The following was posted by Wiggler(If I remember right) in another thread.........

"according to greg schroeder of nafa, it doesnt matter if its blue or not. he says he doesnt dock anyone for blue skin, its all about the looks of the hair, not the underside.
just repeating what he said, so dont jump on me. he says catch all the coon as soon as your season opens. blue skin or not, if the fur is nice you get top dollar. i wish he lived around me so i could sell to him."


Is this what everyone has seen with their fur buyer?
If so then how soon does the fur start to look good enough in lets say Nebraska?

he dont dock on blue coon?

sned me his address!

sned me?

yes, sned me is the private club word for send when your really excited and trying to be the first to make a responce!

You knew what he meant! LOL

the leather is the same year around, if they are looking at quality of that it don't matter if its blue or not, but blue leather means fur isn't too is best potential yet. so folks wanting the best fur, will think twice about buying it.

now this is my thoughts; and words from a friend who has someone in the leather industry.

whos this greg fella? if he dosnt dock i can get him plenty of GORGEOUS raccoons here come november first...

If a large coon still got a little light blue on the hide and the fur fill out for the most part in will go in with the good ones. But for the most part i would'nt depend on making money on blue coons.

Our red fox and coyote stay somewhat blue here till later on in winter but the fur looks better then our Feb. coyote and fox.Some buyers will not and some will take advantage of a blue hide no matter how good the fur is fill out.

If I sell green, very rarely will the buyer even look inside the pelt to see if it's blue or not. I believe what Wiggler said about quoting Greg S. because all that matters is fur that they grade not the leather. It all tan's the same. But don't get me wrong, not all blue coon will have great fur. So don't go out and think your early coon are going to make you the best money. They won't!

Coon grader at NAFA.

one of my fur buyers/tanners says they same thing. He dont want alot of them in a lot, but he knows that it is hard not to catch 1 or 2 a year. Heck my bro and i caught our 2 blue coons after thanksgiving last year. We wait till the 2-3 week of November to set so we dont get them like that.

Most of the coon in SE Nebraska are ready when season opens Nov. 1st. Boars will usually have clear or light slate colored skin, kits dark blue and females somewhere between the boars and kits. My buyer does not pay any less for put up blue hides then he does for cream skin so long as the fur is the same. Bring in a flat haired dark blue/black hide and of course it's worth less then a fully furred one. IMO it's harder to put up a blue hide because the skin is thinner and it's easy to get down to hair roots with just the dull side of the knife.

the blue color is the first thing the buyers down here look for

This is some very good information. Thanks the posting.

It was always my understanding that it's the prime of the fur that matters. I thought that a blue hide meant that it MIGHT NOT be in the best of prime.

I could be wrong.

at the local fur sale in ky, blue is not good. The fur is price is reduced

I've sold to 4 or 5 local buyers and all docked for blue.Heck I'd start earlier if it didn't matter.

well, im just repeating what THE coon buyer in the US told us at the michigan convention last weekend. he said... and i guote, "i dont give a darn what color the skin is, i dont want the skin, i want the fur". he said its all about size and color of fur. if you guys have never seen him at a convention before and have the chance, DO IT! you will be amazed at what he tells ya about handling fur.

I heard him say the same thing wiggler. But it leaves me with a question, if it doesn't matter if it's blue or not, just the fur, why put it up leather out? If all you care about is the fur, you should see all of that and not the leather, right?

I've never been docked for blue hides. My buyer simply looks at the quality of the fur. If your fur is good and the hide is blue and your buyer is docking you, find a new buyer.

I buy fur acording to the fur, not the hide or leather color. A coon hide that is blue that has nice fur on it will go for a no 1 skin. I have worked with Greg for many years in the coon mkt. and you take what he tells you to the bank.
Mind you all blue coons do mot make a no 1 grade just like all creamy hides don't make a no 1 skin. Believe it or not there is a time when the hide can be at light blue color and be at it's best for the season. This is another subject I could write a small book on.
But do not let the blue hide scare you from trapping when season opens. Once a coon hide reaches the creamy white color on the leather, it only has about 2 weeks before it starts to go downhill. So what all this amts. to is, I would just as soon have a hide that is a bit blue over a hide that is getting past prime.
The early coon have superior color over the coon that is caught later in the season. The guard hair is of better quality if taken just before full prime . After a coon or any other animal starts to get past the 2 week prime time, the guard hair starts to get dingy and starts to break on the tips. The leather also starts getting a bit on the poorer side. It gets bite marks, little rubs,dirty , and at times weak spots in it.
So all in all, I would rather buy a good furred blue coon over a later caught prime coon that is going downhill. The 2 skins are going to bring the same money from the end user.

