Next western cat sale of note is Prineville this Saturday. I will make a bold prediction about prices: (OTC breaks down where cats come from in their sale results), so, I boldly state that eastern cats will at least triple the average that western cats get.

Anyway, good luck to those selling this Saturday. May the rising (cat) tide lift all boats.

Heck with those cats, come on muskrats.

Carl - you need to clarify your statement because you are confusing the heck out of trappers from the eastern US.

The State of Oregon has two sections of cats - ones from east of the Cacades and ones from west of the cascades. Big difference in quality and in quotas.

When Carl mentions eastern cats - he is talking about eastern OREGON cats, not eastern US cats. Eastern Oregon cats are similar to southern Idaho, Utah and Nevada cats. They are worth $$$$$$. Western Oregon cats are reddish with poor bellies and not worth as much as eastern Oregon cats.

Sorry to disappoint you eastern US cat traps that may have misinterpreted Carl’s original post.

Yep no cats here, come on possum!!

Will you save your cats for klamath ?

New Mexico is east of Oregon---does that count?

Nancy always has to come along and spoil the fun. lol

Not this time. I'll be taking them to Idaho 7th of March. I have a side deal going that will pay my gas so couldn't pass that up.

LOL Nancy, Carl's like a dang woman, expecting these men to read his mind.

No...Carl is just a born trouble maker.

Are they going to break it down to Eastern, Western, and out of state? I know in the past they have thrown out of state cats in with one or the other and that can give some misleading averages. We'll see what they have for cats, Prineville used to be a big cat sale, not so much the last couple years. And it is early, Last day of the Oregon cat season is Saturday.

The last couple of years they have eastern, western and just bobcat. The “just bobcat” line item accounts for all the out of state cats.

OTC has broken down bobcats in to 3 sections for about the last 10 years or so.

Eastern, western, nothing. For those trappers not familiar with Oregon bobcats, the State is divided into east and west. Each area has their own tags and tagging limits.

On the sale report, bobcats - eastern are cats that have an eastern Oregon bobcat tag.

Bobcats - western are cats that have a western Oregon bobcat tag.

It doesn’t make any difference where the cat was trapped or what it looks like. OTC sorts them strictly by the tag. And the buyers should grade/price the bobcat pelt based on what it looks like and not what the tag says. Unfortunately that doesn’t always happen.

Up until about 2010, bobcats were either eastern or western and it was up to the fur sale manager and his crew to make a judgement call what to do with non Oregon cats. That resulted in not accurate averages. So they added a third category - bobcats. Everything with a non Oregon cat tag went in that group. Which means that average means nothing because you don’t know where the cats are from. Might be Nevada, might be South Carolina. But it was better than the previous system

Was it OR or WA that you could not export the eastern cats out of the US in the early 1980's?

Never heard of that MGM. Must have been WA.

I was working at Pacific Hide and Fur in Spokane at the time. But at this point I could not remember what state it was. It was done to try to cut the harvest down on the eastern side of the state. If they are worth the same as the western cats it will cut down the interest. WA western costal cats are real orange. They reminded me of Halloween. Orange and black.

I remember when we Oregon trappers got bobcats protected in the late 70's because of over-harvest. (Incredibly, the antis fought this), Oregon had a three bobcat limit at first for eastern Oregon. It is now five and jawbones are collected from all bobcats to see to it that the population dynamics are correct for sustainability.

When I was in AZ they collected jaw bones, but had no limit. Here in ND they take the entire carcass.

Have a hard time believing managers can accurately predict "sustainability"!

At the very least when the do-gooders say bobcats are almost extinct we have data to prove otherwise. Aging the harvested cats is just one of the tools to gauge how they are doing.

Wish they would set the Prineville sale back into March a ways. The way it is you aren't done trapping yet and don't have the later fur put up

I sure get that.

A lot of competition out west for sale dates. K. Falls is not on an ideal date either the last couple of years since it falls on the same weekend that FHA has their March auction. I have heard that George Kortum will be in North Bay---not K. Falls. (He will no doubt have representation at K. Falls though).

