Interested in hearing more about fur trappers and hunters in medieval Europe up to 1600s. I haven’t been able to find much online about it.
We’re there fur trappers in medieval England and France like there was in North America in the 1600-1800s?
I’ve seen that there were trappers in Russia and Siberia. And that Europeans would trade for furs. But what about folks actually making a living as fur trappers during this time?
Did they actually use traps or more bows and muskets? Was the primary quarry sable, hares, and harts? Or were there others?
We’re the primary buyers tailors or royalty?
Hello, sorry for very late response.
Since OP had apparently got some basic areal and chronological outlines of medieval fur trade centered at north-westernmost part of Eurasia (NW Russia~ Arctic circle~ Fennoscandia) in the cross-post in /r/askhistory, my following post focus on some not so well answered points of OP's original question.
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Did they actually use traps or more bows and muskets?
Trap was the main means of hunting, together with bow with a special (blunt-tipped) arrow head either of iron or horn for small fur animals, at least in NW Russia from 10th to the 13th centuries (Makarov 2006: 126).
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Was the primary quarry sable, hares, and harts? Or were there others?
Sable was certainly OK, but the most of the most important export of fur from medieval NW Eurasia are in fact missing from the suggested list: (Eurasian) beavers, (northern gray) squirrels, ermines and martens.
Scandinavians had also traded the fur with arctic hunter-gathering peoples, knowned as "the Finns" - not conflated with modern Finlanders, but usually identified with the Sámi people since the Viking Age, and the following account of the middle to late 12th century lists the fur animals living in Fenno-Scandia (now Finnmark region in northern Norway):
"Bordering the length of Norway is a vast wasteland, separating it from the pagan peoples. This waste is lived in by Lapps and by the wild animals whose flesh they eat half-raw and whose skins they wear. ......There is no limit to the number of wild animals there: bears, wolves, lynxes, foxes, sables, otters, badgers and beavers.......Among the Lapps are also a great many squirrels and ermines, and every year the Lapps pay the skins of all these animals as large tribute to the kings of Norway, whose subjects they are." (History of Norway (about 1150-1175): Translation is taken from [Kunin trans. 2001: 5f.]).
[Added]: As for how beaver pelts was popular in the Middle Ages (and after), you can refer to following two posts respectively by /u/MyNameIsRevan and /u/galileosmiddlefinger (though I'm willing to add something if asked):
As numbers and good hunting places of beavers decreased in course of the High Middle Ages (12th and 13th centuries), the main export of fur from NW Russia shifted from beavers to northern squirrels, and Novgorod (a city in NW Russia) functioned as a hub of collecting fur from their tributary hunter-gatherers (up to the White Sea) as well as the export center to the Latin West (one of the the 4 trading posts of the Hanseatic merchants was located there).
This famous map shows the location of Novgrod's tribute taking stations (in forms of fur), based on the donation charter of Prince Sviatoslav of Novgorod in 1136 or 1137 (Martin 2004 (1986): 56). It was customary of counting furs by 40 (40 furs) as 1 sorochok in medieval NW Russia, and 436 sorochoks in total from these stations are mentioned in the charter - they consequently amounts to 17,400 furs. 174,00 hunted furs (probably of squirrels) were expected to be collected these stations alone, and also, in a single year (Noonan & Kovalev 2004: 654-56). In the 14th century (1320s), there was also a transaction record in Novgorod that trade the large-scale estate with 20,000 pelts of squirrel (Martin 2004 (1968): 68).
Medieval City Novgorod had a further unique kind of primary document, Birch bark Document (linked one, no. 210 (middle of the 13th century) is unfortunately not relevant to fur trade at all). Some of the documents mention tribute-taking in form of fur, such as No. 683 (fragmentary text, middle to late 12th century): "......Novik's 6 kunas (unit of money in medieval Russia).....bag (sack) of squirrel pelts, 18 sorochoks, which he concealed in Onega region, are in the hand of Neshka......" (the translation is taken from Noonan & Kovalev 2004: 56).
This no. 683 is a kind of medieval business letter, excavated from the building of Novgorod's Mayor, and it also reveals that furs had already been counted by 40 (sorochok) and packed with the seal at individual stations before they were sent for Novgorod. And a researcher (Ianin, Russian authority of medieval archeology of City Novgorod) suggests that these wooden cylinders (11th and 12th centuries), with the place name of Onega river region (SE to the White Sea) were used to "seal" sacks of squirrel furs at the tribute-taking station.
As for popularity of these arctic furs, Martin cites some examples of medieval British royal members: Queen Philippa of Hainaut (wife of King Edward III) of England had five garments of northern squirrels for the banquet after her birth to their first son, and the namesake princess of King Henry IV of England put a gown with trimmed ermines and squirrels. Later medieval English sumptuary act tries to prohibit the use of northern gray squirrels (thus imported from NE Eurasia - non native in England) out of ranked nobility and upper stratum of knights (Martin 2004 (1986): 64).
On the other hands, sables, ermines and martens were also popular in Islamic world, and as shown in this map (Favereau 2021: 157), the Golden Horde (Jochid Ulus) took over the main trade route to SE Russia in the 13th century. Crimean Peninsula was another export hub of Russian fur trade, and Italian merchants like Genoa and Venice played a role of middlemen in the fur trade on this side in the Eastern Mediterranean. Though not the most popular one, one or two scholars had suggested that it was fleas hiding in the exported fur from Crimea by the Italian merchants that spread the Black Death across the Mediterranean (now grain export from Crimea became the latest popular culprit instead of fur - Cf. Favereau 2021: 248-49).
References:
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