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.