Visitors to Heritage Village Days on Friday and Saturday got a new experience this year.

From bears to coyotes to mountain lions to gophers, the Rooney Fur Company's tables full of animal furs from right here in Saskatchewan was a popular attraction.

Jade Rooney was kept quite busy both days. He said the interest shown by hundreds just confirms that fur, and hunting, is a primal part of Canadian heritage.

"It is really fantastic to to be there at Heritage Days because I can't think of anything that's more Canadian heritage than than the fur industry and trapping."

"To link up with the kids there and some of the adults, and chitchat about our most historical industry in this country was really fun. There's a couple people that were, a little bit apprehensive about handling some of the furs and stuff, and I would just say, 'you gotta feel this one', and then they would touch that sheared beaver, and then they would be there for another 20 minutes."

Rooney, who grew up on a farm outside of Yellow Grass, shared his background in fur, which began at his grandma's farm.

"My uncle would bring over a dozen traps and say, 'go trap gophers', and that's what we would do as kids," he noted. "That was kind of a farm management practice as well as just some good old fun."

He said they would trap between 75 and 100 gophers a weekend, and '"that kind of really started it. I kind of got away from it as a teenager a little bit."

"But I ended up seeing the fur on jackets and stuff, and I remembered doing pest control on the farm. Whether it's coyotes, raccoons, or any of the other furbearers that are considered nuisance. Skunks, the same. And I remember hearing a couple of guys talk about coyotes being worth some real money, and that kind of drew me back in."

He said he followed up with understanding the the conservation and the best management practices that we're committed to here in Saskatchewan and Canada.

"I kind of feel like I fell backwards into it, but also it's just so ingrained in my body from a young age, as well as my great uncle was a trapper, my uncles had tried their hand at it for a bit, and another generation down and we're still trapping," said Rooney.

He said he's currently working on becoming a certified trapping educator, but he's been working through courses and providing resources for a few years. He said it would be fun to do presentations in schools.

"We need to be definitely proactive in talking to the public, and just kind of showing the good management practices that we want to promote, to address some of the [misconceptions]. A lot of that comes down to not understanding proper resource management."

"We're not out here trapping endangered species by any means. We're regulating certain amounts of species and trying to prevent diseases between animals, and make it easier on the population as a whole, and I think that's sometimes lost on people who disagree with it. I guess they look at the individual instead of the entire species. And good conservation management has to look at species. We can't look at individuals."

"Wildlife biologists have refrained from from giving bears names and stuff like that for that same reason, because you know, if we end up with an aggressive or problem there, conservation officers or hunters will take that bear out of the population, if it becomes aggressive to other bears, or aggressive to people."

A typical day for Rooney involves checking traps first thing in the morning.

"Some days you come home with nothing and some days you you end up with two, three, four coyotes," he shared. "I get home and I'll skin a few coyotes."

He said this may sound shocking to someone who isn't a hunter, but, thankfully, that's never part of the demonstration.

"In today's world, people are so removed from that aspect," he noted. "The first time I'd ever shot and processed my own deer, it was so intimate, like just ingrained in me as a human, because we've done that for so many generations as people."

"That's how we kept warm. That's how we ate. Hunting and trapping. It's just almost crazy how quickly your muscle memory, your genetic memory kind of just takes over for you, once you become involved in the process."

"It's almost a like a spiritual experience in a lot of ways," Rooney shared. "Like, it really connects you back to nature, and back to the land, and back to what early humans did and were."

He said it's almost awe-inspiring.

"The first time you've hunted something and you eat that animal, it's just like the flavour is just unimaginatively better than something that you could buy," he explained. "All that time that you've put in, and all that work and all that appreciation for that animal giving its life for your sustenance."

He said it might just be "the best thing that's come out of COVID, is people kind of rediscovering the land and rediscovering some of these older traditions that modernity has kind of washed away in a lot of ways."

"Whether you're sewing for yourself, or growing your own garden, or whatever it is, when you've made it yourself, there's a value there that you just can't get when it comes from the store. We today we live in in such a throwaway society."

Rooney said at Heritage Village Days he managed to have good conversations with some of the older ladies there.

"I asked them if they had a mink coat or or fox coat or whatever, and I heard so many good stories, and they still have them. 'They're still in the closet', they say. Or, you know, 'I'm nervous to wear them', or whatever, but it's like that kind of quality that comes with that [material]. It's not a coat that you throw away after the end of the year, and it ends up in a landfill. It stays generationally."

He said, in fact, some younger girls were there saying they have their grandmothers' fur coats, they wear them, and they love them because they're warm.

"I think that you don't get that kind of quality in plastics."

This and the next two photos by Marna McManus

Read more: VIDEOS, GALLERY: Village Days Throwing Back to Historic Weyburn Once Again