Thread: Possum Trapping

Not sure if anyone will remember me. Just wanted to update this with a-bit more about what I ended up doing regarding possums. Its been almost 3.5 years since I had to leave NZ and i’m back home in Scotland now. I did spend a couple years in Aus learning then working as a shearer in that time but thats another story.

Ive not really got great dates etc written down but ill try piece together another 6 months of updates without boring people.

So to take it back to my last update which was late 2017 I believe this is what followed.

I pulled all my traps from the bottom of the land i was on and went to the top of a big hill. I was there for about 2 weeks and I done really well.

I had started skinning any skin i thought was good for it. When i went on hols with my family when they came to visit I went into a good few shops that sold products made from possum fur and skins and seen all what they making and doing with the fur. And i also seen the price tag. Cushions 2 skins 200. 4 skins 350, moccasins 1/2 skins 100+.
Meanwhile i was getting $10 on a good day from 2 plucked possums. And honestly it hurt seeing that.

When i came back I ordered my first tanning kit and picked out 6 skins. Used a 20l bucket. It was chrome and something sulphate tanning. Made some boards with nails. And made a wee workshop for it all in this old building.

Took about 20 days for the process. And they turned out alright tbh. Nowhere near the quality from the pros but it did tan them. Played about with them a-bit and asked a few folks opinions. Then started another cycle of 6.
This time they came out quite a bit better still along way to go but definite progress from the first batch.

In the mean time of doing the tanning i was still trapping and tbh I was skinning alot of possums i caught and rolling them in the freezer. (This was a mistake as alot of them were ‘reds’ and had rubbish skins) But i had my sites set on making more money im not gonna lie so i focused more on this than selling the wool. At some stage I ended up trapping with a mate we bought more traps and he used his truck which was really good. Although i wouldnt recommend trapping with someone it is much funner but the spoils are way less. I think we had 80 traps. Best night was between 35-40 possums in a night. Id gotten fairly decent at trapping but had defo realised there wasnt a great future in trapping youve gotta move a lot and set a lot of traps to make end meet from that solely. Although poison i think you could wipe out areas much quicker than traps but you need land available and a good set of wheels.

Back to the tanning… id been really thinking hard about what to make and i know my skills are really poor in arts and crafts. So I went for something easy. And something i never had to spend much capitol on as i was broke.
So I tried to make Insoles for your shoes.

Printed off shoe sizes done a bunch of research on what type of backing to use and which glue/adhesive. And bought the basic tools.
Also researched prices of people selling them. And checked out their quality.

must of taken me 1.5hrs to do my first one. The glue process was a pain in the backside i remember that. Ended up making a few pairs gave them all away to people close to me they weren't good enough to sell. And i was getting feedback on them. The whole process was much harder than i thought it would be and took longer.

My third tanning cycle i ramped up the production a bit bought a 100l odd bin and tanned 30 skins. Before doing this i bought probably my best ever purchases. It was a water blaster and a staple gun. Scrapping the skins etc and using possum boards were gonna be difficult with too many possums at once. The waterblaster took everything off in under a minute and you could stretch the possums out quicker with a staple gun.

I made many sets of insoles out of the 30 hides, it took ages to put them together and I still hadn't found a good adhesive but I was getting a bit neater and i managed to sell a good few pairs between $20 and $40.

Memory's abit hazy but Somewhere around this time a brother from the rugby team asked me if i wanted to come try penning up in the shearing sheds and i went for the day. Ill never forget the first time i walked in the shed i honestly fell in love with it right there and then. Id never seen anything like it before and i really enjoyed the hard work. Had a great day out and he asked me if i wanted to be his presser for the up coming season that was starting in 4 or so weeks.
For the next few weeks i carried on trapping and was keeping alot of skins. I also bought alot more tanning gear and ended up tanning 100 skins at once which was way too much i wasnt ready for it and they basically went to waste I couldnt work with them.

I also had my final year of a working holiday visa coming to and end. And much to my disappointment I couldnt get a visa that would allow me to continue trapping and my vision of building a business selling products. I also for sure needed more capitol to make it. If i could of found someone to make better quality items for me and if i was in a position to pay them upfront id of liked to of seen where i could of taken this. My short term goal was to get enough products to have a stall at a market where the cruise ships come in then see where that took me from there. But sadly and always regrettably I didn't and my possum journey basically end there. Maybe it will start again one day I do miss it the hunting side of it.

I always plan on going back to new zealand its a special place theres nothing quite like it that ive seen.

I wanna thank again the people in this thread for their advise and I hope that my story helps someone looking to get into trapping and can show what can potentially become of that.

Scotsman