thats what schroeder said in the fur demos, if your getting docked for blue leather and its good fur, you need to find someone else to sell to because your getting ripped off.
i agree with ya Freepop, but schroeder buys more coon than anyone, and if he says its good to him, than thats good enough for me.

Greg does not buy fur. He is a wild fur grader at NAFA and as far as I know ahead of the wild fur dept.

at last years nebraska convention greg put it this way,(qoute) I'm in the fur biz not the leather biz, the leather is never seen after a garment is made because the liner covers it up. I think that he was refering to the slates and lightly blue but, anything worse than that would have bad fur quality also. Don't crucify me for repeating this qoute HE SAID- the country fur uyers just use the blue hide as another way to give you less money for a pelt so that they can make a bigger profit. not my words so don't hate on me guys.

thanks Don and your right, he is a fur grader, i should have quoted him saying blue leather does not get seen and if the fur quality is good, it makes no difference to him.

Don - does the same hold true for fox? Is slightly blue ok with them?

No problem with fox either. Matter of fact if you wait till fox primes, you will miss a good part of the season. Reds don't prime here untill almost the 2nd week of dec. Grays prime a lot earlier. Most animals are about the same on the blueskin . I never look at a skin color when buying fur. You can tell all you need to know by looking at the fur. Well I will back up just a bit. once the rut starts, I generally look in the neck area quite a bit, I will then part the fur and look at the leather for bite marks.

This is all very good to know.

Here in Kansas I think our "slate" coons are at their best and NO you shouldn't get docked for it, go elsewhere if you do. That is what an inspection window is for. We only have a little bit of time on a milky white before they are chewed up or they hole up because of weather.

BTW, Greg knows his [Please excuse my language... I'm an idiot]....

nafa may sale : for western north central coon 5X sel $57. 4X sel $56. 3X sel $35.-$55. 4X-3X #1 $42.-$53. 4x-3X #1-2 $35.-$45. 4X-3X #2 $36. 4X-3X #3 $6.-$6.50 4X-3X #4 $2.50 the list goes on & on. if you believe that blue makes no difference why is there a $51. difference between the sel & the #3. also if it made no difference why does nafa have so many grades of coon. you may want to learn what it means to have coons that are sel,#1,#1&2,#2,#3,#4, thank you teg

lmfao!

Tom just because a coon is blue does not make it a no 3. I will go as far out on a limb and say that at least 85% of your blue coon will sell for a decent price.

Blue leather is NOT a color - it is a gradient of colors.

There is a difference between the blue leather of a coon caught on the first of October and the blue leather of a coon caught 3 weeks later.

The DARK blue leather should be graded down. The lighter the blue the better.

When I buy red fox for tanning, I much prefer the skins that have slightly blue leather. They look much nicer then they are dressed than a fox that has 'white' leather but the fur is past prime. The red fox skins I buy for tanning are usually graded as "II's" by NAFA.

I was once told by a local buyer that the small to medium sized buyers make most of thier money from the "low grade" furs. Everyone knows what the best fur is worth but after a buyer has nitpicked a skin into being worth only 30% of a top grade fur, he can turn around and resell it for 85% of the cost of a top grade skin. In local auctions of put up fur, a blue skin will get HAMMERED in price and most trappers figure it is because the skin is "unprime" and not object.

I was waiting for Wissmiss to settle this arguement for us.

114 I don't lnow what buyer told you that, but I disagree . Nancy is right about the fox. The primer a red fox gets on the leather, the less it is worth, for the most part. Two things happen on red fox once the leather is prime. One is the underfur starts getting a real pale color to it, the other is , once they are prime it is not to long before they start to break on the guard hair and rub.
Mink is another animal I like just before it is totally creamy on the leather. A mink just before full prime has the darkest underfur and silkiest guard hair that it will ever have. Once past prime or full prime on the leather occurs , mink start getting singed and red colored.

