to go about it. I learned how to put up rats and eventually coon and fox. Times have changed and what once was held as a secret is now common knowledge.

Yes I am not saying I never was moving slow when the alarm went off but it kept me doing things that where positive instead of getting into things that where not in my best long term good .Growing up on a farm with chores to do even at a very young age never left me with much idle time on my hands And I learned from the very start that if you wanted something you had to work for it .Far to many people today have to much time that ends up gett9ing them making poor choices

Back then trapping was money and enough money too affect how u live. Today is just recreation to a lot of us. Would be difficult to adjust to the change. I've only been at it for less than ten years so I'm use to little money in it. Even $50 coyotes, which I thought was great, doesn't even compare to the late 70s/early 80s. Only reason $50 coyotes could be profitable is because there's so many of them and not any real competition like back then.

AH THE 70’s INTERIOR ALASKA TRAPPING!

It was pre pipeline. Winter Construction work hadn’t been perfected yet so trapping was way of supplementing income. My drivers license indicates how many licenses had been issued so I was 317,000th getting a license so that’s not a lot of people in this large state! Few trappers!

Areas to trap were many all you had to do was pick a spot and start cutting. There were road trappers but a lot of roads were closed.

Winters were a lot colder then now. It was not unusual to have -50f for weeks at a time 2 to 5 times a winter.

The snow machines were basic. In my case I started with a 1969 Olympic. Moved to Elans and owned everything in between. What would take hours to travel 30 miles and run out of gas in front of the cabin now takes 1-1/2 hours and a sip of gas.

Alaska Trappers Association was being formed and trappers were beginning to share means, methods forming bonds that were previously solitary.

Traps, snares were basic. There wasn’t all the new fancy equipment there is today. Trappers were making money on fur not on new ideas for a profit! You could carry a days collection of snares and traps on an Elan and a weld-a-sled. Perfecting hiding the snare, trap is more important than anything becoming successful IMO!

I don’t remember much about fur price except it helped keep our family in extra money. Gas was a lot less. In the 80’s I will never forget getting 600$ for a Lynx, lots of 400 and 500$ ones also!

Last trip for this trapper was 2016 due to health issues. I don’t want to put my inability on someone’s ability!

Thanks for reading.