One of the buyers, out of Porcupine Plain, at the trappers table in 2015. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski.
It’s been a lackluster year for fur prices and trapping conditions, and that’s giving northern trappers low expectations heading into this weekend’s annual fur table in Prince Albert.
International fur prices are expected to bottom out this year. In addition, high November temperatures have left trappers like La Ronge’s Gregg Charles with very small hauls of fur pelts at a time when they’re usually very busy.
Charles is the Vice-President of the Northern Saskatchewan Trapper’s Association, and said warm weather keeps animals from “priming” their fur which makes it higher quality.
“It was warm weather and no snow so you can’t really tell where the animals are going, no tracks whatsoever so you didn’t know where to go start setting traps so that affected just about every trapper,” he said.
Charles said people even farther north are also struggling.
“The ice wasn’t thick enough for them to go around and set their traps where they usually set them.”
The trapper’s table is a once a year event to negotiate with four different fur buyers and get the best prices for this year’s furs.
“Fur buyers used to have a Christmas spirit, they’d buy it a little higher than regular prices but nowadays it’s nothing, just buy at whatever price they can get,” he said.
Charles said it’s not a very good year to make money, and because furs don’t keep their quality for long there’s little chance to reserve them until prices go up.
He said beaver pelts are worth so little right now that selling for wholesale isn’t profitable. Instead, people are tanning them for local women to make mitts.
The economic issues associated with trapping make it tough to justify doing it full time this year, but Charles said he and others plan to head out on the trapline occasionally.
“They won’t be able to make money but we just love going out in the bush and stuff like that, that’s the way they culturally were and still are,” he said.
The Trappers Table runs from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday at the Senator Allan Bird Gym on the Prince Albert Grand Council Urban Reserve.
Arts and craft display tables will be there as well, as PAGC is co-hosting.