# Fur Handling......



## rangeman (Dec 7, 2006)

I am a rookie at trapping so I am trying to learn all I can. I do it as a hobby on weekends because I work all week. I have never sold any furs but would like to. What few animals I have caught have been taken care of by my taxidermist for home display. I love furbearers and so does my wife (win-win situation). I recently caught a nice grey fox and a **** and decided to start trying to learn to skin and put up my furs for sale. I was casing the animals and do not have a tail stripper yet so needless to say I made a mistake when stripping the fur from the tailbone and now have a fox with a stub for a tail.......#%[email protected]&! Oh well another lesson learned. Is the fur worthless without the tail? Also I was wondering about storing the green furs in the freezer. Can they be rolled up fur side out, or laid flat until I can sell them? Any feedback is greatly appreciated!


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## Mongojoe (Nov 2, 2006)

I always just rolled them up starting at the nose, fur side out, and froze until I was ready to take to sell, or to flesh and stretch... I saved all our bread sacks, and the good plastic grocery sacks thru the year to put them into... I would put them into a bread sack, squeeze out all the air, and tie the top of the sack, then put them into another (double bagged them) and do it again..... The fur isn't "worthless" without the tail, but it very well may be "worth less"... If you haven't got a tail stripper, I have seen people use a pair of pliers for stripping the tail from the tail bone... Over the last 30 or so years that I trapped and called, I stripped probably a couple of thousand assorted tails, and I have never owned a tail stripper. I was first taught to strip them with a couple of finger sized sticks... and for many years I just kept some pencil sized steel rods about 8 inches long in a container, on the skinning table, for stripping tails... It is simple to do, once you learn................. One more thing you might keep in mind...If you have quite a few furs to roll up and freeze at one time, don't just "pile them up" in your freezers. The outside ones will start to freeze first, and sort of "insulate" the inside ones, and the inside ones may not fully freeze before they start to taint... When I had very many to freeze at one time I bagged them as I said above, then laid them out seperately in the freezers, then when I was sure they were completely frozen thru, I would put them all into those big green trash bags... If you want to keep the various furs seperate, you can use different trash bag for different animals...coyotes in one, ***** in another, grey fox in another, bobcats in one, red fox, etc., etc.,... Occasionally my wife or I would work some of the fur, and seperateing them like this with the trash bags made it easier to get the type of fur we wanted to work with... But generally, we just didn't have the time, and most often I just sold green... You might even want to check with the buyer you plan to sell to... I have even known some buyers who preferred to buy the furs in the round, until the trapper learned to handle them the way the particular buyer desired.................. Good luck.


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