Bob Smalser
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 139
- Location
- Hood Canal, Washington
The hat companies were trying to replace the dwindling supply of Nutria fur which was superior to beaver.
Although I'm a forest biologist today, as a kid I paid for a couple years of college from the proceeds of a trapline, and have some experience grading and selling furs. The notion that nutria underfur is superior to beaver or vice versa isn't that simple. How cold the climate the species is adapted to and how cold the winter the individual animal experiences is closer to the mark, because cold triggers the development of more and finer downy underfur.
Nutria is the South American muskrat (although it also fills the beaver's niche there), a larger, more adaptable tropical animal that eats both plants and woody cambium and was introduced into the US in fur farms after the decline of native beaver numbers as Woodfluter describes, later escaping into the wild, becoming a pest throughout the Southern US. As the best quality fur comes from only the extreme northern and southern areas of the nutria's range where winters are relatively cold, much commercial nutria fur is trapped along our Gulf Coast and in Northern Patagonia. As it was also introduced into European fur farms and has become a pest there in the warmer regions, I imagine it's also trapped there commercially.
If you browse turn-of-the-century clothing catalogs like the 1902 Sears reprint, you'll find some of the best hats are made from nutria fur and not beaver. That's because there weren't many beaver remaining to trap, as fish and game laws were in their infancy then, and beavers didn't resurge in numbers until a combination of strict seasons and catch limits, lowered demand for beaver hats, and suburbanization of the US hunting culture.
The material sold to felt makers in bales is only the downy underfur. To obtain that from the stretched and dried pelt sold by the trapper, the fur is shaved off and the long, oily guard hairs separated from the underfur. The underfur on the animal's abdomen is the finest and the most uniform and light in color.....hence the term silver belly.