If we could ever get enough nutria harvested and put up I wonder if the hatter market would look favorably on them? Current market seems to be between 2-3 bucks which won't get it done. Take two to three times that to get anybody to board them I think. I catch a few dozen every year in my beaver sets but put up very few.

Speaking of the nutria market...in the beaver hatter thread some of the guys were complaining that those of us that continue to produce when prices are low are the problem.

Using the nutria market as an example I say "Petunias on that!" We used to average $10-14 on nutria in the late 70's early 80's. I think Washington and Oregon were producing around 30-50,000 pelts a year with HE Goldberg being the main buyer. When the market softened up I recall one of Oregon's biggest nutria harvesters saying we needed to stop producing and force them to pay up. Blaine used to harvest nutria in the thousands but hung up his traps for good.

Here we are 40 years later and probably (based on what I see at the association sales) only a few hundred are boarded every year and the price is abysmal.

When there isn't enough of something the manufacturers just move on to something different. No biggie.

I think the hatters need the beaver for marketing purposes. Even when very little beaver is in the hat they call them beaver hats. The more beaver means higher priced hats.

They don't need nutria.

I think you just posted the price of hatter beaver was up due to a shortage of supply?

Gotta be certified and Traceable if you want to charge big money for the "real deal"
Them Cowboys wouldnt want to find out their $1000 hats are made from big 50cent swamp rats and not beaver.

I think form what I've heard that most of the felt used in these hats come from rabbits. Hemmoragic disease and war in Europe has disrupted the flow of rabbit fur into the market. I think that has forced the market to compete a little more for beaver, the king of felt. But nutria can be used for felt as well can they not?

If you want a real nice hat,get one made from marten or mink felt.Or maybe Otter or lynx felt.

Yes nutria can. I would suspect the price drop and drop in demand for nutria corresponded with the price drop in beaver.

"Petunias on that!"

I agree beaverpeeler

I think I see what you are saying. Since the hatters can get 60" beaver for 10 to 14 bucks they won't pay 10 to 14 for much smaller nutria. Them hatters are shrewd.

Back when nutria prices were good they were being plucked, sheared and made into jackets. BTW, In the latest FHA sale I was getting $17-$18 for my 60" gd dmg beaver.

I suspect shearable beaver were also being plucked and sheared and made into jackets and they were a buck an inch. The question was, did nutria track the price of beaver?



1X ( 60"beaver) dmg gd fha March $13.50 1X (60" beaver) dmg gd FHA June $16.50. You are getting 10 percent or so less so about $15 You're right! The last auction 60" beaver brought more than $14 to the trapper.

It seems like nutia and beaver would fit well into the high end, ground raw, pet food market, if sufficient numbers could be obtained and interest built. Some people pay absurd amounts of money for pet food.

Keith

Hi Keith. I lost good places to deer hunt because of leasers. So I roughly figured it would take 33 groundhogs to equal 1 deer in the freezer. It would take a bunch of nute's to make a dent in a commercial pet food operation.

I have noticed a lot lately that more and more consumable products have shifted to local goods. For example, yesterday I went to buy a few apples for soup and taters for a roast. The apples were from a local orchard and the taters were from a farm 10 miles from me. This store never had them before. My point is, for the nute, beaver etc trappers, they could maybe have a local niche pet food market for the critters they catch. Your right.

Nutria felt is a very high quality felt. It can be dyed any color. It has been used in hats since the demise of the beaver trade in the 18 hundreds.
Oregons west side produces the best nutria hides in the US.
From the 60s through the 90s one could catch them in big numbers. Not so much now. In those earlier years there were very few if any Coyote in the Willamette Valley. Now there are Coyote every where. Coyote have down sized the populations a lot. Some areas still have fair numbers other areas that used to have big numbers have next to none.
Example
300 acres south end of Albany Oregon. First trap year 444/ dog guys 137 /owner 35
Second trap year. 250 no dogs owner 4
After those two years I would get 75 too 100 for about 3 years. Number dropped to about 20 a year. Until I quit setting there due to lack of sign for nutes. Always check it but the one thing I see now is quite a bit of Coyote sign.

Doubt that even tryng we could produce even 10,000 now. Buyers only pay for large and up also. When we produced the numbers Peeler stated you could still get paid for small and medium. 30 to 40 percent of my catches are small and medium due to the fact Nutria have babies year round. Lot of wasted time for 2 bucks.

Carcass market would never happen here. Not Woke enough.

Jack

To get back to what Dirt and i have been dancing around with...my point is that I don't believe we trappers can control the market by refusing to produce for it. At least for the main manufacturers. Maybe the niche markets can be manipulated a little with supply and demand. The thing is; the big manufacturers will just move on to ranch fur or something else if there is not enough product showing up at auction to meet their needs.

That's the way I see things anyway.

Yea, look at how that worked for the coyote market. Shortly after CG said that was what they wanted the entire market dried up.

The trappers refused to participate and CG said screw you then-dummies.
Killed their own market.

BP supply affects price. Just look at castor. There used to be pattern I'd watch with beaver at auction. Early freeze up in the lower 48 meant less beaver on the Feb auction which resulted in increased prices. I tried to hit that in 2014 when the market collapsed. Bad timing.

Since these guys brought up CG, they could have switched to ranched fox , which would have been cheaper, but never did. They marketed coyote as the best thing since sliced bread and were stuck using them till they quit.

You would have thought CG would have just bought the coyotes from Canada trappers. Aren't you Canadian's all over that certified traceable fur?