Did the mountain men wear fur hats?

There's a few lines of thought on this, ranging from a hard no, "they wouldn't make something out of fur they could sell" all the way to the crowd who wears the full hide as a headpiece.
As usual, the truth is somewhere in between. There are plenty of references to trappers wearing fur "caps".

Form Charles Larpenteur, 1830's:
Here I am, a regular carter of Fort William,
dressed in cowskin pants, cowskin coat, buckskin shirt, wolfskin cap, red flannel undershirt, and
a blue check shirt over that, stepping along behind my old horse and cart.

From Osborne Russell:
a hat or Cap of wool, Buffaloe or Otter skin

From George Ruxton's Life in the Far West:
A coarse checked shirt was their only other covering, with a fur cap on the head.

From River of the West:
grace imparts elegance even to the trapper’s beaver-skin cap and blanket capote

In the mountains,” he answered, “ we do not have
many garments. Buckskin breeches, a blanket capote, and a beaver skin cap makes up our rig

for the buckskin clad trapper,
with his high beaver-skin cap, his gay scarf, and moccasins, and profusion of arms

And then you have "re enactors" with the full coyote pelt wrapped on their head for which there is no historical evidence. We call them "dog heads". Funny how ideas from the 70s die hard.

Yes, see plenty of those still nowadays. The only references that come even close to something like that relate to hunting buffalo. Some hunters would drape a wolf skin over them to stalk close to the herd without scaring them into a stampede.

You post some interesting stuff k snow. Thank you.

You're welcome. It keeps me doing research. There is always something new to find.

That had to take some time to track down those chapeau references. You're the man K!

Extensive note taking and searchable PDF's sure help a lot.

Ha, I read stuff and remember things.... but then struggle to find them again.

I think it was fairly common for them to wear a fur hat in the winter, but there was a lot of money in fur and using one to make a hat wasn't as common as most artists depict.

I always thought this cap that Heston wore looked ridiculous

I'll dig into the ledgers this evening. I am curious what the price of a hat or cap is in comparison to the price for beaver.

Many of the references I have for fur caps are of fur other than beaver. Could be that the beaver was valued too highly, or could just be they liked the look of other fur. Wolf was mentioned quite frequently.

That would be the whole-hide look from the 70s. And they added a brim. I can't imagine wearing that in anything above well below freezing temperatures.

Wolf hat ought to be warm

If I ever find wolf fur, other than an entire hide, a wolf cap is on my to-make list.

When they mention wolf back then it probably was coyote they were referring to.

That is a definite possibility. You rarely see the word coyote in the old references. Prairie or brush wolf was for more common.

Maybe I'll hack up a coyote pelt this winter.