Low fur prices mean trappers afield for other reasons

John Borror has spent many fall and winter mornings running a trapline before school or heading off to a job.

It was a chance to earn some extra money, with animals such as raccoons bringing $15 or more for many years. A few bobcats, the lottery ticket of Kansas furbearers, often bringing $250 or more.

This year, though, one of Borror’s top outdoor pastimes is a financial drain.

“You lose money every time you go out and start the truck,” said Borror, 63 and Kansas Furharvesters Association president. “The fur market is bad. I think it’s as bad as I’ve seen it in my lifetime.”

Most raccoons, the most commonly trapped animal in Kansas, bring a dollar or two. Some adult bobcats only $50 or less. Coyotes, which averaged around $20 a couple of years ago, now fetch about half or less.

Borror, who lives in Wilson County, in eastern Kansas, blamed low prices on the current poor economy in Russia and China, where most American wild fur ends up.

“When their economy is bad, they have no money to spend, just like us,” he said.

Trapping one to help others

Luke Laha didn’t talk low prices Thursday when he drove to run a string of traps made to catch everything from opossums to bobcats or coyotes in Pratt County.

“The main reason I got into trapping, three years ago, was for wildlife management,” Laha said. “That’s when pheasant and quail populations were really, really low and I wanted to give them the best chance I could to reproduce by reducing the number of predators.”

Laha, Wildlife Outfitting and Operations program coordinator at Pratt Community College, said studies in other states have shown that animals such as raccoons and opossums destroy an alarming amount of quail, pheasant and turkey nests every spring. Some southern studies have had 100 percent nest destruction.

“It’s not just (pheasant and quail), but it’s any ground-nesting bird, like meadowlarks and others,” Laha said as he turned from pavement to gravel roads. The Clearwater native, who got a degree in wildlife management at Fort Hays State, said many species of ground-nesting birds are in population declines across America because of lack of habitat and the nest destruction it brings.

As that habitat for the birds is reduced, it becomes much easier for nest predators to find and consume clutches of eggs. Laha said populations for animals such as raccoons, which are highly adaptable, have been on the increase for many years.

Laha said most people would be surprised at just how high predator populations are in much of Kansas these days. Over the past three years he’s taken about 50 predators off a 400-acre property he hunts and traps, and said there are always plenty around after Kansas’ Nov. 15-Feb. 15 fur harvesting season ends.

Trapping problematic animals

There are also plenty of landowners who contact trappers such as Borror and Laha, needing the densities of some furbearers reduced.

“The biggest thing I get around here are calls from people with beaver problems, they’re getting a lot of damage,” he said. “Usually if they let you on to trap beaver, they’ll want you to trap about everything else, too.”

Their natural instinct to dam moving water has many Kansas beavers clogging overflow pipes on ponds and lakes. When a big rain then comes, the impoundment floods, which can spread into crop fields. The holes they dig into banks can eventually cave in, which can cause problems, as can the mess left by dozens of trees felled along streams and lakes.

Such requests concerning problematic beaver have been fewer the past few years, though. Borror said beaver problems across most of Kansas dropped dramatically several years ago because of drought, which makes the animals that often grow to 40 or 50 pounds more vulnerable to predators.

The vulnerability of newborn calves to coyotes can also create a ready demand for trappers. The financial losses some ranchers can get from such predation can be pretty high.

About five winters ago, Elk County rancher Greg Pickett said he lost six calves to a pack of coyotes in a few weeks. Within about 10 months, those calves could could have been sold for $1,000 or more. That doesn’t take into account the future herd production any of those female calves could have brought to Pickett’s herd down the road.

“Once they get started, it’s hard to stop them,” said Pickett, who enlisted the help of a animal control specialist from Kansas State. Once he’d confirmed the calves were killed by coyotes, he helped Pickett learn to better protect his herd. Though an avid outdoorsman, the rancher was amazed at the high coyote population in his area.

“That year we trapped (or shot) 52 coyotes within two miles of my house,” he said, adding he thinks he has lost one calf to a coyote this winter.

A few weeks ago, an area rancher contacted Laha and asked him to remove some coyotes that were pestering his cows as they calved. The first night, Laha’s traps caught three coyotes. He’s had people who have lost chickens and domestic ducks ask for his help.

When he figures in the cost of his trapping equipment, time and fuel, Laha knows he’ll have far more invested in every coyote, bobcat and raccoon he’s caught that they are worth.

Some of the pelts he kept for educational purposes in the classes he teaches about wildlife. Others he sells just so something good has come from the animal.

Borror hasn’t trapped as much as he has some years, but he will take his hides to market and plans on trapping next year, too.

“They bring what they bring,” he said. “I guess the main thing is that trapping gets in your blood, you learn to love it even though it’s a lot of work. I guess every time you leave the house it’s kind of like Christmas morning because you don’t know what you’ve going to catch. A lot of us like to do it, and we’ll do it no matter what the (financial) reward.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2016 at 1:46 PM with the headline "Low fur prices mean trappers afield for other reasons."