I have bought small mink hides about 8 inches long and 6 inches wide at the base--just as you would stretch a muskrat. Take the same hide, stretch it 15 or 18 inches long, and you have added 25 per cent. to the value of the hide. I shipped two large mink hide a short while ago. They were near of a size and color as could be. One was about 12 inches long, the other about 22 inches and well handled otherwise. One brought 100 per cent. more than the other.
NICELY HANDLED WISCONSIN SKINS.
I take common laths heavy as I can get, saw them in two in the center, plane them smooth, taper the ends of the two round the edges, make a tapering center piece, stretch the hide over the two outside pieces. Draw the hide down as far as you possibly can. See that the nose does not slip off the end of the boards. Now tack the hide on each side of the tail, putting in 4 tacks, allowing room for your center piece.
Now you are ready for your center piece. Insert it at the bottom, press it through gradually, but be careful not to tear the hide from the tacks that you have already driven in. The center piece will not always go through the full length. The size of the mink regulates that part of it. One must have different sizes of boards or laths. Now turn your hide over, pull down the legs of the mink as tight as you can and tack, using several tacks. I use large tacks No. 12 three-quarters of an inch long, being sharp as needles.
Most trappers use the one piece stretching board, as they claim the three piece too much trouble. If the one piece is carefully made, planed on both sides, and about three-eighths inch thick, it is a good board. A one fourth board after being planed on both sides is very good.
In this country there are two varieties, which some naturalists have supposed were distinct species; one small, dark-colored, common in the Northern and Eastern States and Canada; the other larger, with lighter-colored, coarser and less valuable fur, common in the Western and Southern States. The dark-colored variety measures from eleven to eighteen inches in length from the nose to the root of the tail, and has a tail from six to ten inches in length.