Marten/Fisher Put Up

Many years ago a fur grader from the former Western Canadian auction house suggested I should wrap the back legs around the board edges. He said he wants to see fur only when he grades marten. This may not make any difference at the sale but if the grader likes the look of the pelt he won't look hard for defects. I have been putting marten and fisher up this way for years and the finished product definitely looks good. I also use wire mesh on the marten tail and a tail spreader on the fisher to facilitate drying after squaring the butt off. The front legs are split to the elbow and tacked to a thick cardboard for quick drying.

Looks good,tomcat.Hard to tell from the pics-do you leave the saddles on your marten?I do I find it gives the pelt a bit more weight and not papery.
Some of our marten are fat.
.

Yes I leave the saddles on and I might add I've never seen that much fat on marten ever as shown in your picture. I only remove the little fat and meat found in the arm pit and groin area.

Our marten are fat some years like our mink.

Bctomcat where did you acquire the product holding the fisher tail in place?

From a trapping supply outlet many years ago but they are no longer made as far as I know. Wire mesh works very well also.

Boco and bctomcat,
Do you think leaving the saddles intact on your marten gets you better grades? Are you just leaving them on as a time saving measure? Or just find it unnecessary to remove them? I've never seen marten saddles addressed in any pelt handling manuals, but have always been under the impression that like mink, the lean saddles are acceptable to leave on. Our marten get so fat, some saddles have to be fleshed off, just to remove the layer of fat underneath. I personally remove the vast majority of mine, but if I had marten as lean as yours sound, I'd be tempted to leave them on.
bctomcat, you put your fur up as well as anyone possibly can! I always enjoy seeing photos of well handled fur.

I find removing saddles from marten unnecessary as I have never seen one with fat under it like mink. If significant fat was there I would think it should be removed.

Speaking of fishers. Two of these five had no fat and did not require any fleshing. The other three (two on the left & the one on the right) were very fat and required fleshing. Now for the question. You can see some grease on the fatties fur. Do I need to remove that? How? I normally just send them to NAFA and they grade well.

The auction house drumming procedure will remove the grease but they would provide a better initial impression of good handling if you removed it with a little sawdust before shipping.

Thanks

Its a lot easier to keep grease off the fur in the first place than it is to try to get it out afterwards unless you drum them.
There are several ways to keep grease off of the fur
-frost scrape
-put the hide in a freezer to cool,and flesh the semi solid cold fat off around the skirt first.
-use generous handfuls of sawdust,cob grit or cornmeal around the skirt/tail area when fleshing.
-trim 1\8 inch of skin off around the skirt with a sharp knife to remove the greasy fur.
-keep your fleshing beam/forming boards clean.

Nice work.

Seeing that marten and fisher are shipped fur out wouldn't It be to ones advantage to remove the saddles so you get complete drying of the leather?
You can't get them to dry otherwise you would never get them turned.

Great put up guys.

Removing saddles will give quicker and more uniform pelt drying. But, if you do get the pelt to dry for easy turning you can re-hydrate and soften the pelt with a damp towel. A re-hydrated skin dries very well and quickly, unlike a green skin against wood.

Fisher have a heavy saddle that needs to be removed.
marten has a light saddle(lighter than a rat) that dries fine,and gives the pelt needed weight.
Take the saddle off marten and you have a papery pelt especially later in the season.-not good.
The worst pelts for grea
sy mess I have seen at the auctions is beaver.

Bctomcat,
Notice I'm testing your mesh on the tail method? Trappers Ron had suggested trying it before too. So far, I think I'm liking it, and do think it saves a bit of time, over the push pins. Nice uniform tails, once I got my method down. Thanks for the post, it inspired/ reminded me to try this method, this season. Probably would have forgot to test it otherwise....

The Beav, marten saddles can be removed in virtually every instance, with no risk of a lower grade, if you have a clue what you are doing. As has been pointed out, it isn't necessary to remove them on the lean ones, but as long as you don't damage the skin doing so, there is no reason not to . I choose to remove many, because of my high humidity (coastal) environment, I like things to dry as easily as possible.

Never dealt with any marten or fisher. Well a few marten when I trapped In Canada. But I have found that over drying with both mink and rats will give you that papery feeling or sound.
I get my rats off the boards In no more 2 days and with a minimum of heat.

Don't know about fisher and marten but I have found that when fleshing grinners I lay them on the beam that way the back or belly side will cousin the hide when fleshing.