Short and sweet…the trapping season is almost over for this year as the buyers are now beginning to get really interested in purchasing our rats.

One of the buyers came by on Saturday and looked them over…actually, he sat in the shed and looked them over…I took one of the hangers down and he thumbed through them and made his assessment of the lot of them from that sampling.  Which is actually all that was needed as the rest of them are just like that 50.  Over all, we have a catch that exceeds anything we have caught in the past as far as the size of the rats goes.  They are mostly XL size or bigger…sure there are a few mediums and large, but for the most part they average XL.

He did make a comment about what another buyer said…the other buyer was talking to him about our rats and said “they are put up ‘skinny'”!  Meaning our stretchers are not as wide as they should be…he came back with “no they aren’t, I gave them some of those stretchers and they are properly sized”…or something to that effect.

This buyer did in fact give us some stretchers a few years back and Bob went through all of the stretchers we have and adjusted them to exactly fit the model shown in the fur handlers booklet that we have hanging in the shed.

So, what happens now?

This buyer I’m talking about did call Bob yesterday morning and gave him a bid on the rats…a way too low bid I might add…and Bob called me to let me know what it was.  I commented on the fact that we could always freeze the rats and let them go later…maybe in June if the price came up.  Our tasks for today are to contact a few other buyers and let them know we are very interested in a “fair” bid and that we are ready to sell.  All the rats hanging are now cured and ready to come down.

Bob has his lot of buyers to call, as do I and that will be something that will happen first thing…once we think they are up and have had their coffee.  Oh, and I almost forgot…the buyer who has given us his first bid also wants me to tell one of the buyers I’m to call, to give him a call…sort of confusing huh?  Well, if bidder number one (as I’ll call him) wants another buyer to call him about our rats, he must want him to know the quality of our rats, and he also wants him to give us a fair price…that is quite a good thing for him to do for us.  It makes sense to me that if we have the quality of rats that we know we have, we should get top dollar for them.

The way I see it, if a buyer ends up with our rats, they could take them, grade them and put them with the token other rats they may have bought from other trappers that equal ours, to create a “top grade, top quality” shipment and send them off to auction.  And then take the rest of what they have and send them in a different shipment…the top lot will net them substantially more than the “run of the mill” shipment to follow and any loss of money from the second shipment will be greatly offset by the top lot they first shipped.  Well, that’s my take on it anyway.

Another way to think of it is our own undoing perhaps.  Maybe with this years high grade of big rats, we might be better off if the buyers graded them…it’s sort of a catch 22 situation.  We do have some very large rats in the mix.  Some that exceed 18 inches in length with the majority of the rats exceeding 15 inches…I have said I would like a picture of them graded by size laying on the tarp and everyone who has been involved this year in the picture (buyers excluded).  The picture would show a very very small stack of under 15 inches, and a very small stack of over 17 inches and the rest would be in the middle in a huge stack with Conner, Weasel, Bob, Brek, Cole, Wapiti and I in the background….A cool picture for sure….especially if I was in focus.

Bears Butt

April 1, 2013 (April Fools Day)