I've never seen a southern US beaver without underfur. That is very unusual that the northern beaver lose it like that. Our beaver's fur is never thick and hefty even in winter. The underfur remains mostly intact, but the guard hairs do start looking ratty, usually on flanks and lower back.

For sure. I'll take some closeup pics of June underfur tommorrow and post on here.

What Boco is saying is no underfur is probably what us southerners think is good underfur....lol

Pull up the flowage to fashon clip off utube it is called "what buyers want"and go to the 8 min and 30 sec mark.
It explains what the buyers want for making felt.There is a guy talking on there from the felting industry and Phil Patterson the beaver grader.
I dont know how to do the link but maybe someone can.

And you are taking this advise as gospel from a company who is no more and duped 1000’s of trappers out of their fur/$$$ !

Kelly more objectively got nothing to do with how NAFA graded fur. They did not handle money well was the problem.

They made bad loans to mink ranchers. Well, the mink ranchers who controlled NAFA made bad loans to mink ranchers.

Yes,Phil Patterson is likely the best beaver grader in the world.
And the felter he is speaking with is one of only two in north america at the time.
There are now many new players in the beaver felt market in other countries currently.

Those are some great how to videos. Anyone who hasn't watched them should.

Went to pick up the traps today,as expected,no beaver left there.
I unplugged the culvert and returned the water to natural flow.
Breaking a beaver dam by hand is pretty easy if you go about it in the right way.
First,remove all the long sticks in the order that the beaver piled them on the downstream side.This is important if you want the water to completely clear the culvert and to make your job easier.
Once all the sticks are removed and thrown behind you in a loose pile,take a little off the top to get a bit of a current going on the downstream side-this will help you push all the loose sticks out the lower end of the culvert.
Watch for any movement of the plug,or you might have to swim out the end,lol.It happens occasionally with big culverts holding back lots of water.
This one started to move a little so I got out after pushing out the loose stick.
I then put the canoe in upstream (since the water was well over my hipwaders) to work out of.
A couple of pulls at the bottom of the plug on the upstream side and thewhole thing washed thru.
If you work smart the water will do most of the work for you.

There is a guy that lives on the backroad that fixes up old cars.
Had to stop and take a pic of his nice Gran Torino

Looks pretty slick!
The car too

That task is a little more risky down here. I'd got struck at at least once...maybe even bit by a cottonmouth pulling sticks out. We do the culvert unplugging with a straight tree/log/pole and an excavator. I usually stand back and watch what comes out the other end...lol

They'd also been widow spiders and wasp nests inside that pipe.

A good beaver man takes care of it here a bit cheaper than an excavator.
We aint sceerd of a few little spiders and snakes.
You sound like the little girl from that old Jerry reed song,lol.

Hydro company here is the only client that wont pay to have the dams removed by the trapper.
They did at first but then their union stepped in and said it was their job to remove dams and wouldnt let them contract it out.

Sounds like he’s calling you a sissy Swamp Wolf

I think so.

Boco's methods won't work too good down here but I can't get him to admit it.

I couldn't even get him to admit that these summer southern beaver have decent value in the hatter market. A guy on a 10 year old video pulls more weight than me...lol

Just get your little buddy Savell to go ahead of you and bite the heads off the snakes for you,lol.

Lol…I’ll bet that the guys doing it are thinking otherwise. We just started to get our contracted meter readers to start doing disconnect/non-payments on Thursday…..contractors can have that job, and it’s not going very well

He would probably do it. Us Southerners are a bit more gritty than most.

What I'd really like to see is a "good beaver man", like yourself, trapping beavers and removing dams here in the deep Southern US. I may learn something.