Historic high Fisher prices......

.....were during what decade? I'm talking back when a fellow would find a track and follow it for days hoping to catch up to it.

1980's just my guess.

1920's.
Also high in the 40's and 70's.

My best was 165.00... had 11 that year...averaged around 125.00... ..The good ol days about 15 years ago...lol

Walter Arnold wrote a story about trapping fisher with his dad in the mountains of northwestern Maine when he was a kid, somewhere around 1905. Adjusted for inflation, the price for a top fisher at the time was around $900 in 2020 dollars. I believe that price was exceeded, adjusted for inflation, sometime in the '40's as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Arnold-Maine-Trapper-Mountain/dp/0999889419

During the 1920's is what I heard. A fisher pelt reportedly would come close to buying you a new Ford model T.

Chris

Thanks folks. I couldn't remember if it was the early 20's, or later, during the Depression.

When I first became intrigued with trapping as a young teen in the late 70s, when we discovered the local dump was crawling with $50 racoons we got this mysterious beautiful furred creature in a foothold set for coon. We took it into the local Hudson's Bay fur depot in our small town to find out what it was. The fur buyer told us it was a female fisher worth around $400. He also warned us that possession of it without a quota was a serious offence and that it was a moral dilemma for him not to report us. He cut us a break and allowed us to leave with it. I imagine around those days numbers would have been seriously depleted.

One fellow told me after he caught one in the 1920's he sold it and purchased 160 acres. In the 1970's he sold that land for 1.5 million dollars was river front. now the lots are going for 750.000$ with the sub-divisions.

I believe he meant Canadian citizens... not You Boco

And there are unscrupulous people in every Nation ....just look at ours

My best fisher prices, back in the 80's were $ 250 for females and $ 100 for males. Today's prices are pathetic.

In the late 1800's in PA hunters/trappers would stay on a track until the fisher was killed.

They’re so worthless now I didn’t even target them last yr and the one I caught in a coyote snare is skinned and frozen in a bag.

J Morse, I'm not old enough, albeit close, to have partaken in the early 80s fisher trapping but they tell me that a good female was worth a weeks or more of wages in our part of the world

EJ Dailey would track fisher and set a trap in the place they holed up in.

Now THAT is a fur boom! I was in on the boom of the late 70's/early 80's, but even that was pale compared to the buying power of a dollar in the early part of our last century. Imagine catching one single critter that paid you enough to buy a farm. That compares to what the old original Mt. Men were able to do. If they could keep their hair, and not die from an infected tooth, it was possible to come back east with enough to buy a real good chunk of ground. What would the price paid for a pelt today have to be to be the equivalent? A quarter million for one Beav, so you could buy Uncle Hershel's 120 acres. Of course you'd have to catch two more to afford the equipment to operate it.

I believe the price of a beaver pelt in the 1920's,extrapolated to todays values,a beaver would bring over $500 dollar avg per pelt.So just 200 beaver pelts would get you a fur cheque around $100,000.
Only problem was in the 20's 3 or 4 beaver would be a phenomenal take by a trapper,almost unheard of.

November of 1924 George I. Fox in N.Y.C. put out a catalog listing beaver prices as $6-$40 USD. Large prime dark Fisher at $75- $150. Otter at $20-$45 Red Fox at $15-$35. Coons at $4- $14. Wild Mink at $5-$20. All depending upon primeness for the New England region. Calculate that for inflation, just google "value of 1924 dollars today". About 15-16X. So Boco's value estimate is pretty close! I'd say trappers were better paid than Lawyers for the time.

My Grandfather grew up in southern Minnesota in the late 1800's and early 1900's. He trapped and hunted as all his brothers did to support the family. He told me that about 1905 he caught a huge mink. The buyer said it was the largest he had bought all season. He remembers getting $28 for it. At the time his dad was working at a feed store for less than a dollar a day. He also talked about spearing muskrats, and selling for 15 or 20 cents a piece.

Boco were beaver that scarce in the 20s? My grandfather and his family were pioneers in this area and he told my dad theyd be nearly starved by the end of winters and i often wonderd why they didnt just trap beavers as theres lots here now.

They were almost extinct by the 1920's,all across North America.There were some in the far north but they were highly protected.However there was a black market for the skins and people poached them.
There was extensive re stocking programs for beaver in the 40;s and 50's.Lots of places in the states only started having beaver again starting in the 1960's.
There were indian beaver preserves in the far north, Rupert house beaver reserve was one of the big ones.Certain Indian trappers were known as tallymen and they looked after the beaver by counting the houses every year and telling the natives which areas to trap and how many could be trapped.This was basically the start of fur management.
Many of the beaver used for restocking in north america came from the northern cree beaver reserves,basically the only places left with any number of beaver.

The James Bay beaver preserves were-
Fort George
Old Factory
Rupert
Nottaway
Kesagami(where I am)
Albany
Kapisko
Attawapiskat