Tyrone Ewig is a heavy-equipment operator at construction sites during the brief summer on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a job he unenthusiastically describes as ''pushing dirt from point A to point B.''
Over the long winters he reverts to a way of life he clearly prefers, living in a cabin heated only by a wood-fired stove, struggling through three and four feet of snow in temperatures that regularly dip 20 and 30 degrees below zero Fahrenheit to trap the fur-bearing animals that still abound in the hundreds of square miles of forests around here.
Today he is marketing the results of a season's work: the skins of 31 muskrats, two minks, three coyotes and one bobcat. Mr. Ewig is here with several dozen other trappers at the twice-yearly Amasa fur auction. They tend to dress alike, wearing heavy, rubber-soled boots and flannel shirts with multiple layers of undershirt showing at the neck. Almost all the men keep their hats on indoors.
Beaver Pelts as Money
It was furs that first brought Europeans to the U.P., as today's residents call the Upper Peninsula. They sought beaver to make fur felt for tall hats and mink, otter, fox and raccoon for coats for the well-to-do in the East and across the Atlantic. In the mid-1700's, beaver pelts substituted for money at northern frontier posts.
In a history of his native state, Bruce Catton wrote of the English: ''When the King's agents looked at Michigan, all they could see was the animals whose skins were adorned with valuable fur.'' Indeed, the French founded the city of Detroit as a military post to control the fur trade.Continue reading the main story
The fur trade is still an important sideline in this scenic but poor region of worked-out copper and iron mines, where the official unemployment rate is 19 percent and local bankers say the real number is around 25 percent.
''There's not a lot of work around, so it's something to do,'' said Jeff Fonteccio, a sometime automobile mechanic in nearby Iron Mountain, Mich.
''It's a hobby that pays for itself and then a little,'' said Art Villeneuve, who said that he and a partner grossed about $2,500 a year from trapping. Old Methods Persist
Modern life has intruded little on the trapper's ways. Snowmobiles speed men from trap to trap, but the final approach must be made on snowshoes. Chemical lures work in the warmer months, but are useless in the cold and snow.
Mr. Fonteccio said he set his traps the way the hunters have from time immemorial, along animal paths he has found by following tracks in the snow. ''It took me 10 years to learn how to trap fox, but if there's one in the area I'll get him overnight,'' he said.
The state's Department of Natural Resources tries to make sure that animal populations are not reduced below desirable levels. Trappers must tag the pelts of some species in short supply, such as bobcat, so officials can keep track of the number taken. Typically, they complain that the official limits are too conservative.
This has been a difficult winter for trappers, as the sparse stocks of furs hanging on racks inside the U.P. Sport and Fur Corporation building attest. Roy Koski, one of the two brothers that runs the nonprofit trading center, estimated, ''This sale probably won't be worth more than $5,000.'' Some past sales have totaled more than $50,000, but the severe cold and deep soft snow that blanketed the ground from mid-December through early February discouraged all by the most ardent trappers.
''The animals were out there, all right,'' Mr. Koski said. ''It's the people who wasn't.'' Interest Rates and Inventories
The curse of a world far away, the high interest rates that plague the industrialists of the Middle West and the promoters on Wall Street also caused pain in the forests of the peninsula.
John Kulish, a fur buyer from Sturgeon Bay, Wis., explained that nobody wanted to hold inventories. Beaver processors, for example, already have one-year backlogs of pelts and do not want to stock any more. ''So guys like me have got to wait a year to get paid,'' he said. ''At 20 percent interest rates, that's expensive.'' The result is that the price of a good beaver skin has dropped to about $25 from $50 two years ago.
The shift in fashion to coats made of long-haired animals such as fox and racoon has also pushed down the price of short-haired animals such as beaver and muskrat. Although the trappers supply the raw material for the wealthy and fashion-conscious, none of them were wearing fur, nor are they likely to. Donald Aberly explained that the price of the finished product put it out of reach.
The auctioneer, Chester Benson, began his singsong chant: ''Fifty, fifty, who'll give me fifty-five; who'll say five, five, who'll say five.'' And Tyrone Ewig nervously fingered the small slips of paper with the numbers of his lots.
The bidding on his 31 muskrats, known locally as ''mushrats,'' stalls at $100. He has the right to refuse the offer. ''Let 'em go,'' he yells. The two mink fetch $35, the bobcat, $30, and the three coyotes, $135. He adds up the numbers: $300.
Was it worth it? ''Well, I'm not a professional, I'm still learning,'' he replied defensively. Then he brightened. ''Besides, I had 150 days in the woods and you can't beat that.''Continue reading the main story