Greg Tucker, The Daily News Journal, Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Early explorers came down the Cumberland River in search of skins for mostly European buyers. The market today is still, European, by way China.
The first documented expedition of British colonials into what became Middle Tennessee was in 1766-67. They were the longhunters in search of fur and they were impressed by the abundance of game and the quality of the pelts. On this, and a second expedition in 1771, the longhunters – Samuel Barton, Gaspar Mansker, Joseph Drake, the Bledsoe brothers and Uriah Stone – prepared the earliest maps and gave their own names to the various creeks and rivers that flowed into the Cumberland River.
By the 1800’s, the expanding settlements and land clearing for agriculture pushed the big game and the longhunters further west. (According the imaginative Goodspeed history, Samuel Wilson shot the last elk in Rutherford County about 1790. The bison disappeared before Tennessee Statehood.) Small game trapping continued, however, for food, hides and sport.
In the early months of World War II, much of rural Rutherford County was still in the grip of the Great Depression. Cash was scarce and many families lived on what they could grow., raise or take from the wild. On February 1942, Mrs. Goldie Reed of the Floraton community in southeast Rutherford County found that one of her hens had died. The hen was too long dead to be eaten. Mrs. Reed told Wayne, her ten-year-old son, to dispose of the carcass.
But Chester Reed had another idea.
“My daddy told me to take the hen to the creek and set a trap,” remembers Wayne Reed. “I had no trapping experience, but I went to the old Floraton mill pond and staked the hen in several inches of water with a small ‘leaf trap’ on each side.”
The Floraton Mill was a steam-powered grist mill in the 1900’s. The pond on Travis Creek, originally named the West Fork of Cripple Creek and now called Murray Branch, provided water for the boiler. The four-story mill was demolished before 1940.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Floraton also had a sawmill, general store, post office and school. The community was named for Flora Travis, the daughter of the postmaster. The Floraton School was known locally as ‘Possum Trot School’.
“It was cold Friday morning when I ran down to the pond to check my traps,” recalls Wayne. “The pond was frozen and I had to break through the ice. When I saw shiny black fur, I let our a holler. I’d caught a mink. I grabbed my prize and took off running home hollering as loud as I could. Scared Momma and several neighbors. They though I was hurt.
“The next morning, Saturday, we took the mink pelt to Murfreesboro. The fur trader, Mr. Jones from Walter Hill, worked from his truck parked on Saturdays at the northeast corner of South Maple and Vine Streets. He gave me $25 for my mink pelt. My daddy said, ‘Boy, now you got more money that I do!’ I thought he was teasing, but years later I realized that a lot of folks didn’t have $25 cash money back then,” explains Reed.
Reed didn’t have his money for long. “We walked up on the Square to The Hub Store where Sol Arbit sold me a leather jacket and a pair of leather boots that laced up over my ankles,” remembers Reed. “I still had a little money left and I was hooked on trapping.”
Prices paid for pelts during the war years were high because the furs and skins were being used for flight jackets and other apparel. “The trapping season was the same in the 1940s as it is today – mid-November to late February,” notes Reed. “I did a lot of trapping every season through high school. Sold it all to Mr. Jones. I got $4 for muskrat, $2 for a coon, 24 cents for a possum and usually $2 for a skunk, but a black skunk hide was worth $5. I caught several mink every season.”
During his school years, Reed was mostly water trapping using ‘leaf spring’ traps. “I baited with muskrat meat, chicken necks and fish,” Reed explains. “I learned how to adjust the trap release so it would not spring until the animal put his weight on the trap – about a two-pound pressure.”
Reed served three years in the Army before going to work for the telephone company in 1955. “During the 1950s and 1960s I did very little trapping. I was working and there was no market for the hides. But in the 1970s fur prices went up and I started setting both water and land traps, ” notes Reed. “I would run traps from 4 to 7 every morning and then spend all evening skinning , stretching and scraping hides. I had a shed in Floraton just for working hides.”
The 1970 prices were #1 per inch for coon pelts, $40 each for mink, $90 for a red fox and $40 for gray, $5 for muskrat and a bobcat pelt was worth $60. “You could even sell a top quality coyote hide for $25 in those years,” recalls Reed, “but a coyote pelt is worthless today.” (In the 1980s R.L. Howard at the Co-op furnished traps for coyote nuisance control.)
Land trapping with spring traps involves placing, concealing, securing and baiting. Wire snare traps, effective in water or on dry land, are much simpler to use and are favored by today’s trappers, including Reed. “I’ve used the snares in numerous locations around Rutherford and surrounding counties,” explains Reed. “The snares won’t freeze and are relatively easy to set on the animal slides and trails.” Snares were legalized in Tennessee in 1990.
Beginning in the 1970s, local trappers attended a ‘once-in-a-season’ sale at the Cedars of Lebanon State Park in Wilson County. Today there are three regional sales each season. The sale for Middle Tennessee trappers is now held in Alexandria, Tennessee in February.
“Over the last few years I have averaged annually about 50 raccoon, 10 mink, 20 fox and five bobcat,” notes Reed. “The raccoon population has increased tremendously since the 1940s when there were very few. Otters are also plentiful and bring about $60 per pelt. There were no otters when I began trapping. They were reintroduced around 1980. Also, beavers are now so common that the trapping season for beaver, like coyote and groundhogs, is year round with no limit.” The beaver pelts sell for about $10.
According to Reed, one of the best locales for water trapping otter, beaver and mink has been Bushnell Creek, east of Murfreesboro, from its cave source to the mouth of the East Fork of the Stones River.
State regulations now require that traps “must be inspected every 36 hours or less and animals removed.” Bobcat and otter pelts have to be tagged as to state of origin. Trappers must also carry written permission from landowners and make written reports and pay damages on ‘any domestic animals caught.’ Reed explains that the snares are ‘pet friendly’.
“I have recently release two dogs from snares. They were just waiting for me like they were leased or tied.”
Today most green pelts (skins that have not been scraped or stretched, usually frozen for shipment) are exported to China where they are processed. “China does the dirty work – scraping, tanning, whatever,” explains Reed. “The pelts then go to Europe, primarily France and Germany, where the fur and skins are used in the high end fashion industry.”
Local trappers, including Joe and Jeremy Barrett, agree that trapping “gets in your blood – it’s fun and challenging with some cash return.”
Notes Reed: “I’m still trapping at 81.”