Hey guys got another newbie question for y’all. We caught a nice bobcat today and it skinned out real nice EXCEPT for I messed up and put a quarter sized(maybe even a hair bigger) hole right in his chest! 🤦‍♂️ How much of a downgrade do think this will be price wise? My teenage son is gonna sell the furs we get and the money is for him so I’m kinda aggravated at myself right now for not being more careful. How bad did I mess up the value?

Grab some dental floss and a needle and sow it up, if it's not to late.

Sew it shut shouldn’t be a problem

Just sew it up from the leather side before boarding.

When marketed fur out it hardly noticeable, you could sew it but I would just pin it- no worries

As said above: "sew it up". Do a neat job and their may be no deduction.

Thanks for the information guys I appreciate it! It’s rolled up in the freezer right now but I’ll take it out and sew up the hole from the flesh side with some dental floss. Thanks again!!

I just finished sewing it up with dental floss, looks great and you can’t even tell there was a hole there. Thanks yall!

Yes, sew it up. Take your time and do a good job and there will be no deductions. I use good strong thread myself. But I've done a lot of sewing on cats over the years.


A quarter sized hole is nothing. This one took me a couple hours, but it was my top cat a few years ago. Got me $950 and was third highest cat out of over seven hundred at the auction.

Stitch it up neatly. Most likely won’t be noticed by the buyer.

Use 15 lb test braided fishing line . Like said take your time

Nice sewing skills...What in tarnation happened? Is that typical dog damage?

jhp or ballistic tip would be my guess

That was a cat hounds killed and it took me over an hour to get there. No that is not typical dog damage, but I get a couple a decade that end up looking like that. Most of that wasn't actual holes, it was bald spots where the hair was pulled out that I had to trim out and then sew up.

I spent 8 hours one time on a big tom that had been fighting during breeding season, and almost five on another big tom that I figure was his opponent. They were both chewed and scratched up really bad, and then it had been a week or so, and they were infected around all the cuts, causing the hair to fall out within a quarter to half inch of each cut.

I don't know about most but trying to sew something that torn up for top dollar is akin to a buyer trying to give you bottom dollar for a dirty pelt thats worth more, there is no honor in either !

I won't try and hide sewing and really it's almost a lost cause if you are dealing with professional buyers who have been around for a while, you can make it look whole for sure but you are not going to fool any one with giant holes and miss-matched sides and backs.

Nickel and dime to quarter holes away from the bellies and backs are minor, but the rest you are just fooling your self.

I've been to many auctions myself and heard and seen buyers talk about such things it's not pleasant to listen to.

Whos says hes trying to 'fool' anyone or 'hide' anything'...? Hes trying to patch up a fur enough to make it marketable, even if its not going to bring top money. Theres nothing wrong with that and a buyer can decide to buy it, or not, and at what price...free market.

When I was a kid I had an old fur buyer tell me, "if you can fix it good enough I can't see it, it is worth what I pay for it." He said, "if I see any defects in a hide, I am going to decide if I can fix it, and how much time it is going to take me, what my time is worth, and add a little pad. That is how much I am going to deduct off the price. If you can fix it as good as I can, your time ought to be worth as much as mine."

I may be fooling myself, but I take pride in my work and do the best job I can on the furs. I've never met a buyer yet that will give you as much for a dirty pelt as they will for a pretty, cleaned up one. Partially because if you can't be bothered to even clean it, they have to wonder what else you couldn't be bothered to do. Is all the hair going to slip when they tan it because you couldn't be bothered to stretch it right away and dry it properly?
And if you have mismatched sides and backs you're either not fixing it right, or it is so bad you can't fix it right, in which case you just do the best you can.

If any of you bought fur to work with for you making dollars on your work, and found after tanning that you had only a quarter of what you paid for because it was stitched up to pass muster at a fur auction, you would be a different person talking about !

I get the small holes that are useable, I dock when buying fur thats been sewn up, or I don't buy it at all no matter how well the rest of it looks it's not worth the wait to find it has fallen apart during the tanning or worse just thrown out due to a total failure.

You might not like reading my opinion thats ok, you might read me wrong in even saying anything, but trying to pass off large stitched up areas as a whole well taken care of fur is plain wrong, the least one could do would be to keep them in a different lot and you get what any one wants to take a chance on them, yes there is usable fur if it makes it through the tanning, thats a big if !

I'm the end user of everything I buy or trap or hunt my self, its not like I just buy fur and pass it off to another and I'm done, people who do this that I deal with get a talking to about taking care of it, and if they don't like it, they don't need to sell to me
either, thats not a bother to me ! Why should I be the one to lose money on sewn up fur because it looks fine enough to sell by the owner ?

People seem to think that trapping and hunting is only learning the art of the set and catch or the shot, the other side is taking care of it after words, most times there is much more work involved in this process than the other !

"
People seem to think that trapping and hunting is only learning the art of the set and catch or the shot, the other side is taking care of it after words, most times there is much more work involved in this process than the other !"

Absolutely 100% agree with this statement. It is what we consider "taking care of" that we disagree with. If you aren't making your furs look as nice as possible and fixing the bad spots in them, then you aren't taking care of them in my opinion.

Of course in the rest of post the truth comes out, you are a fur buyer yourself. Of course you don't want people to clean up their dirty pelts or sew up any holes in them, that way you can buy them much cheaper. I know a couple small time fur buyers who used to make a pretty good income by buying poorly put up and/or unsewn pelts at auction, taking them home and fixing them, then reselling at the next auction or NAFA. That income has went down fur producers have been doing a better job at putting up their furs in the last few years.

I've sewn a few pelts, not many as I'm pretty careful with my skinning and fleshing. I'll sacrifice time for better quality (no holes). My biggest problem used to be big eye holes which I left as is.

I never really thought about it from GritGuys aspect. Is it dishonest? I guess that depends on whether or not a sewing job holds up to tanning or negatively effects the person making salable products from that fur.

I don't know those answers. If it slips by a fur buyer and does not hold up to tanning or it negatively effects the manufacturer then yeah, I would consider it dishonest.