.....

been hearing the same thing

I need to get some more beaver and tag out on otter sounds like. This big fish say anything about skunks? And how good are the 4-5x coons getting?

About skunks? They stink!

I'm hearing the same thing Cathryn. I've adjusted my prices accordingly. My lure prices were based on $50 a pound and this past year my profit margin took a big hit. I'm happy to see castor pricing where I can make a reasonable profit again. I'll take all the LA and AR castor I can get. Last year I purchased over 500 pounds of castor for my lures, and I hope to again this year.

thanks for posting

Haven't seen any state sales crack $50/lb for castor yet.

Could the price be dropping because the market is getting over saturated?

I'm like Paul. I use a lot of castor in my lures also because castor attracts a lot of critters. As a producer of lures, I hope the price plummets to help our margins, which had taken a BIG hit. I bought 10 x 60 lb pails last year at just under $60/lb and for those who think lure making is the way to easy street, I smile every time I walk past that castor (at the price of a new truck) and think dang son!

Blessings!
Mark

I wonder what's the deal with AR and LA castor?

Thanks

Thanks

Castor from the south has a different odor than that of northern castor. It's very noticeable. AR and LA castor smells the same as castor from GA, AL, SC, east Texas, NC, VA and western TN. It's because of the food they're eating.

I have to wonder what Pakistan does with it. Maybe I don't want to know!

Hmmm..apparently it's used to boost or enhance the flavor of food!
Savell????????
Nessy?????

Stabilize but Not Plummet

Castor the past few years helps a lot of Small trappers cover Gas money.


And the Average trapper here could never buy 10/ 60# pails even at $40.

The last fur harvesters sale last year they struggled to move anything but the #1 castor.

Writing was on the wall that there were going to be issues this year!

The unfortunate thing is that castor has been one of the few shining stars for trappers the past few years.
It was coyotes and castor.
Then it was just castor.
Beaver prices have risen a bit, only to see castor prices go down so price per beaver is going to stay about the same.
If I wasn’t getting paid to catch’em, I wouldn’t lol.
My castor will stay in the freezer.

I wonder how much of the issue is the speculation that there will be large spring beaver catch in that upper mid-west beaver belt. And will that actually come to fruition without the carrot of high castor prices?

Beaver pelts are going up ..even the by the pound beaver..the castor isn't.

The problem with skunks is that all the skunks sold at the last FH sale were bought by the same guy...a furrier here on Tman because he needed them at the time..that's why he paid like a 23 dollar Ave for them. The guy that bought them..we know..he buys some of Jerry fur..that's how we know what happened with the skunks.


They're still in demand but I'd say 15 or so would probably be it on the big ones..is what we are hearing.

If you got a good clear.coon a 4 to 5 x is good..if theyre like ours..They're not worth much..even if they are big.

He said they used the castor for.food flavorings ect

Koisoi from Siberia who is on here told me recently that their castor market remains stable compared to a year ago. At that time he reported castor selling into the local homeopathic-medicinal trade at over $200 a lb in US dollars.

I like the sound of the cat market improving.
My body is aging and forcing me to slow down. I let myself get fat. Again. I am correcting that now. Plan to catch a few next season.

....

Speculation drives prices more often than not

Up! and DOWN!

And All around

At the Iowa sale castor avg. 44.16 a pound I bought most of it. Skunks avg.15.50 finished 11.05 green. I will be happy to buy castor at 45.00 a pound at this time.

In Pakistan at least some of it is being used as Oriental Medicine: https://www.dawn.com/news/1203762

Hakeem Haji Gulfaraz sits behind the counter at Islamabad’s oldest ‘Pansar’ shop, Murree Kiryana, in Aabpara Market. Behind him is a wall lined with hundreds of drawers, each labelled with a strange new name and containing a type of herb, root, raisin, berry or seed.

The request to see what his drawers contain gets Hakeem Gulfaraz excited.

“The curiosities in here won’t disappoint you,” he said, taking out a large plastic container from one of the drawers.

Inside the container are five or six lizard corpses. “This is a sandfish, found in the desserts of Arabia, it’s crushed to make a paste which increases libido and improves the functioning of the nervous system,” he said.

He takes out other samples, each with an interesting new chemical property. There is the snake-root, locally known as Chota Chandan, a root with psychotropic and sedative properties. It is used to treat high blood pressure, mania and even schizophrenia.


Another unappetising sample pulled out by the hakeem is Castoreum, locally called Jund-e-Badastar. It is collected from the castor sacs of an adult beaver. Castoreum has a calming effect and is used to treat anxiety, fever, hysteria, insomnia and menstrual disorders.

Oddly enough catching beaver causes anxiety, fever, hysteria, insomnia and menstrual disorders!

Are you implying there is an inverse relation between the price of a beaver pelt and the price of castor?

..

LOL!

