388 Department of Conservation of Louisiana 



Grading Fur Pelts 



Every trapper cannot expect to be a fur grader, but it 

 is very necessary that he know something about the man- 

 ner in which furs are graded by the raw pelt dealers, as 

 grading the pelts of fur animals determines their value 

 in the marketing. What follows is a concensus of opinion 

 as to what constitutes furs as the fur market men view 

 the skins sent them by the trapper. 



It is hardly necessary to say here that some exper- 

 ienced graders judge pelts in one way and other profes- 

 sionals differ in their methods of judging, and what is set 

 down in this chapter is written more as a desire to ac- 

 quaint the trapper-reader with a brief outline of what 

 the graders look for when handling a fur pelt so as to fix 

 a price on it, rather than attempt to set what might be 

 construed a "standard grade" for Louisiana furs. 



Prime Pelts 



There are two kinds of skins," prime" and "unprime," 

 that are sent into the fur market by the man who takes 

 the animal in his traps and the price the trapper receives 

 depends first of all on this first classification. A prime 

 skin must have a bright, healthy, reddish flesh-colored 

 pelt and on the other side it must be very well furred 

 with no rubbed spots, cuts or holes. The skin must have 

 been properly stretched to come within this rating and 

 in size must come up to what constitutes a full-grown 

 adult animal. 



Unprime Pelts 



A pelt is usually classed as an unprime skin when the 

 pelt side exhibits sufficient characteristics to grade them 

 as such. A pelt that falls into this classification is usually 

 bluish, instead of being reddish flesh-colored, and graders 

 usually refer to such skins as "blue." Unprime pelts are 

 frequently graded as Nos. 2's, 3's or 4's, according to size 

 and the quantity of fur shown on the opposite side of 

 the skin. 



The blue pelt, however, almost invariably denotes 

 that the animal was taken at a time of the year when 



