[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Perhaps it's just a total lack of fur-hunting in Florida but when I was reading a lot of gun magazines in this period (no internet so I read hand-me-down copies of Guns&Ammo, Shooting Times and American Rifleman along many other miscellaneous things) I didn't read about fur-hunting there either.

The article I read about coyote-hunting out west had that being done for bounties/government payments and the fur was not harvested.

That sounds right. In 1930s to 1960s Maine, there was a bounty on bobcat and black bear. Coyotes were just getting common* there by the time social mores has changed enough for bounties to end. Of note in connection with that is the fact that protective measures, such as a limited season and even a licence to hunt, started applying to black bears the moment they stopped being a pest with a bounty on their heads. Quite a jump, eh?

More southerly counties in Maine seem to have retained a bounty on black bears into the 70s, though I think that the Sheriff or Chief of Police needed to approve someone to act as his agent to go after a black bear that had been causing trouble in a suburban area. Incidentally, Maine County Sheriffs in the 80s seem to have still retained a pretty free hand to deal with animals that weren't the subject of politically significant conservation efforts. For example, they can appoint people as coyote hunters for the county and allow them to use artificial lights for night hunts to that end.

Given the presence of one (out of three) County Commissioner in Aroostook County on the predator hunting party, not to mention that former guests include a State Senator, several State Representatives and the State Attorney General and an Associate Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, I think that Clayborn Allen arranges for Sheriff Darrel Crandall and his replacement, Sheriff Edgar Wheeler, to appoint him and his guests as official county coyote control agents for the duration of the hunting party.

It's not corruption. It's a courtesy. And he does donate generously, not just to the campaign funds of courteous Sheriffs, but also to the Maine State Police, Game Wardens and the Aroostook County Sheriff's Office. Why, he's donated shipments of high-quality Smith & Wesson handcuffs and revolvers from the Houlton plant** to all of the above.

*As noted earlier, I discovered that they got there in the 1930s and were common by the 1960s.
**To which he is the landlord, through some land he owns there.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If you've got your Maine sources about fur-hunting that's fine and go right ahead but it seems terribly, terribly odd to me, especially in the context of blood-sport for the wealthy. I thought pelts were mostly gathered by trapping and it was an activity for pretty marginal back-woodsers.

Fur-hunting is mostly done by trapping, but assuming local laws allow it, trappers have often added to their supply by shooting. Everyone in the rural areas of Aroostook County in which my adventure is set will know some family which supplemented their income through trapping and sale of fur, especially back in the Great Depression (and earlier).

Men like Clayborn Allen, his brother and his businessmen, politician, lawyer and banker friends, however, will not have any commercial need for the fur. However, that does not mean that they have no interest in it. Especially if they do not need to skin the animals themselves.

Clayborn has an uncle on his mother's side, Henri Sinclair, who was born rather simple-minded. There is nothing wrong with either his manual dexterity or his work ethic, however. Clayborn assisted him in getting a part-time job for the local school distrct and he often employs him for odd jobs besides. One of them is cleaning and skinning game for him and his friends, as well as curing and tanning pelts.

Finishing the pelts and making them into a nice pair of gloves, scarf, hat, lining or even a fur coat is done by an old widowed cousin*, Rachel (Jackson) Denis and her daughter-in-law, Sherilynn (Denis) Cyr, who lives up in Frenchville. Mrs. Denis is an artist with fur and her daughter-in-law is very good.

Even if a man might be able to afford shopping at exclusive furriers, many people will still be more impressed by a gift of a fox scarf or bobcat mittens when they shot the animal themselves. They don't even have to be strange blood-sporting rich men for it. I know I would far rather like to own a nice trophy made from the fur of an animal I shot than just a bought fox scarf.

The coyote fur is less desirable than either fox or bobcat, of course, but Sinclair usually tries to harvest it nevertheless if the animal was healthy. If the guest doesn't want something made out of it, the coyote** fur goes to decorate the cabin or is kept by Sinclair, who has a pretty nice collection of coyote fur wear by now.***

Edit: I know some people in Iceland who shoot foxes and while the .22 LR is overwhelmingly popular (it's not as if fox hunters here can expect to encounter anything heavier than 11 lbs. fox, with most animals well under that), there is a vibrant community of shooters who favour .22 WMR, .22 Hornet and the newer varmint calibers, for their flat trajectory out to any range where a human being can expect to spot a fox, and for their fur-friendly natures, which match the .22 LR with proper load and bullet selection.

Not all fox hunters here harvest the fur, but people who do it for sport are actually fairly likely to do so, especially if they fairly seldom have the opportunity to hunt anything other than birds. It's a really nice trophy that you can have made into a memento of your hunting trip. Even those shooters who do not harvest the fur are often careful to select a bullet and caliber that will not blow through the foxes with graphic terminal effects. It's a sportsmanship thing for many of them, I think, where humane killing is extended to mean not just with a minimal of pain for the animal, but also with a minimum of gruesome mess.

TL;DR: it's more elegant to hunt with a load suitable for the target, killing cleanly and without unnecessary splatter.

*Her grandmother and his were sisters.
**Maine coyotes have a lot of wolf in them, by some accounts 22% of their DNA comes from fairly recent wolf ancestors up in Canada. The winter pelt of a Maine coyote is actually far from ugly.
***The annual hunting party tradition among Allen's friends started in 1972, but has been at the end of December and focused on predator hunting only since 1979. That makes for eight previous occasions, with this hunting party being the ninth.