The kind of luck I have been having beaver trapping lately, I believe I may have just started with my "monthly visitor". Its just spotting though. It might just be from all of the wait-a-minute vines I had to trudge through. I'm too old and fat to bend and twist to get a good look at where its coming from.
The cramping I've been getting may just be from the gas station food I'm forced to eat on the road.

Well, now that we know men can have babies, there's some catching up to do on these processes.

If I were to guess, it’d be making perfumes and fragrances

...

castor has been a food additive for a long time.

It is a shame to see it tank, but I remember when we didn't even remove it other than what we needed for our own lure. Might have just been a lack of a local market. I would be interested in knowing what the value of castor was in 1980. It may be an item that has stood up to inflation better than most other items, even at $50

Sounds to me like you are dealing with Carlsons Fur from Jacobson.

I sold 11 lbs of caster to Pacific Hide and Fur in Gt Falls MT in 1980 for $30 a pound. I fleshed and stretched the beaver for $5 each the caster was from. The guy that caught them did not save the caster, so I said he had a pile of dead beaver to get rid of, and ask what he did with the carcasses. He said he threw them in the Vaughn dump. He no more than left and I was headed for the Vaughn dump to get the caster. Between fleshing and caster I made as much as he did on his beaver.

$30 in 1980 comes out to $116 today using an inflation calculator. Not sure if that tells the whole story, or how accurate the inflation calculator is, but sounds like $30 in 1980 may have been a better deal.

Shipping charges moving it to market.

You shouldn't laugh!
I'm ready to buy your castor for $70.

I know that I will make more than 100%

KOSOI, are Russian trappers targeting beaver again or are populations not stable enough yet?

The beaver population is more than stable.

And in the USA for a long time

Sounds like the 2023/24 season will be a good one for me to put the hammer down on some nice NV bobcats

Why dont they pass the costs of doing buisness to the end user instead of to the producer?
That is what most buisnesses do.
I will sell mine locally for a little less than last year instead of letting some middle man make a large profit from my work.

If you are referring to the auction house as the middle man they are sitting on last years catch and no buyers for it?

No,I was referring to your post about the cost of shipping castor overseas is a reason the price the producer gets is lower.
Maybe I read your post wrong?Usually when the cost of buisness by a manufacturer increases the cost is passed on to the retailer,(and thus to those that buy the products that the castoreum winds up in),not the producer.
I always sell my castor private,either directly to a buyer(middleman) for cash and also to local medicinal buyers.
The local market is limited,but I believe with a bit of networking I can expand that market.

Castor is something I try to follow closely, starting last June the end buyers who carry the market stopped buying.

The shipping charges have made the moving of the goods beyond what the end market can absorb so they have walked away from the market.

These are the folks who buy tons not pounds.

The lure makers will be happy.

As of the first of the year nobody is buying privately in Ontario anymore.

They have started telling the guys to leave in the freezer for now.

That is what I am doing,but should be able to move some into the native medicinal market this spring and summer for around $8 an oz.

Google Jund-e-Badastar and you'll find that it sells for 1.49 LAKH per KILO. (one) LAKH is the equivalent of $1,397.00 USD. so a kilo of beaver castor is worth retail approx. $2081. This is in Indian currency. I found that at Indiamart if anyone is interested.

Wow. Hope this doesn't get out. The antis will be calling castor the 'new bear gall bladders' and try to get it shut down!

It won't ever sell for a fraction of that here, but you could be right.

In my Oregon Game Commission reports from the 1950 shows they were auctioning off both beaver pelts and castor. Beaver pelts averaged $22 (Seattle Fur Exchange) and castor $4.75
SO in today's dollars those beaver averaged around $271 and the castor $58

It could be the same as the logger that hauls the Cherry tree out of the woods with a lot of hard work and sells the log for a tiny fraction of what the cabinet maker gets for custom made kitchen cabinets.

The cost of international shipping is back at/below pre Covid levels

Just say’in

I sold mine to gfw for $60 a pound on Jan 7. I was happy with that.

Easier to buy it cheaper from the producer. It wouldn't be, if the producer figured he wasn't making money and wouldn't produce. That will never happen. Somehow end users get thousands of deer hides and the producers lose money on almost every hide.

Castoreum keeps very well in the freezer.

PAKISTANS economy is in the dumpster and their government has cut way back on imports to try and slow inflation so far it's not working.

^^^That appears to be dead on right. I was just reading a business report from yesterday stating that thousands of containers of foods and merchandise (and maybe castor) are held up at the Karachi airport in the throes of a foreign money exchange crisis.

Apparently Pakistan has failed to perform and live up their promises with the IMF and the country is doing everything they can to stem the outward flow of US dollars.

I don't see a quick cure for this.

But Pakistan made such great knives, lol.

It's not just Pakistan not buying.

So if they are still consuming castor and can't get it into the country, does that mean demand is somehow building? What about other countries? Boco may be right about freezing it this year!

That's the best case scenario. Worst case is they get used to nit having it. Mediocre case is that' they turn to an alternative and demand is reduced when castor can get back into the market.