Not sure how many of you know wolfwoman on here, but she has been my fur sewer for a couple of decades now. My latest project I had for her was to make us an 18"x18" pillow from some of the muskrats I caught last winter. I selected 2 coal blacks, 2 reds, 2 grays and 2 regular ones and gave her free reighn with putting it together. She used a beautiful brown suede for the back, and it is obviously high quality, as it feels like buckskin.
We couldn't be happier. Thanks, Bonnie!

That is stunning!!!!

Interesting to say the least. Bonnie posted pictures of it on her FB page. Got a lot of “likes”.

I have always though rat fur was gorgeous.

Looks great and much better than using a dead beaver for a pillow.

Do you recommend a live beaver instead?

That would be interesting to see on utube.

Hard to flip to the cool side……

Years ago I used to trap the place you are trapping now I don't remember catching that much color variance in the rats although I have caught all those colors plus tan and white through out the county. 40 years ago I had a muskrat pillow made like that and donated it to the trapping association for a fund raiser. I don't remember what it went for but there was allot of interest in it .

Where did you find the black muskrats on the west coast?

We have areas with black rats with silver bellies. they are usually a smaller rat . most will grade large with a few extra large if you have a couple hundred of them . One of the places is a marsh out in the desert i'm not even sure how they got there to start with.

I am doing some ADC work for a guy that has an 800 acre "farm", that is/was loaded with muskrats. Without going into Muskrat History of Oregon, the blacks were imported from Alaska in the 1920s. And as klam.rat points out, they were on the small side. As such, the enterprising muskrat farmers later brought in much larger rats from Louisiana. Like so many other fur farming endeavors of that era, they went bust and released the rats into pretty good habitat.
Of the 800 acres I am involved in for those rats in the pillow, about 200 acres are marshland and is managed for many types of wildlife. We don't want the rats eliminated, but control is a must. And I will give klam.rat a hint: this farm sits up against a huge marsh that is absolutely plugged with muskrats, (not Tule or Lower Klamath). The very descendants of those blacks, along with the others.
Man, if I had my airboat down here, I could put up thousands of muskrats.

If i'm right the place you are trapping is cove point and the marsh north of you is hanks marsh roughly 2000 acres all federal wild life refuge and has been closed to trapping for 40 years it's mostly dry in the summer and has very few rats in it any more. I trapped a fair amount of the lake this last winter and caught very few rats even trapped down the Klamath river and only ended up with 205 rats between the two places . In the past those two areas would have produced over 1000 rats. it appears to me the rats have died out . I hope it's short lived but I will know more after this coming season when I can put more effort into trapping.

Are you sure?

I saw in one of the Game Commission annual reports that an application had been made and approved for a private company to raise imported black rats in Mud lake. I think that was down around Klamath somewhere? Report was from the mid-late 40's.

You are correct. There is some predation on the rats at the farm, mostly raptors and otter. I find huts dug out by otter several times through-out the season. And I have also seen Bald Eagles flying by with rats in their talons a few times. And lose a rat or two each check to those otter. If the price on them keeps improving, I might even trap a few.
The last 2 years, when driving over the large dike abutting Hanks Maarsh, I have seen a dozen huge huts from the road, on the very southern-most edge of Hanks. I can't believe that marsh went dry last year. We had abundant water from all that snow the previous winter, but now that I think of it, the commission opened irrigation to all. This summer will be a different story. I live out by Keno, and we had 1 day all winter that got snow that stuck for 24 hours. About 3" on Christmas day. Gone next day. That was it, but plenty of rain. River has been very high, lately.

Cool looking pillow AV!
Bonnie Brummett does some fine work!

Bonnie has done some awesome work for us. Marten Mongolian hat and beaver/otter mittens.

x2
That's a good lookin pillow!