|
04-19-2015, 05:53 PM
|
|
|
|
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Nanton,AB
Posts: 1,025
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Donkey Slayer
|
Thanks for sharing Peter
|
04-21-2015, 02:23 PM
|
|
|
|
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: North Eastern Alberta
Posts: 891
|
|
Very similar to todays prices overall. I sure wish beaver prices were like that today. Man are the mink high! Mustn't have been 45 million ranch mink produced every day back then.
Spruce
|
04-22-2015, 07:32 AM
|
AO Sponsor
|
|
Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 2,485
|
|
I hear numbers like 70, 80, 90 million mink nowadays, don't know which one is accurate, but the number is in that range. Also hear stories that nobody knows how many mink China produces, even though they are low grade compared to the rest of the worlds ranch mink, it has a huge impact. And that my friends is why wild mink will likely never be worth much.
|
04-23-2015, 02:02 AM
|
|
Gone Hunting
|
|
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: North of Peace River
Posts: 11,343
|
|
Cool stuff. Boy does that bring back memories! Thanks for sharing.
That was towards the end of the last peak in fur prices. And it was right at the peak of my trapping career.
A few years before that Lynx topped out at around $1500.00 for a top hide, Fisher reached a top or $500.00 or a bit more and Beaver were averaging around $60.00
One has to keep that in prospective with what one could earn pumping gas or slinging burgers. Back then I was working of $8.50 an hour and riding high.
Lots of folks were earning less then $600.00 a month back then.
It seems to me that minimum wage was around $4.00 per hour back then.
So one Fisher hide could bring in a whole months worth of wages.
In 1980 I was driving truck in the oilfield. The boom was about to go bust. It was the last good year in the oilfield. That winter I took home almost $10,000. Meanwhile, my dad was trapping and that winter he took home over $15,000.
It was then that I decided that I'd had enough of the oilfield. I joined my dad on the trapline the following winter. There really wasn't any choice.
The oilfield had gone bust. Trudeau and his NEP had sent many companies into bankruptcy, those that survived had lied off most of their staff.
I had a choice, pump gas for $600.00 a month or chase the big bucks in trapping.
I had a few good years on the trapline but then it too went bust. I trapped when I had time but I had to raise a family so I turned to the only thing I had left, my class 1 license. I went long haul trucking.
I hauled whatever was available, dry goods, lumber, hanging meat, pharmaceuticals, steel, machinery. I even hauled some houses.
I never really trapped again. Oh I dabbled in it for years, running a few traps on my line but it could never pay the bills so driving truck took most of my time.
For a time I trapped beaver for the county. I tutored a few up and coming youngsters. I did a bit of problem wildlife work for local farmers, but most of the time I drove truck. It paid the bills. Trapping was just a hobby, a passion.
Time passed and my health declined. 14 hours behind the wheel of a lumber wagon 7 days a week will do that.
In the late 90s I pretty much gave up trapping. I held on to the trap line for a few more years. Partly in the hope that some day I would be able to go back to the life I loved, but more because no one wanted to trap back then. Or at least they didn't want to trap a marginal line in the remote regions of the north.
There were people looking for trap lines. Outfitters looking for an exclusive hunting territory. Wanna bees that wanted to live a life they had no concept of.
Eventually a couple of local trappers became interested in my line so I let it go. I had to choose between two friends but it was time and I knew it.
So these days I read about the life I wish I could return to and I remember the good times.
I try to forget the frozen branches tearing at my face as I sped through the bush, the electric jolt of ice water as I fished for a submerged beaver, the endless hours of tinkering with unreliable machines with frozen fingers so I could go the next day and check my sets.
I try to forget the many empty sets, the smells and mess of fleshing pelts well into the night. The dishonest fur buyers who so often tried to convince me that the fur market was half what it really was.
But you know what? Those were a part of what made trapping so worth doing. It was the challenge, the thrill of victory when things went my way.
It was the knowledge that I had done it all by myself. I could survive without any help from anyone. If I had to.
But most of all it was the feeling of being one with the world around me.
I was not on the outside looking in. I was a part of a much greater whole.
There is no life like it. I wouldn't trade one day on the trapline for any number of days in the city.
I cherish the pain and the weary bones, the chilled feet and the loneliness.
Because without them there could be no victories, no triumphs, no life.
Without them I would be just another cog in a very large wheel. Which is what I am today. Just a number on an employers spread sheet.
A tool, a piece of equipment. To be used and discarded like the old truck I used to drive.
Two months ago that day arrived. I outlived my usefulness to the company. I was sent off to join that old truck in the rust heap of life.
That is what makes trapping so special. No one. No one but yourself decides when you are ready to retire. No one can tell you you aren't worth having around.
You live or die at your own hand.
And that is something no amount of money can buy.
__________________
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw
|
04-23-2015, 09:03 AM
|
|
|
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: Meadow Lake, Sk
Posts: 165
|
|
Awesome write up Keg. Very well said.
|
04-24-2015, 11:46 AM
|
|
|
|
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: CYET
Posts: 79
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marty S
I hear numbers like 70, 80, 90 million mink nowadays, don't know which one is accurate, but the number is in that range. Also hear stories that nobody knows how many mink China produces, even though they are low grade compared to the rest of the worlds ranch mink, it has a huge impact. And that my friends is why wild mink will likely never be worth much.
|
In 1978 I had my first trapping licence in southern Manitoba and at that time wild mink fetched double farm mink. There was a mink farm just outside of town and I would sometimes catch them in my traps along the river. A nice wild one would get me $40, a tame one of equal size was lucky to get $20.
I was one rich 12 year old at that time. Lots of great memories and frozen feet.
Caught the odd badger and fox but mostly went for the mink.
|
04-24-2015, 03:02 PM
|
Banned
|
|
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Copperhead Road, Morinville
Posts: 19,289
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by ifly
I was one rich 12 year old at that time. Lots of great memories and frozen feet.
|
No wonder your feet were cold, look at the boots that you are wearing!
|
Posting Rules
|
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
HTML code is Off
|
|
|
All times are GMT -6. The time now is 12:21 PM.
|