Is there market for rabbit fur in the US , and does anyone on here trap them?
There used to be a big industry here trapping rabbits for fur from the 1880s to 1950s.

Our native wild rabbits, in most of the US, have much thinner skin than the European wild rabbits that were introduced in Australia. I don't know of anyone who has ever sold any of the wild rabbits furs. Domestic European rabbit skins have a very limited market. Most domestic skins are discarded or processed into pet food.

Keith

Domestic rabbit is a byproduct of the meat market and only whites (californian/new zealand) are readily accepted as it goes into the dyed trim trade.

There used to be a market for rabbit that resulted in many different breeds such as chinchilla, rex, belgian blue and many others being developed. But all that is long past and many of those breeds are now on the verge of extinction or converted to meat.

And the domestic meat market is tiny and more of a specialty item.

My daughter rases chinchillas and sells them for pets and processed for meat. We have never bothers saving any of the hides.

In the mid 70's I worked at a hat makers shop, cutting Cow and Rabbit hides and let me tell you those Rabbit hides were a ring tailed PITA to work with. super thin leather was hard to lay out flat, and when that arm came down to press the dye, fur would fly and it makes your face ITCH like crazy.

Saw a rabbit hide for sale in a Hobby Lobby last winter...they had 1, snow white.

Domestic rabbit fur is still used in the international fur trade.
Most rabbitskins are sold as plates to manufacturers.
As far as wild rabbitskins,I could privately sell every snowshoe hare skin I can harvest.($25 per skin would be easy)But I only keep for personal use.
I have developed a method of tanning that retains maximum leather strength and thickness.

With little to no winter in my area, the rabbits are so thick in town and the country it's gonna be a fun fall small game hunting season

Do the snowshoe hares have much thicker skin than the cottontails and jackrabbits?

Keith

I had Himalayan rabbit for dinner last night. I found him a layin in the road.

Im not familiar with those two but the snowshoe hare has much thinner leather than a domestic rabbit or hare.
But the fur is extremely warm and looks great.
Traditionally snowshoe hare skins were used frost dried,vut into strips and knitted into rabbitskin robes for winter use when one had to sleep out in the open in 40 below weather.
Raw skins like that tended to shed with constant use so often the rabbitskin robes were sewn in between two hudson bay blankets