What do you do with the animals you harvest since there is not much of a fur market?

eat em.

Put them up and take what you can get , better than trashing them, put them up and hold them over and hope for better times, take your lower grade ones, have them tanned and make things or sell as wall hangings Hooped on willow beaver hide sell well and make great gifts.

Eat them isn't that bad of an idea, muskrat is better than rabbit, raccoon is up there with pork, beaver is a lot like tender beef and bobcat is the other white meat. Most of my line supplied the freeze as well as the fur check.

A couple tanned coyote pelts dress up some plain Livingroom chairs.


My wife wants a coyote throw for the couch and I have a vest planned.

Vest sounds Nice

Did you tan yourself and if so what method did you use or tanning solution? I just bought two bottles of the orange bottle stuff and plan to do a nice male I just shot.

I send out, I used to tan skunks for snowmobile mittens, it takes a lot of time. Coyotes at the tannery costs about $25 each and they comeback garment tanned soft and ready to use.

Moles is worth every penny. Doing it yourself is so much work!

I'm gonna let the animals carry it around until fur prices get better. Ain't no telling how long it'll be before fur prices go back up, if that even happens. Gas and ammo is too pricey to waste on nothing. They'll still be around in a few years and have had plenty of offspring by then. If I ain't making some money back it ain't worth getting out of the house. The price of everything is so expensive I don't know how people can justify it.

dang, i do it just to get out of the house. lol

i like getting a few fur checks when the coyotes are worth selling. but the truth is, even the times when those fur checks happen, i highly doubt i made any money. just came closer to breaking even, maybe.

but just getting out in the prairies and having nobody within 20 miles is mostly enough for me.

i will add to above, i was a hard core coyote hunter for over 40 years of my life. it seemed i lived for coyote hunting. killed many, many. would hate to guess how many. loved it.

now days i dont care if i kill one or not. my happy place now is just seeing one come running to something that sounds like it's in great distress. these times when they are worthless and i kill one to just leave it lay make me sad. it's not a good feeling for me. guess i have gotten soft in my old age. so be it.

The way I look at the cost going hunting is if you don't spend it your kids surely will. Besides, I don't have enough years left to blow it all before the kids get it anyway. Getting "soft" is certainly no disgrace. I've just not gotten there yet.

I love getting out there but I feel bad leaving perfectly good coyotes out in the field. I've always been that way. Plus you have to fill out paperwork in Oklahoma if you plan on keeping anything to sell after furbearer season ends. I'd rather just let stuff live until the following year to see if things get better. The worst that could happen is they get killed in the meantime. Best case scenario is they make babies so there's a better population when fur prices rise.

I'd rather spend money on gear to make me a more efficient hunter when that time comes. But there's no wrong answer. For me personally it's better to leave them be