Johnny Carson had Ed MCmann, Nancy has Carl. ONLY you old guys will understand that one

I don't recall Washington ever seperating eastern and western cats, they were all tagged with the same CITES tag. Of course I was born in 79 so I wasn't tagging many cats in the early 80s. I used to sell cats and other furs to Roger at Pacific Hide and Fur in the 90s. I don't know when I first went there, but I remember the first brand new traps I ever owned I bought a dozen Victor 110s from him when I was about 10-12. It was kind of a big deal, because it was 7-8 hour trip from the coast over to Spokane that dad would make once a year for quite a few years.

They upped that limit to seven for a couple years and then dropped it to five. I don't recall when that was, but I remember it was right when cat prices went up.

Now they have changed it so that instead of an Eastern or Western record card you can get a Western (unlimited) or Statewide (limit 5) so you can take some poorer quality coastal cats on your "Eastern" card.

Idaho is currently collecting lower jaws also, but it isn't mandatory here, they pay you for each jaw you turn in. Whereas Oregon will absolutely not tag a cat without a jawbone. I recall turning in an upper jaw, in Oregon, once (chopped off with a machete, and never bothered to mention it was an upper jaw when I turned it in) because I set the lower jaw down and one of my dogs grabbed it and ate it. lol

They had two different color metal CITES tags and one said E Washington and the other W Washington. We were buying a fair number of cats at the time. It made the eastern Washington cats about worthless. It seems like it was a short lived thing. We had a guy that drove down into NV and bought cats and sold to us. He bought in WA, OR, ID and NV. His name was Tolly Roberts. He would come in about once every two weeks with a hundred cats or so. He would have coyotes, fox beaver and rats too.

I wonder how many of those cats had the nonexportable Eastern tags cut off them and were taken in somewhere else and tagged again?

I buy raw bobcat skulls. My no1 supplier traps Arizona. One of several state's he traps. From the Arizona cats I get the top of the skull. Get lots as he catches lots. Only thing Arizona and Oregon really want are two canines from each cat. They section them and count rings like a tree to age the cat. They do two just to double check.

The tops still have good value and at least for me sell quite well.

Western oregon red backs can still have decent value if you can find the right crafter or taxidermist. I'm a crafter so that part I know. Put up for crafting or taxidermy needs to be very good. Better then fur market put and normally different. The Nevada stretch doe not work for me.

Haven't been to an auction in several years as I don't sell my catch to the fur market any more. Also it always seems that the roads to both sells in Oregon are iced up every year. I'm getting a ride this year and that makes it a bit easier.

MJM - you’ve been around a long time if you remember Tollie Roberts! Bet you remember Jerry Campbell, bought for Goldberg. Who else is there, while we are reliving the “good old days”. LOL

And don't forget Jerry's sidekick Dick Stewart. Both buyers for H.E. Goldberg over the years.

Tolly told Roger and I he over paid for a good cat right before pulling out of Elko. He said he had a pretty good crowd and said what he would give load enough for everyone to hear. He said he told everyone he would be back in two weeks, paid the guy and hit the road. He said they were standing in line when he got back in two weeks. Did you know Ron Rajeski (SP) He was a hoot. I saw him work Roger once with a bunch of beaver. When it was all over Ron gave me a wink and walked out with his check.

Is Dick still kicking? I know about a year ago his health was real bad, and I haven't heard anything lately. I think he was the first fur buyer I sold fur to, although it could have been an old guy down at Longview whose name I don't recall. Took some up and sold to Goldberg personally once and he took me back in his cold storage and showed me five years worth of cats he had been storing waiting on the market to go back up.

As far as I know Dick is still alive. He was at our fur auction year before last. See if he shows up this weekend. He quit buying a few years ago.

Before Dick Stewart worked for Goldberg, he was one of three people that were instrumental in starting OTC. Before that, he helped run the Washington State Trappers Association fur sales in Olympia. In those days, bid reading was always done verbally, which made it interesting on a couple of species (beaver and otter).

I talked to Dick about a year ago. He had been thinking about going too the K. Fall sales but ended up backing out. Too far..etc. He was always one of my favorite furbuyers. Chuck and I used to shag fur for him at the Goldberg buying stations

I'm not old and I understand.