Today was the first day of the North American Fur Auction (NAFA) local fur pickup for 2014, so I met up with the driver and got some of the bags and tags they insist we use to put our furs in.

While there I saw a couple of guys dropping off their bags of furs and even though I didn’t see into the bags, they appeared to be full of either coyotes or foxes.

This will be our first year to sell our furs through the auction house and it should be an interesting one.  The one thing that we won’t have to deal with is the local buyers who like to throw the shaft at the trappers.  It actually makes me feel a whole lot better knowing exactly what we are going to do with our furs, what is expected of us in putting them up and bagging them and the schedule for when the bags of furs will be taken to the pickup driver.

I have always hated the haggling over the price we would accept for our hard earned rats.  This way, we know we will get whatever the buyers pay at the auction and even though we are at their mercy, so be it.  Last year we could have made a bunch more money had we gone through the auction house.  As it ended up, my butt still hurts from the screwing we got.

Sure, we will have to wait for the fur check, as the auction that our furs will be in does not take place until June.  That’s OK!  It will allow us more time in the swamp picking up a few more rats before they start to slip.  Maybe we will hit the 1,000 rat mark this year!

Anyway…step one has been taken for this trapping season!

Bears Butt

January 3, 2014