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Thinning the population or will you do something with the pelts? I got a real pretty boar coon this summer that would have made a real nice hat if I knew how

Thinning the population and training the dogs mostly. We used to always skin them out and they would keep the pelts to sell at the end of season, but anymore they're not worth enough to justify the time skinning. We tossed them in the back of their truck and I never asked what they're doing with them this year. My brother kept a hide from a coon he trapped in that same timber last year and he's working on some moccasins/ boot covers but I don't think he's finished them.

Nice, we hunt rabbits, but I haven’t been out in a few years. We had a beagle named Bandit, and he made it so easy.

This brings back some of my fondest memories of my childhood, of all-nighters in the bush with my Dad and the hounds. Half of our first house was paid for through the sale of these pelts and other furry critters we trapped. I still remember the sound of Dan and Ann baying a quarter mile off, having treed their first one for the night as we walked toward the bush through a hundred different corn fields. I could write a book about the dramas that played out. Shooting a big boar that fell into a slough and my Dad having to kick it off Dan’s face because it was latched on to him and holding his head under water. The thwack of a well placed shot from a Cooey .22 and the thud of the animal hitting the ground. Seeing constellations in the sky that have not changed in the 45 years since.

That's awesome, thanks for sharing the pictures. I wish it was still that way, where a man could generate income from the woods. But modern society has decided that real fur that came from the natural environment and has a story behind it is somehow less ethical and fashionable than petroleum-based clothing manufactured by third-world child labor.