I really don't see where the argument was at. I never spoke a thing that was not true. So in other words all the typing I have done has been in vane.

no it wasn't

Sharing knowledge is never done in vane Don. Many of us pay extra attention when folks like you,Greg and Asa ect. have something to say. If folks want to nap in class then that's their loss.

Thank you!

Don, I was saying what the buyer told me. Due to the fact that "most" trappers don't know that a slightly casty leather might be at the peak of fur quality, the buyer would use this as an excuse to pay less for the fur and laugh all the way to the bank. I believe that otter are another fur that is at its peak just before the leather primes 100%. One exception to the fox might be the western Alaskans. I have caught them all the way into the end of Febuary and first part of March without a broken guard hair to be found and great naps. Not to mention the darkest, cherriest, red fox on planet earth.

Don - I certainly wasn't agruing with you. I was simply pointing out something that I hadn't seen any one else mention. Everything you wrote on this thread was true and much appreciated.

newhouse114 - those late Feb/early March Alaskan red fox may be as you described, but it has been my experience that red fox taken at that time of year, no matter the location, will tend to have matted/bunchy underfur when they come back from the tannery.

Have you had any experience with having those skins tanned?

Thanks,.

I never had any tanned but the owner of the camp I was trapping out of (care taking) bought one of them and had it tanned. It was probably the most beautiful fox I've EVER seen. Close in color to a bright Irish Setter and over 40 inches to the butt. I sold the rest of them to Goldberg because I hadn't a clue about international auctions back in '81. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I sold those fox.......until I heard about what fox had done at Hudson's Bay and Dominion. LOL I remember that I combed and brushed all my fox and don't recall any matting that I could detect in the nap.

Nancy I could see you were not disagreeing with what I said. I guess it just kinda struck me funny that I had been giving advise from the first and then you came in said basically the same thing I had been saying, and in my eyes got credit for getting the ideas of people straightened out or as was said, you settled the argument. Nancy in no way do I think that you were trying to discredit me or argue with me. I have my eyes wide open. Sorry , Nancy if you received my thread wrong.
I could never disagree with a person like you unless I had substancial reason to.

Blue skins leather side are just In most cases a good way for the local buyer to down grade your fur. There are some who live by It. I have sold a lot of Oct 15th caught coon and recived some very good prices at auction but take those same coon to good old groney and they will be down graded to just about worth less.
When your season starts It's time to set your steel.

One way for those that want to learn more how the fur sells and is graded or valued is to take an assortment of "blue coons of say 2xxl-4xxl size and ship them to an auction and then review the grading that they get and the prices they receive. Talk is talk, worry is worry, put the fur into a place where it is actually graded and lotted instead of just commented on. You will also find that what Don Wolf talks about clarity and colar are big added values to better quality hides. Last year 4xxl selects that were 2-3s on clarity sold for 10-12 dollars more than the 4-5 clarity. The better silver clear ones come here in WI when we have those 40-50 degree days and our first 25-30 degree nights on our big boars and barren females.

Bryce

bblwi that is when a coon is at it's finest. The nice clear silver coon with the beautiful light colored flanks. The same coon caught later in the season looses that nice clean silver look.. After it has been around for about 3 weeks, it starts to get to be dingy and dirty in color. Then it starts loosing value.

I trap in Michigan and one thing I learned is that when the season opens you better get your steel in the ground - this theory of waiting until the skin gets prime would mean a severely reduced harvest of coon and fox for me. You would be giving a heck of a lot of money away - last year we got an early heavy snowfall that cut down the coon harvest drastically. Sure we had a few warm-ups after that when the coon came out but they get rubbed and pizzed up after being holed up. Get them when their coat is the best and if that means trapping when season starts that is what I am going to do.

Thank you DON and WISSMISS, very informative! this kind of knowledge is priceless. thank you again

Don the posts you and other knowledgable folks take the time to post ARE read by the vast majority to learn. I don't understand how 10 percent can sway the view, 90 percent are learning...Tom

I for one really appreciate getting first hand knowledge from someone that knows...thanks!