2015-2016

I hear ya moneyspots. The snow is what Shut me down up here for sure. We haven't had snow like this since I was in middle school. I did make it to the tagging the other day and will share what I was offered. Took my one cat and just the first 10 coyotes I came to that we're dry in the shed.

Top offer on cat was $327 and low was $160. Low avg. on coyotes was $48.50 and high was $61.20 avg.

After talking to many people through out the day it sounds like any $300+ offer on a cat was as good as it was getting. We will have to see what Fallon brings me this year. I would say Kreg Kolling was right when he told us this was going to happen at the rondy. It is a good time to have a couple coyotes though

You all north of Tonopah are having it pretty rough this year.

Those of us in the Mohave region have it made by comparison. Even a wet year like this is nothing compared to what you all go through.

I have had traps snowed on several times this year and 24 hours later it has melted off and the whole line is back in business. I use peat and salt to make sure, and seldom have a trap snowed under or frozen in.

moneyspots I hear ya brother. It has been tough not to go put some sets out but side job has been keeping me occupied. went with a friend to go scouting for some spots for him. We went south and it looks pretty scarce for cats. We did find some just not worth the 325 mile loop that it would take. Hope all is well with everyone.

FYI. If anyone would like some hoodies or shirts or decals let me know. I can have them ready and meet you at the sale.

BUCKSNBOWS wrote:

FYI. If anyone would like some hoodies or shirts or decals let me know. I can have them ready and meet you at the sale.

Will you have the ones that say "BUCKSNBOWS is My Daddy!" like usual????

That was a private and personal one I made for you!!! Wizenhimer.

Finally caught a few.  Snow was kicking my butt for a while. Ive been hearing bad deal on prices this year. We will probably keep the last 2 in pics and tan for my 2 sons.

Great pictures and thanks for sharing! This place needed some livening up.

Nice pics for sure!! Yep prices will be in the gutter for sure this year. Avg. at tagging's are looking horrible. Wish it was better news but it is what it is. Great looking country too tedcrf450.

Fur prices like these are why God invented the chest type deep freezer.

Will fur keep in a freezer if it has been stretched and dried though?

Most buyers recommend freezing them before stretching and vacuum packing after fleshing. We may be looking at several more seasons before the market turns around if you look at past drops during the last thirty years. Most of the past market drops were caused by surpluses of the species, that is not the case this year, it is the economy in China and Russia.

The CITIES tag is going to be a good give-away to future buyers to watch out for freezer-burn after several years of storage

I helped my daughter make a set last Saturday; we did the same thing last year. We went to last years locations and somebody had some leg holes their so we went to plan B. A lone juniper located in a saddle with jackrabbits all over the place. Two checks and one week later, this is what she had waiting for her! Her first bobcat, she was so excited and was saying "I caught a bobcat, I caught a bobcat" as she was jumping up and down. Best moment of the year for me, without a doubt!!! Here's the cat in the cage and on the stretcher.

Great Job Teach!!! Bet she was just full of excitement for sure!

hey nevadagteacher do you tumble your fur? looks beautiful whatever it is you do

Man that is awesome teach. Congrats to her and you as well. I hope I can have the same experience like that some day with my little girl. Great cat to boot! Actually I will probably have the same reaction and words come from my mouth the day I finally get one in a cage. Lol

Thanks everyone and hezzy, I do tumble my fur after fleshing it in sawdust and Borax. Everything I know about tumbling was shared to me by nvsage and Cameron2. Rockpile and bucks has also shared great advice and knowledge at the rondys and in conversation. I really love putting up fur, but I need to give credit where credit is due!!! It's amazing how the fur comes out of the tumbler. If my coyotes have blood I wash that out and tumble until dry. I've yet to figure out how Cameron2 gets his cats so soft, but I'm working on that too!!!

Here's another bobcat I caught on Sunday. First time I followed a cats track to the set, it was pretty exciting. I wish I could have gotten a catch picture, be he was not happy and I only had him by two toes; it was a bit of a rodeo actually. He had only been there a couple hours and I caught him in about 8 inches of fresh snow in an unburied trail set. The #3 victors reached up to get him; glad I didn't set the MB 450's in this case!

