where does that deer hide you sold go??

At least for the North-Central states probably to China (where it seems most commodities end up nowadays). I don't know if there's a market such as this for southern deer skins or not (I know an old buyer around here won't buy any any further south than Missouri because the hides were too thin and had too many tick bites). These buyers up northeast of the Twin Cities give a much nicer price than around here. The most I ever got for a nice hide was an Abe Lincoln, usually $3. I've home tanned some of the smaller deer skins we've gotten over the years but that gets old without a decent market. And living in town, de-hairing a deer hide is a mess...

Just what happens to that deerskin? | Star Tribune

I am a big trapper in Mn living on the st croix river. I get 5 for all my deer skins. All the other fur shipped to auction then sent out to china and russia

I may be a little off topic but do you ever advertise your trapping/hunting in on line classifieds? I only ask because I found someone advertising to come and hunt coyotes on people's properties. I also saw a week or so ago another ad to pick up a trapped rabbit for the meat/skin. CL and others are full of weirdos so I was wondering if this normal practice?

Yes for trapping it is normal practice as it is a business. It would be like asking to come get metal only difference is your coming over to trap animals which are pests and most land owners want gone. As far as the rabbit thing that's weird.

Admiral Alum- I've seen people runs ads on CL in my area offering to trap critters or shoot yotes. I don't know how successful they are in my rural areas. Landowners probably have their choice of people that they'll let in to hunt or trap. Pheasant hunting is big bussiness here in South Dakota. You can't get on decent pheasant land without rolling off at least a few Ben Franklins a day unless you're extremely tight with someone. I refuse to do that so I hunt the dregs of public land or "road hunting" which is legal here.

I've run ads on CL about trapping before. When muskrats were so high in prices a few years back, I ran an add saying I'd go in as a partner if they'd let me trap their wetland that had mrat huts (because that year our public sloughs around here were all dried up). Never got a taker. I ran an add a few years back towards landowners in a couple of very rural counties East River seeing if they would give me a break for my 2 young teenage sons a chance to shoot a buck deer (our deer hunting in SD is by lottery by various units--mostly county based). We had gotten turned down for licenses on a big national wildlife refugee that allows deer hunting that fall and the only thing left where a buck might be a possible connection were these very rural counties. I didn't (still don't) have multiple Uncle Bens to hunt deer as well. No responses except a Native American who wanted to sell me his resrevation licenses. I politely declined that offer.

The boys got lucky however on some public land in one the very rural counties and each got a buck as their first deer. I've shot plenty of does so getting a buck isn't my big drive (won't turn one down if one appears in front of me though). Like most things else, money talks and bu****it walks...