PENNSYLVANIA Stagnant wild-fur market hurts interest in trapping

The number of trappers in the state has decreased significantly in the last 20 years.
ENOLA, Pa. (AP) -- The tens of thousands of animal pelts that have been stretched and dried in the white shed behind Jerry Johnson's ranch-style house have not been enough to keep him from losing at least $100,000 in 30 years of fur-trading.
Occasionally, the retired pipe insulator and avid trapper considers the stagnant fur-trading market and decides to quit the business that he loves, though he hasn't yet.
"These guys working here will tell you that it happens every year," said Johnson, 62, his eyes gleaming blue from beneath a muskrat-fur trooper hat.
Now, nearly 250 years after disputes over fur-trading rights brought the first blows between colonial armies in western Pennsylvania in the French and Indian War, Johnson is one of a dwindling number of hobbyists and die-hards who ply forests, fields and streams in hopes of snaring creatures from bobcats to beavers.
Few, if any, people make a living at trapping and fur trading since pelt prices crashed nearly two decades ago, and demand for farm-raised mink and fox pelts has practically eased wild fur out of the winter-clothing market.
Take John Epler. He has run the Epler Fur Co. near Pottsville for 27 years and has a day job running a crop-spraying rig.
Former trailblazers
Trappers, many working for the huge Hudson Bay Co., were the first Europeans to blaze many North American forests and give settlers footsteps to follow. But as prices for wild fur have foundered more recently, some traders and trappers have simply given up.
Joe Kosack of Pine Grove remembers paying bills during college with income from trapping, or putting the extra cash toward Christmas presents.
"Gosh, I don't know how many Christmases trapping was responsible for making the holiday brighter," said Kosack, 45, who quit about 10 years ago because of plummeting pelt prices and the rising cost of trapping equipment.
Reasons for fading
Some trappers blame the animal-protection movement for the drop in prices.
Some observers say wild-fur prices have suffered because of independent factors.
Russia, one of the biggest buyers of wild fur, has a tight economy. American clothing attitudes have waxed casual. And relatively new man-made fibers, such as fleece, and farm-raised animals are stiff competition.
Others say trapping is fading into obscurity without a new generation to carry it forward.
"I think it's dying on its own because there's not enough young people coming in to keep it going," Johnson said. "Trapping is very hard work. You couldn't make a living on it today; it's just impossible."
The price of a pelt of wild fur varies widely by geography -- pelts grow thicker in colder temperatures and at higher elevations, making them more valuable.
In the Rocky Mountain states, a stretched and dried bobcat pelt can fetch up to $300, Krause said. In contrast, a bobcat pelt from Pennsylvania is worth only about $30, Johnson said.
Twenty years ago, when prices were peaking, a red-fox pelt could fetch $50 in Pennsylvania, $30 more than today, he said.
The numbers
No nationwide statistics are tallied on the numbers of animals trapped and trappers licensed, and states vary widely on how and whether they license trappers or log trapping statistics. But Pennsylvania Game Commission officials and those in the industry say anecdotal evidence shows numbers are dropping.
For instance, trappers reported snaring well over 300,000 animals last season in Pennsylvania. In 1981, trappers caught 2.2 million muskrats, raccoons and opossums alone, according to the commission.
Krause estimates that about 250,000 people are currently trapping in the United States, about one-half or one-third of the number two decades ago.
In 1980, 93,000 people were licensed to hunt or trap foxes in Pennsylvania, and 83,000 were licensed to hunt or trap raccoons.
Based on surveys of people who buy those licenses today, an estimated 9,000 people are trapping in Pennsylvania, said Cheryl Trewella, a game commission spokeswoman.
If nothing else, trapping can claim at least one recent convert.
Trewella, who hunts, got into trapping about five years ago with a co-worker, Dan Lynch, who had learned to trap as a boy. Now the pair set and check traps before and after work, then skin, stretch and dry the pelts themselves.
Trewella, 45, loves it for the challenge.
"You have to figure out how to get an animal to walk onto an area of one-and-a-half inch square," she said.