You put up some nice fur teach and have had one heck of a season this year!!! Wish I could have made it out with ya sounds it was an interesting day. Those tumblers sure just make life easier when it comes cleaning your fur up. Had a lot of coyotes this year that looked like this and worse. Brushed as much as I could before skinning and after fleshing put it in the tumbler and it comes out just like the other coyote in the back. I think one of the most important parts of fur put up is hanging it upside don't after fleshing and cleaning it up. I use the same media as teach does. I am sure teach has had a lot of coyotes that looked the same this year with all the weather we have gotten. The storms still haven't stopped and I am running out of places to pile the snow!

This is my first year trapping and i wanted to share my first cat.

That is awesome catshaser. What part of the country are you from? Congrats on the first cat!

Just memories to live on this year!

Im in Nevada, Chuchill county area

Way to go catchaser! Nice color in that cat. Bucks, nice throwback! I've been driving on the western part of the state, what the hell...what's with all the brown on the hills! I'm used to white on our hills! That Seven Throughs area looks awesome for cat country

Thanks guys. The second cat i caught Sunday and we washed it yesterday and all of the fur started to slip. In big handfuls. have you guys ever seen anything like that before? I was wondering if maybe it was sick

A lot of that has to do with how fast you skin it and if it gets green belly. Also how warm the hide got after it was skinned and how long it stayed warm. Over fleshing will also cause you to loose chunks of fur.

We skinned it within 30 minutes if dispatching it. And we had 6 inches if snosthe day I checked. Do you guys know I'd any sickness that could cause that

catchaser,

Only thing I can think of is maybe too much pressure on the fleshing knife. Opened up the hair follicles in the skin and allowed slippage. Really a shame. .

On the topic of deep freezers, I have used them many times over many years and have had good luck.

Two years ago I was offered $760 for my best cat and pulled it.  Sold the same pelt last year for $1217.  

I don't think someone should freeze for the long term, over five years.  But if a particular year looks off compared to most, maybe freezing is not a bad idea for a year or two.  Maybe not all but some.

The CITIES tags do not have a date anymore, or change colors every year.  At least in NV.  So it is not a dead giveaway as some are saying.

I don't roll up or vacuum pack or anything.  Just line the freezer inside with plastic garbage bags so frost doesn't touch fur, and that's it.  Lay cats flat on top of each other.  A 14 cu ft freezer will hold 50 or so cat pelts.

Thanks guys. Something I well have to learn for the future. Im looking to learn as much as I cab

Sorry to hear about your pelt catchaser. I've seen something like that happen before. It can happen on the fleshing beam. If you pull the cat up on your beam and lean against the beam to hold it in place and the hide slides down as your fleshing it can start slipping where the hide was rubbing on the beam. Only ever seen it happen on cats caught mid Jan thru Feb. Also make sure all blood is cleaned off your beam before fleshing as the dried blood can catch and pull hair.

Some great looking picutres, guys! Nevada definitely has some awesome cats!

The cat that catchaser talked about was skinned within a hour of dispatching and put into a refrigerator until the next day. We noticed while skinning between the skin and the body there was very sticky slime more than I have ever seen. The cat was just a semi-heavy female which was odd for this time of year although looked fine from the outside. The cat was not fleshed at all as it had no fat even down around the vent.

This cat was washed with two others and a coyote. All of them were fine. As I took it out of the water chunks of fur started to come out. I put it on a stretcher just to see what would happen and now after two days when you put you hand inside the skin the leather is so thin it is nearly transparent. Don't now what the cat had, but it was not healthy.

catchaser wrote:

Thanks guys. The second cat i caught Sunday and we washed it yesterday and all of the fur started to slip. In big handfuls. have you guys ever seen anything like that before? I was wondering if maybe it was sick

If the cat had a sickness that would cause the hair to fall out, you would have seen that same thing occur when you skinned it. The hair would have come out as you skinned. I don't think its a sickness.

Slipping is caused by one of two things: 1. "Over fleshing" which is really just scraping too hard so that you sheer off the base of the hair follicles from the flesh side of the skin. Kind of like cutting off a tree trunk under the ground -- the tree will fall over.

