The Tundra R could handle it but it is staying at home in the pole barn where it belongs. I don't hate critters bad enough to run a snow machine line this year.

Me Too

I measured just a whisker under 18 inches this afternoon. The 15.5 was at 0800 this morning. I already have snow piles 8 feet tall. This is nuts.

Looks like we might need a machete and a long pole to work through the hanging brush!
Seriously considering keeping the ticker in one piece this weekend.

I just hope these 3 young boys we are taking this weekend break good trail for me.

Now you know the best part of taking a couple young guys with me! This year it will be great that one of them is much taller than I am, I hate snow down the neck!

Tell us more wise one.

But will your short legs be able to keep stride in his snow-shoe path

Can you give a short Prayer Friar

and not the "piter-patter-lets get at er " in the opening morning

I hope you Minnesota boys have fun chasing those marten and maybe some fisher. Its will be nice and nippy up there this weekend.

I think I've asked this before in other places but what makes sable that much more desirable than mink? I mean marten are basically somewhat larger tree mink with pointed ears. Mink have pretty silky fur but sable must be even multiple grades silkier and finer than mink..? I know Boco does magnificent job handling fur but those pale, yellowish marten hides photos he posted do nothing for me. Then again, I'm not a broad wearing a fur garment.

If I lived in marten territory, I'm sure I'd go after them but being multiple hundreds of miles away from such ground, I don't see the appeal except they tend to be per square inch (or centimeter) probably the highest paying fur. I guess that's reason enough...

Mink is streetwear, it's pretty, practical and durable. I see dozens of mink coats every day, of all sorts (long, short, classic vs trendy models, dyed, plucked, ....). Sable trim on collars/sleeves/hoods is rare and it's usually American marten marketed as "sable" in combination with expensive European farmed mink. I've only seen sable coats a few times in real life, as people who own them don't wear them for practical purposes and generally don't even live where you need a fur coat. These coats are often designed with open collars and short 3/4 sleeves that cannot even possibly keep you warm. Yet every politician's wife/girlfriend you see on TV has a sable coat (or several). I don't know about other countries, but here, sable is just a way to parade your money.

Thanks Tatiana!

Prestige and having almost "unattainable" things (for the average person) brings on its own unique demand. I'm sure if marten could appreciate things such as a human, such as irony, they would be laughing their silky little butts off ...

Very good sum up Tatiana especially " to parade your money"
some of your catches of this type of animal have been nice to have seen.

That's the answer. Marten are not challenging to catch. Access and travel will beat you up. They gotta pay for the pain.

There are a few reasons sable/marten is attractive as a garment.
Number 1 it is very lightweight when made into a full garment.
Number 2 it is one of the only furs that can be worn in warmer climates and is comfortable,and is also very warm to wear in cold climates.
Number 3 the character of the pelts lends itself to unique design in the hands of a master designer for both full garment and as a trim item for other garments.One of the reasons is that Marten/sable is considered neither a short hair fur nor a long hair fur,but it can also be used as both depending on weight of the different grades in the marten collection.
Semis are used for garments and heavys for trim.
The other attractive attribute of Marten/Sable is the range of colours in the clearer grades,which dont need to be dyed.There are 8 colour grades in marten ranging from near black to near white and everything in between.Where I am we catch the whole range of colours including the odd canary which are the least common colour by far.
Off clarities can be dyed or tipped.

Here, almost all lighter colors are usually dyed/shaded nowadays for local production or for sale in ready-to-sew bundles (i.e. bypassing the auctions). The most favorite shades seem to be tortora and graphite. This trend has actually increased the demand for bigger, paler colored sable typical for the western part of the sable range, both at the auctions and from local buyers/furriers. There are coats from pale sable but since a part of the sable color range overlaps with the cheaper, coarser European pine marten, these colors aren't really popular.

Among the pale sable, the least reddish ones are the most valuable for dyeing/shading, since they are less likely to produce unwanted greenish hues during shading, and can be shaded lightly, thus retaining the natural dorsal stripe.

Just a couple of pictures from our local tannery, local fur dealers who buy fur from trappers all over Central Siberia sorting a batch of sable with into piles for dyeing and shading. You can see there's a more reddish pile in the back.


This is dyed (the darker bundles) and shaded (the bundle in the front) sable, originally of the colors 5-7 (don't mind the squirrel and the radioactive mink in the back).


Just thought you could find it interesting, in this context.

I didn't know mink came in those radioactive tones

I sure love my marten hat, from several lovely different coloured individuals caught in SE AK. It is warm and looks great.

Wow!! Are the grayish-to-almost black ones the "graphite" color? If so, I can see why people like it!

The grey marten we catch here do not grade too well.
I imagine they are dyed adding cost to the production chain thus the lesser price paid.
The extra dark and the pales and the browns are most often used natural,as long as they are clear(1-2) skins.
Red hips also not a good grade and also are dyed.

Thank you for bring some inside tanner pictures Tatiana and Happy St Nicholas Day tomorrow
quite a bit of it is guarded for the secrets and pictures are not allowed over here

Boco is the last couple of years the dye process as changed and those lesser value command way more than the XXD so cost is not a factor anymore.

The color scheme payout that Boco mentioned is still the same, however the darks fell down near the pale prices. Pales didn't climb.