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.