I think it was Giant Sage that said the Dakotas weren't historically on GFW regional buy routes and yes, I said this was correct. I don't know the history of fur buyers in say the Red River Valley of MN/ND or further west into ND but in southeast South Dakota, there were fairly well established fur buyers such as M&M Fur out of Bridgewater and Peterson's Fur out of Ramona, and maybe some others out of say Yankton but for whatever reason GFW didn't push much past a couple of stops just into southeast SD.
However, sometime before the covid upheaval, the way I understand it, GFW teamed up with "Colt Fur" out of Wheaton, MN, which is on the south end of the greater Red River Valley area and Colt started to do local pick up runs in eastern SD. By this time M&M (and whatever followed them out of Bridgewater) had folded and "Pete" at Peterson's has always been a cautious buyer and told me on several times in the past he never wanted to go up in smoke as a buyer.
I think it was in the fall of the first year of 'vid exile that I contacted Colt (fall of 2020) and they said their basis price for top end coon was going to be $8. That's when I decided to pass on setting any coon traps, and around this open farm country, that is the most abundant fur species, although I do like catching diggers
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I said that I haven't been in the position or had any real desire to be a "production commodity" coon trapper. Those who are and are willing, more power to you, do your thing. I did like sending put fur to auction, if nothing else to see where my stuff stacked up against others. And I do keep records (I gave jbyrd crap if he kept any Excel files of all the deer he has killed knowing that I kept an Excel of my NAFA and for a year FHA auctions). The first auction I sent put coon skins was the NAFA 2013 May one and the last was the spring 2020 FHA pick up date that resulted in a PT sale after their July 2020 sale).
Now, many of you will laugh at the numbers I sent to auction but you are you and I'm who I'm. Between the dates above (spring 2013 and summer 2020), I sent 152 coon skins to auction. My highest coon skin during that time was $28 and the lowest was 50 cents, I believe that FHA probably have tossed that last two that haven't sold. My cumulative average obviously fell over time as conditions changed but in the end I finished with a cumulative $10.29 average after commission. I probably should re-commute it because I'm counting the last 6 coon of mine that NAFA sold and then bounced their check on me (and obviously many, many other people) but a third party did pay NAFA for those coons, its just that NAFA stole from us who have been been made "whole" by their last year of illegal activities, although ole Herman (correct, the head guy of NAFA in 2019 or the recent years before?) will never be held accountable for their theft. So it goes.
I'll stay with my slightly north of $10 after commission coon prices and if I never catch or cap another masked bandit, I won't overly miss it.
Here's Colt Furs website. It doesn't look like its been updated since their antler runs earlier in 2024.
https://coltfurs.com/
