Fur Put Up and Handling on the Road

What do you do for fur handling while trapping far from home?
Staying in a hotel or camping.

I found a thread about this from a few years ago but I cannot view it. I think last time the site went threw some changes all those non archived threads were lost.

Anyway if someone knows of thread where this has been covered please lmk as I cannot find one.

Would like to see the responses to this.....I have often wondered the same thing. Thought about hauling a chest freezer I guess.

You will either have to rent locker space where your going or haul a freezer with you. That's the only way to make sure your catch doesn't go bad.

What you mean by rent locker space Beav? I’m not following.

I think he's referring to the local meat locker. That's what they call meat processing plants around here. Although I've never known 1 to hold fur for people, though I suppose them or a taxidermist might do it for a fee.

WE have some cold storage places around here that will take anything. At the time I looked Into It It was $30.00 a month.

But I'm sure that In po dunk USA your not going to find these cold storage places.

Professor friend of mine travelled across the mid-west and did a book on "Locker Rooms" building, because he knew they would be gone in very short order. He put a lot of miles on between active and left to ruin buildings.

Places that are considered cold storage places that do custom butchering won't take and store fur.

Not a problem.Bring a woman to put up your fur at camp each day.
She can cook and keep up camp,and run a few traps and snares close to camp while your trapping.

Well a quick google search of the place I plan to go didn’t have any cold lockers listed.
Perhaps my best bet would be to make friends with someone with a big garage.

Making friends with the garage owner will be 10 times easier then finding the woman described above.

Amen to that!

Putting up fur on the road Is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen. Rough skin and freeze your pelts and take care of the pelts when you get home.

I spent 15 years long lining In the SC and It was always easier to put up that fur when I got home.

I have no idea what the storage units cost and If they all have electricity but that may be a place to start.

That's goofy,Millions of pelts were put up in camps by thousands of trappers for hundreds of years.

Your time would be better spent catching fur while on the road.

Those millions of pelts that were put up for those hundreds of years were probably put up by camp peons.

Nobody is trapping 24-7,there is always time at camp to put up your fur,unless your too lazy.It is nice to have a good woman at camp though that can handle fur,cook and keep the camp stove going.

Well when I went south It was 24/7 If you didn't you weren't going to make It. Check traps all day skin till dark . 40 and 50 degree weather and no place to really dry fur.

WE were lucky that we always had a place to stay but for the most part there wasn't any place to work fur.
I have skinned rats and beaver In a motel room but they kind of frown on scraping and drying. LOl And If your tenting or even staying In a camper your not going to be able to do It right.
Boco your living In dream world. LOl

No beav I live it.Have put up plenty of fur at camp and so do all the other trappers I know.
If you are trapping out of a motel room,there is something wrong with you.Wasting money,and where in the heck are you going to find a motel room on a trapline,lol.Wasting money on a motel room and also wasting money driving for miles to get to it.I can imagine what a motel looks like that allows skinning etc in the room,and who the heck would do that where they sleep?Scratch much beav,lol.
Lots of guys trap out of wall tents,one for bunking and another for cooking putting up fur.
I think I figured it out beav.you drive the highways all day picking up roadkill,then stop at a fleabag hotel every night to skin the gutpile,lol.

No boco The people I trapped for furnished me with a house to live In. But there was one time we skinned a bunch of rats In a motel room.

I can just see you trying to dry rats and other furs In feaking wall tent with the humidity so high you could cut It with a knife. You never trapped In SC In Jan and Fed so you don't have a clue. A wall tent wouldn't be big enough when your taking 20 beaver a day and then throw In a few otter.
But I do know several big time rat trappers who worked out Of a motel In ND and caught more rats In a week then you have caught In lifetime.

Beav the way its done is you fire up the small wood stove in a 12x16 walltent-(that is bigger than a lot of fur sheds by the way)only when you are handling the fur once a day or two.That is fine for drying fur.Once dry you bag it and store it same as anywhere.No different than the guys that stay out on their traplines all fall,and only come to town once a month or so for supplies.
And why would you want to trap 20 beaver every day,lol?Although if working with a partner,that is only about 3 hours work each evening.That is just poor planning if trapping alone.Maybe it is to save on the motel bill?lol.
At camp 8 to 10 beaver a day is just right,as long as your not catching 6 or 7 different species per run.

