Do you understand the fur trade? It’s more than setting a trap, selling the fur, and having a nice mink coat.

The fur trade has been a difficult market over the last few years. Two of the biggest fur buyers, Russia and China, are experiencing financial problems. That means millions of pelts that would have sold for good money three or four years ago are sitting in storage, waiting for the market to rebound.

Outdoor Life has a great article to help you understand the fur market, from catching the animal to purchasing a fur garment.

The pelt pipeline begins with local fur buyers, known in the lingo of trappers as country buyers. One of them, John Hughes of Roundup, Mont., has developed outlets across the globe for wild furs. Hughes prefers that local fur-takers bring skins directly to his unassuming 40-by-98-foot sheet-metal building, which every trapper for several states around simply calls “the fur shed.” Hughes looks over pelts with an eye tuned by decades in the fur trade, judging them for size, color, quality, and a subjective assessment of the fur called “primeness,” and makes an offer on the spot… [continued]

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