Intermountain fur harvesters sale this weekend in St. Maries, ID. Who's going???
I'm hoping to get off work early enough to make it there to check in fur tomorrow night. Should be a great sale!

Hope the sale is a good one! Seems as if both Idahos,Montanas and Wyoming were very good.

Nevada and Utah had good sales too.

Not sure about Colorado, since they don’t publish results.

3 more western sales then the season is over.

16 March. St Marie’s, idaho
23 March. Klamath Falls, Oregon
30 March. Blackfoot, idaho.

Any one at the fur sale today in St Marie’s, Idaho?

Hopefully they have a good sale, though it will be quite a bit smaller than last weeks sale.

Can’t wait to see some pictures.

Williams Arizona today, wish i was there!

Colorado had a successful sale.

I don't know about cats but everything else was on par

I'm here today. Looks like a decent sale, I see the same big buyers that I normally see in Glenns Ferry. The fairgrounds here is a much better location than the community center in Athol. Grease fur and skulls are in one building and the clean fur in another. Probably 500+ beaver here and a lot of well handled huge coastal otter from Washington. Not much for tanned fur.

That's a lot of beaver. Kind of surprised that they got that quantity in. I think they only expect about 200 beaver for the OTC Klamath Falls sale.

Yeah, there was a guy at our Washington rendezvous last weekend consigning fur for this sale. I know he brought a lot of WA beaver and some otter.

Dissapointing sale.
I only averaged $30/ea for my beaver. Most of them were XL's and the quality was great. Easily the nicest bunch of beaver I've ever caught.
Sold one otter for $62, so that was ok.
Had a buddy with some cats get some insulting offers.

I wanted to throw a bid out on a tanned wolf. Asked the lady for a bid sheet. She hands me a piece of notebook paper and says to write the lot# and bid with my info on it. I did and returned it to her. Turns out my bid never made it into the auction. Shady to say the least.

I am definitly not going back to an intermountain fur harvesters auction ever again.

Sorry to hear that musty. I know you bring top notch pelts and handling to the table. Better chalk it up as a learning experience. At least all your eggs weren't in one basket

Could you post pics or location of your buddy's cat and what the offers were? What was high cat? Seems odd all the same buyer's and your beaver averaged less than the other sales? What was your numbers, sizes and grade?

Sorry, I don't have pics of the cats. They are washington cats, definitely lower grading, but well handled and decent looking. High bids for them were $50 each.
I had 30 beaver, probably 4 mediums and the rest were large to super blanket, very heavy prime beaver.

Oh well, that's how fur auctions go. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Last fall Cathryn posted some good advice for beaver producers. That was.....sell early and often, the felters are beginning to have enough skins stacked up that they are feeling more comfortable with their inventory and would like to see prices they are paying go down. Pretty normal at the end of the season.

Still better than going back to ten years of $12-$13 averages.

I think it depends who is there for buyers. If you get George Kortum in the room beaver averages will increase at least $5. The OTC sale may have similar results this Saturday because it's happening the same time as the FHA sale and some of the buyers will be there.

What happens at a small sale with just a few buyers does not reflect the health of the beaver market imho.

Who were the buyers?

I am sorry you weren't happy Musty. I would suggest you give Bernie a call in a couple days and voice your concerns but let him recuperate a couple days. Buyers were Western Montana Fur, Mineral Springs 1, Fort Benton 1 and 2, Fort Okanogan Hide and Fur, Dave Campbell, Stan Sweet Furs, Porcupine, Austin Bouhilder, Line of Bull, Macks Traps and Trapping Supplies and I am probably missing a few. Here is a few of the unofficial results I got
171 cats $587.13 high
115 coyotes $53.15 high
233 Marten $61.12 high
66 Red Fox $21.34 high
453 Beaver 61.04 high
86 Otter 76.50 high
380 Muskrat $5.37 high
28 Mink $10.56 high
89 Skunk $26.95 high
These are unofficial results, as soon as the official results come ou I will get them posted.

Sounds like a very good collection of buyers. At least 4 major buyers in my opinion.

Will be interesting to see the averages. Top prices are nice advertising but don’t really mean anything.

Will be interesting to see what happens at Klamath this upcoming Saturday. Klamath used to be a three day gang buster sale, but not these days.

Oh yeah, I hope I don't come off like too much of a negative Nancy. Beaver prices are still much better than a couple years ago and I'm happy for that.
George Kortum bought my beaver again at this sale. He gave me almost $5 more per beaver back in January, and they definitly weren't as nice of fur. I agree with you BP, probably the lack of buyers kept prices down. And with the big sale in glenns ferry last weekend didn't help either.