Michigan's Die-Hard Fur Trappers Never Left
Their conference was filled with useful products like “Coon Chum,” “Coyote Urine,” and “Predator Paste"
Evart — Fur trapping sounds like something out of the American frontier, but it’s alive and well here in Michigan. To find out more, I visited the Michigan Trappers and Predator Callers convention in Evart.
It’s not your average convention by any means. Walking in, I was greeted by booths selling traps, books, and raccoon urine. Yep, you heard that right. Trappers often rely on a large variety of scents and baits, and some of the most interesting items on sale were bottles with names like “Coon Chum,” “Coyote Urine,” and “Predator Paste.”
What was even more fun was seeing people excitedly buying these ingredients.
Besides traps, there were two entire halls dedicated to furs and fur clothing. Every kind of animal was available for sale, from lush bobcat furs to full skunk pelts. And the prices were way higher than you would expect. Some pelts were going for hundreds of dollars!
You could also buy patterns for making your own fur hats, taxidermied animals, and heaps of fur-covered knickknacks.
The last section, besides a variety of vendors selling miscellaneous items like guns, pike spears, cast iron pans, and bacon-wrapped honey buns, was a section for live demonstrations of trapping.
To the uninitiated, trapping sounds pretty easy: Just put a steel trap in the woods and wait, right?
Wrong! Trappers spend hours studying the perfect place to set their traps, and each animal requires different tactics. If you want to hunt coyotes, you may be sitting in a field with a shotgun blowing on calls.
Hunting beavers, on the other hand, has you looking for entry points in wetlands and rivers. The amount of knowledge some of the old timers had was simply incredible.
But after a few hours walking around, I still had one question: Why spend so much time learning how to trap? Trapping is not nearly as common as it used to be, and is constantly at risk of being banned, as New Mexico recently did. And unlike other types of hunting, people aren’t in it for the meat.
So, what gives?
Asking around gave me a lot of answers. Some people want to get rid of nuisances, like beavers damming up creeks or coyotes eating their livestock. Others do it as a side hustle.
While the fur market has collapsed in recent years—due to a decline in fur use and geopolitical issues (Russia was one of the biggest fur markets before the war)—some people make a good chunk of change trapping by focusing on high-value furs. For example, bobcat fur prices went as high as $1,000 in some auctions last year.
Another group sees fur as a resource. Michigan gets really cold, and no matter what gear companies say, fur is still one of the best ways to stay warm in the winter. Serious outdoorsmen can often be seen wearing fur hats and gloves because of how warm they are.
Trapping gives them the ability to make their own clothing. It’s also more sustainable than faux fur. A well-conserved fur harvest, like we have in Michigan thanks to the efforts of the DNR, can yield top notch winter clothing that isn’t made from volatile and toxic materials needed to produce faux fur.
In an age that is increasingly sequestered from nature, it’s great to see that something as ancient as fur trapping still exists.
If you want to live out your mountain man fantasies, or if you just want a cool new hat, there’s no better place to get it than Michigan.