Because the money was good. I could have tossed most of the beaver but It's not what I would do.
After a long day on the line it's nice to take a hot shower and have a decent place to eat and sleep and wash your clothes and watch TV. And a wall tent Isn't going to cut It. You have to remember I was away from home for 2 months and home was 18 hours away.

You can have your wilderness camp I think my way was a lot better then what you were doing.
We always had a place to skin our catch. The land owner said If It was good enough for 20 Mexicans to live In we could use it for skinning. LOL

Of all the debates I have seen on trapperman I think that one was the most informative.

Oh man, that is incredible. Skinning a beaver in a motel room. That's a new 1.

You just skin In the shower and hang the critter from the shower head. but I wouldn't try hanging a beaver from the shower head . LOL
I know lots of long liners that find land owners where they can park a trailer and have access to a shed to do their skinning. Sleeping In a tent just won't cut It.

I'm lucky in that I have a couple places I can stay when beaver trapping on the road. Landowners here want and need them gone. My main area I trap I get a place to stay, a place to skin, freezer space, and all the food I need to keep me going. In addition I have access to four wheelers and UTVs, plus fuel for them. I run traps from first light until dark and sometimes later. Come back and unload the catch and skin until food time and then skin some more. I don't put up any fur until I haul them all home. With these southern hatter beaver I put up what I can but if I have to sell them frozen green I will - there isn't much of a price difference. Like Beav said, trapping in the south is a whole different ballgame - it rains a ton, it floods all the time, it can be downright hot, there are ticks and mosquitoes out, you will see snakes and turtles out and about, the beaver are all chewed up, and there is a crap ton of them. Twenty a day is not impossible in a lot of places south of the Ohio river.

I have a friend that skinned and hung fur in second bathroom of his college apartment. He is out of college now and still lives in an apartment - and he still skins and washed pelts in the shower.

This I find to be true. Skin and freeze. Plan ahead before you head to those greener pastures. Make preps to have acess to a freezer.

Or you could just get your old lady to do everything for you.

When I was in college in Louisiana I skinned many a critter from the limbs of a tree outside of the athletic dorm.
Right next to the busiest sidewalk on campus.

Some of the prettiest cajun girls would stop and ask where I caught that otter or nutria.

Most of the guys would tell me how disgusting it was.

Try that on today’s college campuses.

The entertainment value of this thread is right up there

Can you see boco heading south with his 2 wall tents 2 wood stoves all the stretchers and his traps. It would look like the circus was coming to town. LOL

Many years ago I was travelling out of the bush just before Christmas to visit friends that lived in Toronto.I picked up a few road killed coon.I asked my buddy if I could skin them in his back yard.He said go ahead.Now he lived in a row house with a small back yard,a wire fence,and lots of kids in the neighborhood.
I hung the coon from a rope from his balcony and proceeded to skin.A few minutes later there was a little black kid hanging over the fence and said",Hey mister,what are you doing to that cat?"I told him to eff off and get lost.Next thing you know he is yelling at his friends -"hey-that man is killing a cat",then there was about 20 little kids watching me skin all yelling "hes killing a cat,hes killing a cat".
Anyway,I finished up the skinning quick and rolled up the pelts and put them in my buddys freezer.I took the skinned coon carcasses and left them in a garbage bag beside the garbage cans.
We had a good laugh about the kids,then we went and picked up a couple cases of molsons.When we came back from the beer store we seen a bunch of kids standing beside Mount Olive blvd,a main traffic artery beside my buddys townhouse.
The kids had swiped the coon carcasses from the yard and tossed them out into the heavy traffic to watch the cars squish them.I yelled at the kids,"Hey what are you doing with those cats"LOL.
They all were laughing and having a great time.
Now this was a black neighborhood in the rougher part of the city,and I have a lot of fond memories of those days coming out of the bush to visit with my buddy in Toronto.

Good story.

Good story. I was skinning and cutting up a deer in the backyard during college. I had the deer skinned and was cutting it up when a cop arrived and asked what I was doing. I told him,"cutting up a deer",he said,"oh,ok" and left. I would skin the fur in the bathtub,my roommate was a hunter so no problem with him.

Hey Boco, just curious. Those guys in camps, how many beaver would they typically do in a season. And. didn't they trap and the women do the put-up? The difference today, in my opinion, is the number of animals killed. When I killed to many coon it was better for me to pay someone to skin&streatch and use all of my time trapping & sleeping. Coon had to be killed quick before they went in for the winter. Same with coyotes, I'm limited to foothold traps. I can do best if I kill, skin & freeze then do flesh stretch after the snow comes.

