Best prices are gotten for pelts that are clean, have intact eyes and ears, and have been properly stretched and dried on a standard sized board. When I trapped I was getting top prices even for pelts that had large holes shot through them.
I would case the animal out, roughly sew up any holes in the hide, and then flesh on a beam with a two handled scraper, using lots of sawdust to soak up the fat. I would also turn the lips and trim them to the edge of the black line and take all the cartilage out of the ears and nose. I then took the rough stitching out and then washed the entire hide in warm water with Dawn dish soap before letting is soak for an hour in COLD water with Dawn. Take the hide out and rinse it inside and out to get every last vestige of soap out of it and then hang fur side out to drip dry for a couple of hours.
I then tumble the hide in dry saw dust to remove most of the moisture, before blow drying the hide with the blower of a shop vac to blast out the major bits of sawdust. Now is when I would take good waxed thread and really sew any holes up tight -making sure that you are not getting any fur caught up in the stitches.
When pinning to the board you put them on fur side in for the first day and then take them off and turn them CAREFULLY fur side out and pin them back on. It is then that I take a fur brush and the blower on the shop vac and brush AGAINST the grain of the fur while blow drying to get the underfur really fluffed up. Leave on the boar for a week in dry weeather and then take off and send to auction.
Sounds like a lot of work and it is. Each animal required about 30 minutes worth of actual hands on time (not including soaking time and drip drying time). But for me it paid off in that my prices were 15 to 20 dollars higher than the average paid.
I once submitted a small red fox that I had literally shot in half with a 22-250. After sewing, washing, fluffing etc. I still was able to get nearly $40.00 for that pelt in an auction where the average was just over $20.
I used North American Fur Auctions nafa.ca/
