Beaver for Bolts | Live Free or Die

One of those days were the amenities so hot that the air is sweating. Well, it's about 20 degrees above room temperature. I tell my glance at the river, I'm thinking, I sure would like to go down here to enjoy some of that cold water.

There's no rest for the weary, especially for frontiersman Colbert, who is single-handedly building a cabin in the middle of the Georgia swamps. I think that'll work. This is going to be the handrail on the porch. It's a nice, pretty piece of driftwood, weathered, the heartwood of an old twisted cypress tree.

I've got it started. I've gotten foundation. I've got something to build on. All of this is a result of months of rebuilding. I've got to get the mainframe up in a few weeks, get the roof on, and get the porch started. I like building where I take the material that I find, that I have an interest in, and try to figure out where it best fits.

This is bent from about right here. Rather than straighten it out, I'm going to take advantage of that curve right here at a fastening point. Every tree in the forest is a little bit bent, a little bit crooked. So if the cabin is a little bit crooked, a little bit bent, it'll fit right in. I've got to gather a lot more materials to finish my cabin. Part of what I'll get will be in the forest, but I'll still have to buy some of the materials.

With the need for building supplies on his mind, Colbert notices, "Whoa, that's a really big beaver." Frontiersman Colbert counts on transforming a catch into currency. The last many weeks, I've been doing a combination of building and collecting a lot of furs. That's not as easy as it looks. He's got a nice pelt that all adds up to bring a good price.

The money I get from it will be invested in supplies to rebuild my cabin. It's a challenge rebuilding your life when some disaster happens, but it gives you an opportunity to redo it again, maybe a little better, a little different. The quest for beaver pelts and another animal fur helped fuel the North American economy and furthered expansion into the new world in the search for untouched hunting grounds.

Today, some 80 percent of furs come from animals raised on fur farms. It's a 40 billion dollar industry worldwide. What I've done is cleaned off all the meat and tissue so that the leather will dry thoroughly. It's a really nice fur, but the next step, so this doesn't dry all wrinkled up, is to stretch it on this board.

This belt right here is worth somewhere between 8 and 15 times the price of a raccoon pelt. So just from a practical standpoint, that makes them a really efficient catch. So that's a finished hide. It'll dry out and look like cardboard. They should bring top money for the fur industry.