An old fellow that I trapped with stayed at his camp from early oct to first week of dec each season and used to put up 60 beaver 30-50 marten a dozen lynx plus a bunch of fox some wolves and rats and mink,weasels squirrels otter.The first couple weeks was putting up firewood for the next year,getting traps ready and fishing and hunting.Then he would trap from end of October until around the first-second week of dec.His fur handling was superb.
There was one native guy that the MNR used to fly in to problem areas in winter.He would work out of a tent and he put up about 600 beaver one winter,all frost scraped and dried on hoops.He worked with a partner.
Back in the day up until around the 1980's,a lot of cree families would be flown in to remote traplines in the far north in Oct,and come out by skidoo on the crust in april with huge amounts of fur all put up in their tent camps.
Used to see some come out to the railline at Abitibi canyon and load everything up on the train to head back home to Moosonee in April.First time I seen a bunch come to the train I asked where they came from.The headman told me he and his family had been trapping 80 miles North west of the Kipling dam,which is the Northernmost powerdam on the Mattagami river system.They travelled out on the crust about 150 miles with 4 elan ski doos (each pulling several sleighs in tandem),with the cowlings removed because of the warm weather.
That's the old fellow at his camp,cooking us supper after putting up a bunch of beaver.Guy was in his 70's then.When he was younger he put up a lot more fur than when that pic was taken.

[img]https://trapperman.com/forum/attachments/usergals/2019/03/full-21521-2826-dscf0226.jpg[/img

Putting up a bearhide at camp.


I put up tons of fur at my 12x12 line camps over the years.

When you stay right on your trapline you have plenty of time to put up fur.
Putting fur up at home always seems to be a rush,as there is always other stuff to do.Not so out in camp-everything you do there is fur related 24-7.

Those camps aren't wall tents Boco.

Well I let you all know how trapping out of a wall tent goes. A friend of mine wants to catch a bobcat. So I made a deal with him. I will help him catch a bobcat, if he will agree to help me cross a to do off my bucket list. I will supply all the gear and grub stake, do all the put up, make buckskin for our outer garments, and cook 1/2 the meals. His part is to practice setting and bedding traps,supply the wall tent (which he already has) cook 1/2 the meals, make the buckskin outer garments, get in shape and don't let the camp and wall tent fire go out. He agreed to his part and we have been planning for 2 months now. We are going to stay for 10 days, pending the weather. Planning on being home in time for Christmas eve. We are not taking anything modern, except a GPS locater device and of course a camera for pics. The hardest part is finding a place in pa.
We are now looking at NY as well.
Of course it would not be what you would consider along line. But walking 5-7 miles a day is fairly long. Lol

I haven't done it yet but my plan is to take a smallish chest freezer and a generator. Many people think a freezer has to be plugged in to power to keep stuff frozen. It doesn't. Before leaving on the trip have the freezer plugged in and stack a bunch of water jugs in it until they are frozen. Take the freezer and the now ice jugs with you so it stays cold in there. When in camp just plug it in to the generator for 2-3 hours each day and your fur will stay frozen. Take the ice jugs out as you need the space. It can help to cover it with an old sleeping bag or something too. I also intend to put up fur as much as possible while I'm at it.

Good luck.

We do this with the freezer when we go moose hunting........works well.

I take a freezer with me on my pay jobs. I have pulled a popup camper with me too....but I really like it when there is a modern hunt camp to stay at...

Back in the day, I put up all my fur on the road. Would work some long hours, keeping up with it. One trip, I lived in a ranchers pop up camper, put up yotes half the night, in an old grainery, and was avg right at seven dogs a night. Had a few big days of around 12, and those were trying days to keep up with. Other times, in Wy I had some big years on r fox that were hard to keep up with also. Had a pretty decent shop to work in at the ranch at that time. I still put up some of my fur now, even though I carry a freezer with me these days. Up north, if you get behind, you can lay the skinned pelt on the cold concrete or dirt and will keep for those days that you have more time. This year, I was glad I put up as many as I did, cause I ran out of freezer space as it was. Sure is easier to freeze on the road than put up all the fur as you go though!

A chunk of dry ice in a freezer works fine also.

I am a newb and don't know, but could you salt them?

No, never salt any fur (unless you are prepping it for a tanning process that requires it) Fur buyers do not want salted hides, only fleshed and dried.

I don't know as dry ice is always the best to work with though. I looked into using it once this year. It was hard if not impossible to find any around here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_ice