GREAT OUTDOORS: Wild fur auction at Kidron a success

The Ohio State Trappers Association had its annual fur auction in Kidron last Saturday. It was the only one this winter after the January 10 Bucyrus sale was cancelled. According to Shawn Bentley, OSTA's fur auction coordinator, more than two dozen volunteers, including Ryan Sprunger, who kept a tractor running to produce electricity for the facility that was having a power outage, allowed the show to go on for the approximately 12 buyers and 70 sellers present. The fashion industry, world politics and economy control the prices paid for wild furbearer species. Generally, they fall into long-haired land species and short-haired water species, with the latter doing comparatively better. Average prices paid for the best grade of each Ohio-legal furbearer offered at Kidron included: beaver, $39.89; coyote, $18.77; raccoon, $5.84; muskrat, $3.52; mink. $25.44 (males)/$15.78 (females); red fox, $24; gray fox, $29; opossum, $1.78; otter, $47.25; and skunk, $17.14. In Ohio, the following fur bearing animals are legally trapped and in some cases hunted: coyote, red fox, gray fox, raccoon, opossum, mink, weasel, muskrat, beaver, river otter and striped skunks. Bobcat, fisher and badger are trapped elsewhere in North America but remain protected in Ohio, due to their current low numbers. Of the three, bobcats are the closest to having a large and widespread enough population to soon be able to sustain a managed harvest. Many furbearers reach nuisance or unhealthy numbers if not controlled by hunting or trapping pressure. They provide a useful, sustainable and beautiful product, similar to the hard-to-argue need to control deer or local Canada geese. Beavers can flood roads, timber plots and farm fields or damage dam, stream, pond and wetland banks when they burrow into these locations, disrupting transportation routes, drowning crops or causing expensive shoreline repairs. Muskrats, their much smaller relatives, often do the same types of burrowing into the edges of waterways but on a lesser scale and need to be controlled when overabundant. Raccoons have become horribly overpopulated ever since the prices for their pelts dropped as a result of changing fashion trends and more recently due to the war between Ukraine and Russia. Those countries are the largest users of these pelts for the warm jackets that these heavily furred animals can provide. Without the annual harvests of this species, they have spread canine distemper to fox and pets. Many have been seen locally wandering in obvious distress, prompting calls to local law enforcement officers to dispatch them before they have dangerous encounters with pets and children. Raccoon are also reservoirs of rabies and require medicated doses of rabies vaccine to be distributed to control the expansion of the deadly disease. In their currently overabundant state, they also are taking a heavy toll on ground-nesting birds, turtles and preying on other vulnerable species. Beavers have been steadily expanding into northwest Ohio, following streams and the lakeshore to establish new colonies. They have taken residence on some of the islands, including Kelleys, South Bass and Middle Bass, and are found in large numbers in the expansive coastal wetlands at Magee Marsh and Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge. Otters often live in the same habitat that beavers create. One was recently photographed in Howard Marsh and documented living in local rivers. They are not regarded as much of a pest until they take residence in a location where they prey upon someone's fish in their pond or at hatcheries.