2. Slipping is usually caused by bacteria which are little microscopic critters that eat the tiny tissues which support the base of the hair follicle. Bacteria need two things to survive -- moisture and heat. When you washed the cat, you provided the moisture but there must have also been a heat source. It doesn't take much heat and it can happen in a period of just a few minutes. I've never had a cat slip but I've seen it a bunch with fox -- particularly red fox tails. Some critters are just more susceptible to it.

If you wash a cat, make sure you use COLD water, then get it dry while keeping it cold. Tumbling in dry media with a bit of Borax added always helps. If you feel your cat is susceptible to slipping, add a pound of non-iodized table salt for every two gallons of water when you wash. You might also check out a product from the taxidermy industry called "Stop Rot." Its amazing stuff and I really believe you could scrape a jack rabbit off the pavement in July and still save it with that stuff.

The main thing is to get the cat dry ASAP. Hope that helps.

I typed my response while Jim was posting his apparently. I defer to Jim on all things having to do with cat fur. However, from his comments it sounds like the cat had physical problems that were noted during skinning, so illness may have in fact been the problem. Jim. did the cat have any unusual odor?

not really that we noticed any smell just the stringy slime. The meat looks normal.

About ten years ago I had about 2,000 spring rats and every once in a while (maybe 2 out of 100 I would have a rat when skinning that the leather would separate into lines all though out the skin that looked like stretch marks on a pregnant woman. The fur was absolutely normal but the leather was impossible to put on a stretcher. I took several to the state lab and they could not come up with anything. Good reason to wear gloves!

Sherm Anderson from Utah caught tularemia one time from skinning muskrats and always carried tetracycline with him. It can be fatal if not diagnosed and treated correctly.

In 1993 we had tularemia here in both Carson Lake and the Stillwater National Refuge area.
We had two trappers and one guy who was skinning end up in the hospital. All survived. By the end of March, there were thousand of dead rats floating all over the units. That was after 30,000+ rats had been caught from both units. A population explosion and mother nature took care of it.

NAFA cat sell was a disaster!! Looks like less than 10% sold if that many. The majority were withdrawn. Same with beaver and coons even worse

Teach Not sure when or what mountains  you have been looking at. 7 troughs area is good looking country but gets hit hard by lovelock. Had some stolen stuff in that area so I didn't go back. The areas where I have trapped in the past is under about 6-12" of snow. We are getting plenty of moisture so keep it coming. Thanks for the complements on the cat.

Jim,

All indications are pretty grim for this year. Unless a couple of our buyers receive a last minute order, like last year, then things are looking bleak.

Will see what happens in Utah. We have always been higher than NAFA at their early sale. My understanding is a lot of the cats at NAFA are dealer left-overs that had sell limits. I still hear that some of the country buyers are paying fair money for good cats. I know I will be receiving more reservations but as of today I am running about 2/3 of last years cats and only 1/3 of 2014's.

The supply and demand equation is good for sure. A lot of trappers stayed home. A lot that didn't got buried in snow. Tough winter.

The outlook is pretty tough. I know lots of trappers and some that are very good at it that threw in the towel. 2 ways to look at it also. Gives the cats a break and the weather we can always use for sure. I have seen lots of critters this year too. Hope everyone is safe and planning for next year. I have been doing a little calling for coyotes and scouting for cats. Lots of snow in my country but I love it ! Little memories to keep me going thru the rest of the year.

Hey Matt how did it go when your buddies came through the other day? Prices on coyotes?

The coyote prices were down also. I never really got a good number but it was not even close to last year. Then he had to drop price a little more. Some orders dropped off. If you need to know holler at me and I will get ahold of him.

finally kept one in my trap.

missing some toes from an earlier catch

https://s1036.photobucket.com/user/paydirt06/media/IMG_0156_zps7xh4n64n.jpg.html?o=0
End of our first year of trapping.

Great picture and congrats on the good year paydirt06! I love seeing trappings pictures with kids in them.

Its not much but we had a ball! He lives for this.

Thought I would add a little bit to the slipping issue. Just a few years ago Dick Hane encountered that same exact issue on a few western Colorado carcass cats. Slipped mainly on the bellys, and more so towards the front legs. What is interesting is he said the same thing, about a slimy mucus on it.

I wonder if its some sort of disease. I tried looking it up but have had no luck. It slipped mostly in large patches but some areas are holding the fur just fine. A lot of the slipping on this one is on its back but there are 2 large patches on the belly.