Kent Weil

The wild fur market is going into the 2026-27 trapping season with a lot to be thankful for. It’ll certainly be a good year to trap bobcats, otter, red fox and mink. But if you trap mostly staple Midwestern fur, such as muskrat, coyote, or raccoon? Maybe not so much.
As has been the case for a while, the majority of buyers at the FHA have been Chinese – or at least brokering for the Chinese. Over the past few years, more and more millennials in China have reached a stage in life where their buying power is coming into serious play.

Bobcat harvest slid slightly in Illinois this season, but interest in the limited number of permits issued by DNR each fall continues to rise.
A record 9,700 trappers and hunters applied for the 2,000 bobcat permits available for the 2025-26 season, which ended Feb. 15. In all, 654 tags were filled.

Halfway through the 2026-26 bobcat season, the Illinois DNR has reported the harvest to be “uneventful,” with roughly one-third of the anticipated harvest tagged.
At the Jan. 1 mark, a total of 195 bobcats had been harvested, a number that puts trappers and hunters on pace to match or exceed last season’s record harvest of 649.

The 10th Illinois bobcat season won’t see the changes previous seasons have, but interest in securing one of the 2,000 hunting and trapping permits distributed by DNR is expected to remain high.
The application period for 2025-26 permits opens Sept. 1 and runs through Sept. 30. According to DNR Furbearer Biologist Stan McTaggart, last year’s season ran smoothly with no hiccups and he sees no problems this year.

If you are a trapper in Illinois or basically the entire Midwest, the last couple of years is not what you want to see in the wild fur industry.
The collapse of the coyote market in 2021, followed by the rapid rise and equally sharp drop in the beaver market, leaves trappers without a viable wild fur market – at least nothing of a lot of consequence. Since the dismal results of the June 17-19 Fur Harvesters Auction, little has changed over the summer. But the big surprise of this year’s auction was skunks.