Skins mean money for Craig

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 7, 9 July 1985, Page 13

Skins mean money for Craig

Salting deer, cow, sheep and opossum skins is how Craig Ryland, Raetihi's borough foreman spends his spare time. Craig has been hunting opossums since he was 13 and says he does it not only for the money, but because he loves it. As well as hunting opossums, he also buys skins, mostly from local farmers. In the last three weeks, Craig has paid out $4,000 to local people for skins — continued on p22

Skins mean money for Craig

continued from pl3 "That's a lot of money for the town," he says. Craig even lends his own traps to the local children who get $2 for every opossum they bring back. He believes it's better for them to hunt opossums than to be on the street. Craig sells the skins to a Whakatane company which grades and packs them and exports them to Canada, the United States and Korea. The skins are also exported to Australia and are used for making toy koala bears! Craig was paid $4 per opossum when he was 13 and is still being paid the same amount today, which means there is very little profit in the business. With bullets selling at $5 per packet and traps at over $10, plus the fact that the profit is heavily taxed as it is secondary employment, Craig claims he does not make much money from his skins business. Craig's father used to hunt and introduced him to the sport. Now Craig's four-year-old daughter Jessie, is becoming interested in trapping opossums! The skinned opossums

are not wasted — they are eaten by a Raetihi farmer's ferrets. Craig has hunted opossums in Turangi, Wanganui and Waitotara as well as Raetihi. Many people believe opossums are carriers of tuberculosis, but out of all the opossums he has trapped Craig claims he has only

found one with this disease. But opossum skins are not all that Craig buys, he pays up to $10 for sheep skins, $10 for deer skins and $40 for cow skins. Sheep skins are sent to Napier and from there to Korea. Some of the skins are returned to New Zealand after being made into mats.