140 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



Raccoons 



Raccoons, as I have told in the account of dyeing and dressing, 

 have recently come in high favor. In the '8o's, the demands of 

 the trade ran to 600,000 a year ; but the trade to-day could use 

 many more 'coons ; and the 'coon is so easily domesticated, he is 

 now farmed. His family runs from 5 to 7 yearly. He weighs 

 25 pounds, full grown, and measures 2 to 3 feet. Though he pesters 

 the vegetable garden and the sweet corn patch, he pays for his 

 depredations in frogs, toads, mice, insects and pests destroyed ; 

 and when domesticated is easily satisfied with vegetables and fruit 

 of a discard grade. The best 'coon comes from the States south 

 of the Canadian boundary. The little striped 'coon known as 

 "civet" is now classified in the trade as Bassarisk. It hardly needs 

 to be told the 'coon burrows in hollow trees and logs. The best 

 fur is from Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri and Nova Scotia, and is 

 the grizzled dark bluish with the well-pencilled black brown stripe. 

 The pity is that in 'coon hunting so much fur is taken unprime that 

 it is sheer waste of the life and profits. Prices ran in 1920, in Mon- 

 treal for 43,000 from $30 to #5 and 30^ to nothing; in St. Louis 

 from $14.50 for Minnesotas, to $10 for Eastern, $4.50 for Southern. 



Badger 



Badger was just being tried out as a fur when I left the West 

 and was in great favor. To-day, it is in equal favor in the East. 

 The fur is a yellowish gray with over hairs of light brown and drab, 

 white at the tip. The beauty of this fur is its depth and downy under 

 pelage. The badger is low set and like an Eastern woodchuck. The 

 claws on his forefeet are terrible scratchers and the badger holes 

 of the prairie were our horror, when riding off the road at night. The 

 badger is a great eater of insects and frogs, but he is also a pest 

 to the Western farmer ; and as the prairies are more and more cut 

 up into farms, I see his doom sealed ; and considering the number 

 of accidents ascribable to the badger holes, I have nothing to say. 



