You needed to add this:
Sell Your Squirrel Tails to Mepps for Fishing Lures | Mepps

 

As a kid I used to sell bonito to bait shops for .25 cents ea. for catfish bait.

 

As a kid late 60s early 70s. We would trade them for 10 cents credit per tail. Usually ended up with 22 shells in return.
The owner of the sporting goods store tied his own flies and jigs with them.
Times sure have changed.

 

I hunted with a guy that sent tails to Mepps. One day we were moving to a new hunting spot and I saw a road kill squirrel. It was a recent kill, so I stopped and tossed it in my truck bed. A tail is a tail. As I was retrieving the road kill, a car came around the corner and saw the whole thing. (A lady in a sedan.) At that point I knew I just reinforced what people think about country folks. My inside voice was shaking it's head. Three of us cleaned the squirrels of the day. Guess what happened? We somehow mixed the road kill in our quarry. One guy had a shotgun so it went off of the radar with no big .22lr holes. One of us ate road kill, so yeah, that lady did see what she thought she saw after all.😆

 

Sold to Mepps and to fur buyers. Most I have ever got was $4 for the dried hide with the tail on it. Made the stretchers out of wire and just salted them. Now no fur buyers around close.

 

When I was a kid me and a buddy of mine decided to collect all the squirrel tails we killed that season. We had em stapled to a sheet of plywood in an old shed. My Labrador, who hunted with us got into our collection and shredded them to pieces.I guess we took off hunting and left him home pissed him off a little…..
Anyway that was the end of my squirrel tail collection and I never bothered keeping them anymore.

 

I was told this years ago, but it never gained any traction. Do they still buy them?

 

Wow, that brings me back; thx for the web link.
:nostalgia: