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Speaker 1: I T E dot com. Probably ladies and gentlemen. We're
Speaker 1: joined by our our, our friend and colleague and uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, beloved, uh ark and Arkinson? What is?
Speaker 1: How do you say that?
Speaker 2: Ar Kanson?
Speaker 1: Ar Kanson Clay Newcomb, who's recently back from a trip
Speaker 1: where he accompanied a wolf trapper in Alaska and made
Speaker 1: a uh made a video about hanging out with this
Speaker 1: Alaska wolf trapper and video has gotten quite a lot
Speaker 1: of views and generated a lot of conversation. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to check in with Clay about it. And first
Speaker 1: thing I want to know Clay is tell me what
Speaker 1: you wanted to name it and what they ended up
Speaker 1: naming it and why.
Speaker 2: Well I wanted to I wanted to just come out
Speaker 2: and say what the film was about in the title,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to call it trapping wolves in Alaska
Speaker 2: or Alaskan or Alaskan wolf trapping, and we were we
Speaker 2: were advised not to do that because of the potential
Speaker 2: for YouTube to flag something that had the word trapping
Speaker 2: in the title, and so we ended up calling it
Speaker 2: Alaskan wolf management with Clay Nukem, and that that kind
Speaker 2: of opens up a can of worms from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Really sets you know, Yeah, I think it sets uh uh.
Speaker 1: It just sets an expectation and delivers a certain dialogue.
Speaker 1: Meaning if you made a squirrel hunting video, which you
Speaker 1: like to do and which I like to do, and
Speaker 1: then you had to call it squirrel management in Michigan,
Speaker 1: it feel kind of weird, right, Raccoon managed.
Speaker 2: It feels a whole lot more like it's this mission
Speaker 2: driven experience, as if I felt like, by me going
Speaker 2: up there and trapping a couple of wolves, four wolves,
Speaker 2: actually that it was gonna, you know, change something, And
Speaker 2: no doubt that it's a statement in today's world if
Speaker 2: you go wolf trapping, But really I wanted to. I
Speaker 2: wanted to experience it. I've known David Bennett's for about
Speaker 2: ten years.
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to get into because well, I
Speaker 1: don't understand. I was a little hurt because I don't
Speaker 1: know why it didn't come. It's why the article wasn't
Speaker 1: beaver trapping with Steve.
Speaker 2: Beaver Management with Steve Vanilla.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what what? What headed the whole thing off?
Speaker 1: Or what started?
Speaker 2: So I met David Bennett's about ten years ago through
Speaker 2: Bear Hunting magazine. David's an outfitter. David's a professional crabber.
Speaker 2: That's his main livelihood is crabbing for three months during
Speaker 2: the summer.
Speaker 1: For Dungeon Crab. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh man, his stories and and and and his learning
Speaker 2: about that was incredible. But he's just like the classic
Speaker 2: Alaskan man.
Speaker 1: He's he's whenever those guys come through our area, crab
Speaker 1: and gets bad on. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: David is also an outfitter, so he guides for you know,
Speaker 2: Alaskan big game. I would say his primary thing is
Speaker 2: is black bear and goats. But then lastly in the
Speaker 2: wintertime he traps and he's traped since he was ten
Speaker 2: years old.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: David's fifty seven or so. Just an incredible guy, you know,
Speaker 2: and he at times he's made a lot of money
Speaker 2: trapping back in the day and this, but to this
Speaker 2: day he still traps just as hard as he's ever trapped,
Speaker 2: just out of principle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if he's sixty seven and he started trapping when
Speaker 1: he was ten, he was cranking through the big fur boom.
Speaker 1: I mean he was young, but he was selling fur
Speaker 1: during like the the big fur boom with a capital FB.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard for the l late seventies, early eighties.
Speaker 1: You know, my friend Stu Miller said to me, every
Speaker 1: generation has its own fur boom, and uh his game early.
Speaker 2: Man, I think those old guys have a hard time
Speaker 2: letting go of that. I mean, so much of what
Speaker 2: we do, I think is is fueled by more than
Speaker 2: just economics and the buzz that somebody would have gotten
Speaker 2: back in the day to have made a legitimate amount
Speaker 2: of money trapping furs. That association with sustenance for your family,
Speaker 2: you know, going out and taking first off the landscape
Speaker 2: would just almost be hard to erase. It feels to
Speaker 2: me like, you know, you keep doing it even when
Speaker 2: the prices are cheap. But man, the beaver, the beaver
Speaker 2: markets back though, because of these dang felt hats.
Speaker 1: Oh I know, Uh, it is cranky. I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about fur prices, but I
Speaker 1: don't sell fur. I'm obsessed with the fur market. I
Speaker 1: follow the fur market more closely than I follow like
Speaker 1: the stock market.
Speaker 2: Do you have one of those? Do you have like
Speaker 2: a graph on your phone that you just can of
Speaker 2: It doesn't work the clip on and see like that,
Speaker 2: ups and down, it's like a stock exchange.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't work that way. So you reached out
Speaker 1: to him, and I bet there's no way that he
Speaker 1: wasn't at first thinking to himself, Man, I don't want
Speaker 1: you and some camera dudes coming into this thing, which
Speaker 1: is just going to cause me hassle. Guys are going
Speaker 1: to know where I trap, Guys are going to know
Speaker 1: how I trap. I'm gonna have animal rights people coming
Speaker 1: after me. How did you ever get him to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: come on out trapping with a camera.
Speaker 2: You know, I was very conscious of that when I
Speaker 2: reached out to him, And I honestly feel like David
Speaker 2: believes that the the authenticity and legitimacy of what he's
Speaker 2: doing is able to withstand any criticism that he's taken.
Speaker 2: And he also just isn't concerned about giving away secrets.
Speaker 2: I mean sometimes guys are like that. David is willing
Speaker 2: to help anybody can that's wanting to do it, but
Speaker 2: it's so difficult. I mean what the film didn't portray
Speaker 2: and we tried to portray. And you know this because
Speaker 2: you do so like this all the time, Steve is that.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: You gotta have something driving you that's almost clinically insane
Speaker 2: to do what he does. I mean being out on
Speaker 2: the water, the distance of these the distance he's traveling,
Speaker 2: the amount of money that he spends on even just
Speaker 2: his trap sets. It's a very very few people are
Speaker 2: going to see that video and move to Alaska and
Speaker 2: be a wolf trapper. Yeah, and he knows that.
Speaker 1: And uh.
Speaker 2: And I told him that we were gonna handle it
Speaker 2: in a responsible way, and I think he just he
Speaker 2: just took us for our at our word for that.
Speaker 1: You know. So, how did you guys pick the season
Speaker 1: you were going to go? Was he trying to line
Speaker 1: it up with with peak conditions, with when he doesn't
Speaker 1: have anything else going on with when he felt that
Speaker 1: it was the biggest chance of getting like real prime
Speaker 1: wolf else that weren't rubbed out right, what was he
Speaker 1: shooting for when you guys went so.
Speaker 2: His his year is very regimented down to the week.
Speaker 2: You know, he can tell you what he's going to
Speaker 2: be doing any given week of the year. And that
Speaker 2: first week of December he was going to be trapping wolves,
Speaker 2: whether I was with him or not. That's what he
Speaker 2: told me. And yeah, it's it's peak for it's but
Speaker 2: it's also you know, tough travel conditions that time of year.
Speaker 1: No daylight, you can oh, that was.
Speaker 2: The biggest challenge of the whole trip, Steve, And you
Speaker 2: would know it as much as anybody is. It gets
Speaker 2: daylight at about seven thirty AM, maybe even closer to eight,
Speaker 2: and it's dark by four thirty. I mean it's like
Speaker 2: dark dark And so what was wild so dirt myth
Speaker 2: was my cameraman on this deal, you know, Garrett Smith
Speaker 2: and he we would get back to the boat four
Speaker 2: thirty and not be needing to be in the boat
Speaker 2: till eight o'clock the next day. Setting in that little
Speaker 2: cabin on the on the Sandpiper, which we became very
Speaker 2: familiar with. We'd set around for six hours and I
Speaker 2: don't know what we did read, eat.
Speaker 1: Pack a big old pack a big dip.
Speaker 2: Probably right, dirt was running through some dip, buddy, you
Speaker 2: better believe it. I was like, man, what if we
Speaker 2: run out? And he was like, Clay, I got so
Speaker 2: much dip in my bag. He's like, I got enough
Speaker 2: for all of us. And I'm like, I don't dip.
Speaker 2: I'm out, but appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So what are the days goal? Like? He runs a
Speaker 1: big like he's running a big well. First, I think,
Speaker 1: guess before we say what the day's goal like, you
Speaker 1: should explain this is a marine based deal. He's not
Speaker 1: running off snowmobiles, trucks. It's it's marine based.
Speaker 2: It's boats completely two boats, water based, completely water based.
Speaker 2: Trap line.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if you saw the film, you saw that he
Speaker 2: has a forty eight foot crabbing boat with a cab,
Speaker 2: a kitchen, you know, fully equipped. We we put that
Speaker 2: in a small narrow inlet to get it out of
Speaker 2: big water in waves, and then we took a skiff
Speaker 2: out to check the traps. And what is amazing to
Speaker 2: me what I would have thought if you would have
Speaker 2: just said, Clay, you're gonna have to go trap wolves
Speaker 2: in a in Alaska, how are you going to do it?
Speaker 2: Coastal Alaska. I would have thought you couldn't trap these
Speaker 2: wolves on the beach just because they wouldn't have any
Speaker 2: reason to be there. But he's literally catching wolves on
Speaker 2: the beach in the sand a lot of times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you only salmon. They like, it's a
Speaker 1: peculiar kind of wolf that like salmon dead. I've watched
Speaker 1: them eating rotten salmon off the beach. Yeah, well yeah there,
Speaker 1: so there.
Speaker 2: He feels like they're actually attracted to these points, these
Speaker 2: sandy points. He feels like they just kind of loaf there,
Speaker 2: you know, like a Mallard duck and the timber in
Speaker 2: the midday, you know, just like loafing.
Speaker 1: Huh okay.
Speaker 2: But but what's what it was interesting to me is
Speaker 2: he said he learned how to catch wolves by watching
Speaker 2: his Labrador retriever. He would pull up on a pull
Speaker 2: up on the bank and let his dog jump out
Speaker 2: of the boat, and he would watch what his dog
Speaker 2: would is a male dog, and he said that dog
Speaker 2: would pick the most prominent visual thing that it could see,
Speaker 2: whether it was a stump, whether it was a clump
Speaker 2: of grass that set out from the rest of the grass,
Speaker 2: whether it was a big rock, and he'd go over
Speaker 2: and he'd mark it, you know, lift his leg and
Speaker 2: pee on it. And he just started watching that dog
Speaker 2: and he started setting traps where he saw his dog
Speaker 2: mark and started catching wolves and he so he started
Speaker 2: doing That's exactly that's what he called him. And we
Speaker 2: didn't have time, you know, the video wasn't like how
Speaker 2: to trap wolves, so we didn't really get into the
Speaker 2: technical side.
Speaker 1: But what he.
Speaker 2: Uses is wolf here in a big, big bottle of
Speaker 2: wolf here, and he'll make an artificial scent post. So
Speaker 2: he'll go to a beat to a point that he
Speaker 2: wants to trap on, and he'll go gather up a
Speaker 2: couple of logs.
Speaker 1: He's doing this above above the high tide marker, right
Speaker 1: in where it's getting submerged at high tide.
Speaker 2: Now, most of it's above the high tide mark, even
Speaker 2: though that is a strategy, you know, to set it
Speaker 2: below the tide mark and it's it's like a drown set,
Speaker 2: you know. But most of these he's just catching above the.
Speaker 1: The grass or be grass. Yeah, Okay, so he drags
Speaker 1: out whatever, drags out some object to make some visual appeal,
Speaker 1: I assume.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he and then he puts sin all
Speaker 2: over it. You know, he puts his he he had
Speaker 2: multiple commercial wolf lures, but also this this wolf you'reine
Speaker 2: and uh, the biggest thing that I think is different
Speaker 2: for those guys in Southeast Alaska that are trapping is
Speaker 2: they don't have to worry about human scent. We were
Speaker 2: not worried about human scent at all.
Speaker 1: Because everything gets wet, just everything gets washed out.
Speaker 2: It rains. When you're setting a wolf trap, you're, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're it's gonna rain and it's gonna wash away the scent.
Speaker 2: And so when the guys in the lower forty eighth
Speaker 2: that do some trapping, that's a big concern is how
Speaker 2: do you pretty much keep the set scent free. So
Speaker 2: you know, they're wearing gloves, they're really concerned about what
Speaker 2: you're touching, and and up there he's not at all,
Speaker 2: which is makes it makes it convenient.
Speaker 1: But his traps, his footholdser dyed and waxed. Correct. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so go through making this like scent post set. So
Speaker 1: he drags out an object for some visual appeal and
Speaker 1: places it out on a point that's.
Speaker 2: Right, how big of another? And so we showed it.
Speaker 2: We showed a set in the film. There was probably
Speaker 2: a stump that was eighteen inches long, or just a
Speaker 2: piece of log that was eighteen inches long, kind of
Speaker 2: had a big oblong rootball on one side that set
Speaker 2: up eighteen inches tall, and we set it out right
Speaker 2: out out from the grass in the sand where everything
Speaker 2: would see it, and maybe even put another little smaller
Speaker 2: four or five inch log on it. And then you know,
Speaker 2: you put that scent post in an area where you
Speaker 2: can dig easily. That's not rocky, that's sandy. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: then we dig down and set just a standard trap set.
Speaker 2: I'm not an expert trapper. I've spent a little bit
Speaker 2: of time trap and I know how to make dirt
Speaker 2: hole sets and catch foxes and coyotes and all this,
Speaker 2: and I mean, you know, setting these big traps is
Speaker 2: just identical to that. You know, you're you're trying to well,
Speaker 2: he uses a drag for his equipment. He's he's using a.
Speaker 1: Drag instead of trying trying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you have to dig a deep, a
Speaker 2: pretty deep hole to bury that big drag. And it
Speaker 2: is a big drag. And then you know you're setting
Speaker 2: that trap down into a bed where it doesn't wiggle
Speaker 2: around and the top of the trap has to be
Speaker 2: even almost even with the surface of the ground.
Speaker 1: How many inches off the explain how it goes, like
Speaker 1: how many inches off the post, because you gotta you're
Speaker 1: trying to cut. One of the ways to describe it
Speaker 1: is you got the whole world. You know, the animal
Speaker 1: has the whole world, the whole am island whatever to
Speaker 1: walk around on, and you're trying to get it to
Speaker 1: put its foot on a well. In this case, you're
Speaker 1: trying to get it put its foot on a two
Speaker 1: inch circle. Right, So if something walks up, if you
Speaker 1: picture that, Let's take something that people are more familiar with,
Speaker 1: like a coyote. Okay, a kyote's walking down a dirt lane,
Speaker 1: walking down a farm trail, whatever, and there's an object
Speaker 1: that it wants to piss on. Its feet are gonna
Speaker 1: fall in a specific spot. They're not gonna be two
Speaker 1: inches off the thing. They're not gonna be thirty inches
Speaker 1: off the thing. He's not gonna dance there, he's gonna
Speaker 1: come through, raise his leg and leave. What are the
Speaker 1: odds that you've put that trappan where it's gonna put
Speaker 1: its foot. Yeah, so you're David, You're You're like, you're
Speaker 1: you're thinking about foot placement and anatomy when you place it,
Speaker 1: because if not you place it wrong, you could have
Speaker 1: eight wolves run by. None's gonna put their foot there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I was kind of surprised at how
Speaker 2: non technical David's explanation to me of you know, where
Speaker 2: to put the trap.
Speaker 1: So he's thinking, he's thinking it, but he's not saying it.
Speaker 2: Probably well, I think he's just done it so many
Speaker 2: times it's just instinctive. But I was expecting them to
Speaker 2: have a tape measure and be like the average big
Speaker 2: Southeast Alaskan wolf has a stride that's, you know, fourteen
Speaker 2: inches long. So if he's sitting here and he's peeing
Speaker 2: on that log, he's going to be sixteen inches out
Speaker 2: and slightly back because you know he's peeing from the third,
Speaker 2: you know, the back third. Yeah, what you know, this
Speaker 2: technical nothing. I mean, he's just but probably he was
Speaker 2: eighteen inches off of the trap, And I don't think
Speaker 2: he was targeting a specific foot. I think he's catching
Speaker 2: a lot of them in the front feet when they
Speaker 2: come up to sniff the post before they market. You know,
Speaker 2: just just an animal just walking up and putting his
Speaker 2: nose on that on that little scent log that we
Speaker 2: I don't think he's trying to catch it with a
Speaker 2: back leg, you know. So he is not as technical
Speaker 2: as I thought it would be. And what you guys,
Speaker 2: before he came out, he went out and made a
Speaker 2: bunch of sets. Yeah, correct, So he has some sets
Speaker 2: out working and then you guys punched in some sets
Speaker 2: and did some remakes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But how many during your time there? And explain the
Speaker 1: number of days you spent there? And uh, tell folks
Speaker 1: how many traps you checked? Okay? Over what? Over what distance?
Speaker 2: We were there for six full days, and in that time,
Speaker 2: David was concerned that we might not catch a wolf.
Speaker 2: You know, that's how this trapping goes. You might be
Speaker 2: there for six days and not catch a wolf. So
Speaker 2: by him setting the traps, you know, the day before
Speaker 2: we got there, you know, we kind of got an
Speaker 2: extra day. And he has fifty five sets over a
Speaker 2: two hundred We mapped it out on on x a
Speaker 2: two hundred mile trap line boat by water. But each
Speaker 2: of those sets might have multiple traps. So he had
Speaker 2: two kind of sets. He had p post sets and
Speaker 2: what he called bait sets which were set in tide pools,
Speaker 2: and basically he would have a chunk of beaver that
Speaker 2: was elevated above the low tideline covered in rocks, and
Speaker 2: then he would have four traps set under the water,
Speaker 2: just set on the ground, not buried even at under
Speaker 2: that low tide, there underwater, at low tide, there underwater,
Speaker 2: but at low tide or mid tide whatever, the meats
Speaker 2: out of the water, but the traps just buried in
Speaker 2: a tide pool or submerged. Correct, that's correct. And so
Speaker 2: we had fifty five sets, but each of those sets,
Speaker 2: most sets had uh, well, if there were baits that
Speaker 2: they had four traps. So it would be easy to
Speaker 2: say he had one hundred traps out. Yep, I would
Speaker 2: say he had one hundred traps out.
Speaker 1: How many had how many out ahead of your arrival?
Speaker 2: He had all of them out. He had all of
Speaker 2: them out before we got there. And we actually caught
Speaker 2: four wolves on the trip. And you know, it's just
Speaker 2: showbiz stuff like we just couldn't we couldn't fit in
Speaker 2: the other two. But we caught We caught one jet
Speaker 2: black wolf, which was cool, and and caught another kind
Speaker 2: of juvenile gray wolf. So we caught four wolves in
Speaker 2: a week, which I think that's about what he expected.
Speaker 2: But you can go you can go a week and
Speaker 2: not even catch a single animal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. Now, A lot of states have checklaws
Speaker 1: twenty four hour check laws, forty eight hour checklaws. Some
Speaker 1: states have checklaws. I should clarify when I'm talking about
Speaker 1: a check law meanings like a maximum amount of time
Speaker 1: that you can go without visually inspecting a set, And
Speaker 1: some states just have a flat out check law twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, forty eight hours. Some states have no mention
Speaker 1: of a check law, and some states have slightly more
Speaker 1: nuanced check laws where certain sets don't have a check law,
Speaker 1: meaning you might be able to set under the ice
Speaker 1: or underwater with kill sets and not have a check law.
Speaker 1: But if you're making sets with footholds dry ground sets
Speaker 1: with footholds, then there is a check law, meaning that one,
Speaker 1: if something goes wrong at your set and you catch
Speaker 1: something that you're not supposed to catch, you're not leaving
Speaker 1: it there too long and you're able to release it.
Speaker 1: Two being that when you do make a target catch
Speaker 1: that you're not leaving it in the trap so long
Speaker 1: that it might be regarded by some as being inhumane
Speaker 1: to leave something caught in a trap for an extended
Speaker 1: period of time. So to minimize stress, minimize suffering, you
Speaker 1: enforce this check limit. They don't have a check law,
Speaker 1: and he's making somecessities leaving for quite some time. What
Speaker 1: was his perspective on this, that he would leave a
Speaker 1: foothold set for a week and could potentially have a
Speaker 1: catch for a week, because there's two things. One there's
Speaker 1: a consideration of the animals well being, and two there's
Speaker 1: a consideration of you might not hold it forever. It's
Speaker 1: gonna get out, right, the longer it has more, it's
Speaker 1: gonna get out. What was his thinking about this? Is
Speaker 1: it just is it a matter of logistically it's just
Speaker 1: impossible to do it any other way? How did he
Speaker 1: think about that?
Speaker 2: That's a good question, and that was one of the
Speaker 2: first things we talked about. And he when he's trapping,
Speaker 2: that's all he does. Like when he starts trapping, he
Speaker 2: is a twenty four hour a day, seven day a
Speaker 2: week trapper, and in his mind, he had he believes
Speaker 2: he has an ethical responsibility to check those traps. Is
Speaker 2: absolutely as much as he can. But if you were
Speaker 2: there and saw what we were up against with weather,
Speaker 2: like there are days when you can't get on the water.
Speaker 2: So that's primarily the reason in Alaska that they don't
Speaker 2: have the check laws is because you're setting you're setting
Speaker 2: traps in places that some times you just can't physically
Speaker 2: get to. And so and and he also, I think
Speaker 2: just believes his job is to to catch wolves and
Speaker 2: uh and and he's tracked. He's he's checking him as
Speaker 2: absolutely as much as he can, you know, avoid and
Speaker 2: we I mean, if he thinks he's not going to
Speaker 2: be able to get to traps, he won't reset him.
Speaker 2: I Mean, it's kind of one of these deals where
Speaker 2: you know your own conscience is your god, you know,
Speaker 2: and it works good for it works good for him.
Speaker 2: I don't think he sees any kind of pushback from that,
Speaker 2: you know. And that's just the way it is in Alaska.
Speaker 2: That I heard something. I don't know any trappers who
Speaker 2: love the checklaws.
Speaker 1: I can tell you that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well man, it's uh, that's definitely something that
Speaker 2: some people didn't understand that that watched the film. And
Speaker 2: if you're up there and you're in that boat and
Speaker 2: you met David, you you'd get it.
Speaker 1: You know, what was your feeling when when when all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like there's a wolf. You know, when
Speaker 1: I asked us, I'm asking from the perspective of there's
Speaker 1: certain creatures that occupy a lot of mind space, you know,
Speaker 1: like you think about them a lot, but you don't
Speaker 1: get to look at them as much as you think
Speaker 1: about them. And I remember, after always catching glimpses of
Speaker 1: mountain lions, you know, out out in the wild, I
Speaker 1: remember the first time I came up on a treed
Speaker 1: mountain lion. Where there it is you could actually like
Speaker 1: really look at it as long as you wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: those stunning to be just to have it be like
Speaker 1: right there, dogs blow it. It's in the tree. And
Speaker 1: this thing that you just you only get glimpses of
Speaker 1: also is just there in its larger than life kind
Speaker 1: of way. When you come around the bend or whatever
Speaker 1: and there's one standing there, what are your you know,
Speaker 1: what were your thoughts about it? Were you like, man,
Speaker 1: I hope he gets away, or that guy we got one,
Speaker 1: or you know, what are the different things you're feeling?
Speaker 2: You know, I haven't I haven't interacted with wolves a
Speaker 2: whole lot being from Arkansas. You know, when you and
Speaker 2: I were in Alaska two years ago, we saw a
Speaker 2: pack of I think fourteen wolves that we watched a
Speaker 2: couple of evenings. Once in Idaho, I saw one across
Speaker 2: the road. I haven't I haven't spent a ton or
Speaker 2: time around wolves. This was definitely the closest I've ever
Speaker 2: been to one, and it was I. If I didn't
Speaker 2: say it was slightly conflicted, I'd probably be lying.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: It was just a magnificent beast. I mean, yeah, to
Speaker 2: be able to walk up to it look at it.
Speaker 2: But what I said in the film I'm is that
Speaker 2: my confliction was completely fabricated by the confusing messaging of
Speaker 2: planet Earth and humans about wolves. I mean I was
Speaker 2: aware of that, like if I was, you know, I
Speaker 2: said that, you know, to sacrelize something really is a
Speaker 2: man made feature. It's not in the natural realm. I
Speaker 2: mean that that wolf. I've killed a lot of deer,
Speaker 2: a lot of white tailed deer, and on the ethical
Speaker 2: spectrum of human existence, me shooting a white tailed deer
Speaker 2: is no less different than us dispatching that wolf on
Speaker 2: the end of a trap. I believe that. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, this is a very unique animal in
Speaker 2: a unique place, a unique predator. You know, they're less
Speaker 2: predators than there are prey animals. I mean, so, I
Speaker 2: mean I was just fascinated by it. I'm always fascinated
Speaker 2: by predators, probably in just a generic sense like anybody
Speaker 2: else would have been just kind of like a little kid.
Speaker 2: I mean when after we dispatched it, shot it with
Speaker 2: a twenty two mag I mean, I just walked up
Speaker 2: to it. The dang thing smelled like a dirty, wet
Speaker 2: German shepherd, and I looked at his claws and just
Speaker 2: inspected every part of him. Man, And you know you can't.
Speaker 2: You got to have respect for him, I mean, just
Speaker 2: absolute respect for them and their job what they do
Speaker 2: making a living out on that landscape. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, and I said this in the film, honestly,
Speaker 2: there was little ecological consequence to us taking those two
Speaker 2: wolves out of that bay. I mean. The one thing
Speaker 2: that David says he and he has, you know, thirty
Speaker 2: five years a wolf traffing experience to say to know
Speaker 2: it is that you can trap. You can trap half
Speaker 2: the pack, you can trap three quarters of a pack
Speaker 2: out of a bay, and within two years that pack
Speaker 2: will be back up to the same numbers, Like you
Speaker 2: just can't stomp them down that hard, especially on this
Speaker 2: coastal trapping. And what he said to me made a
Speaker 2: lot of sense. And the reason I'm saying all this
Speaker 2: is it didn't really help the deer that much and
Speaker 2: it didn't really hurt the wolves that much. It was
Speaker 2: just a unique experience where we could extract resource from
Speaker 2: the land and kind of nobody loses and everybody wins.
Speaker 2: That's the way I look at it. Yeah, and it
Speaker 2: undoubtedly did it save a couple of deer moose calves
Speaker 2: in that cove this year, yep. Because those two wolves,
Speaker 2: they were probably ninety pound males. They're going to eat something,
Speaker 2: and they would have been eating five to seven pounds
Speaker 2: of meat since that day that we took them out.
Speaker 2: And because you know, going back to our original conversation
Speaker 2: about what we titled this wolf management, as if I'm
Speaker 2: trying to make some ecological statement, man, my biggest statement
Speaker 2: is just let us manage them as a as a
Speaker 2: natural renewable resource. And you know, like David said, man,
Speaker 2: you can't overtrap these wolves on the coast because a lot.
Speaker 1: Of that because you're touching the edge.
Speaker 2: Oh man, you're not laying a finger on on the
Speaker 2: on the wolf population now, but it but it makes
Speaker 2: some sense. There's some pragmatism in it for these guys
Speaker 2: that are sick of black tail deer hunting and moose
Speaker 2: hunting because they're only hunting the coasts, Like when they
Speaker 2: go in there to deer hunt, they're just hunting the edges.
Speaker 2: And so if they can thin wolf populations out along
Speaker 2: the edges, it helps on a very micro scale. They
Speaker 2: truly believe that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the conversation around wolf hunting, wolf trapping, any kind
Speaker 1: of predator stuff, it gets it gets really confused because
Speaker 1: a lot of people start throwing away their own realities
Speaker 1: and then putting in these things they half know or
Speaker 1: suspect to be true, or things they've picked up from
Speaker 1: social media or media in general. For a while, everybody
Speaker 1: fell in love with this idea that one up not
Speaker 1: being true. But this the trophic cascade, right, this this
Speaker 1: ted talk level idea that by you know, wolves being
Speaker 1: on the landscape, they caused the Riparian areas to bloom
Speaker 1: and paradise returned to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and the
Speaker 1: landscape of fear, which drove the elk, you know, which
Speaker 1: were inflated numbers of elk, and it pushed them into
Speaker 1: the mountains. And so the willows came back and Eden returned,
Speaker 1: and that idea was proven to not be true in
Speaker 1: the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. But the refuting that idea didn't
Speaker 1: get nearly the press as advancing that idea did. Another
Speaker 1: thing that you know that everyone on the planet feels
Speaker 1: like or like, you know, everyone in Montana seems to
Speaker 1: be a born grizzly expert. You know, half of Alaska
Speaker 1: seems to be born a wolf expert. And they all
Speaker 1: know this idea of disrupting herd dynamic or disrupting pack dynamics.
Speaker 1: They don't know it from living, they just know it
Speaker 1: from having heard about it, and so it becomes this
Speaker 1: idea they put forth. On the other side of it,
Speaker 1: people that like to hunt lions or people that trap
Speaker 1: wolves or hunt wolves will lay in a lot of
Speaker 1: things like, oh, if I don't do this, they'll be
Speaker 1: coming to get your pets. Or if I don't do this,
Speaker 1: there will be no big game left, which begs the
Speaker 1: obvious question, if there's no big game, left, How would
Speaker 1: there be predators anyways, because they rely on big game
Speaker 1: being so I don't believe that they would be able
Speaker 1: to completely eliminate their food source because that would lead
Speaker 1: to their own destruction. Then you'll have people in the
Speaker 1: Rockies who are just so upset about wolves being on
Speaker 1: the landscape because of course that means there's no game.
Speaker 1: But then they like to go hunt in Alaska, where
Speaker 1: wolves occupy about one hundred percent of their historic range.
Speaker 1: And so if you hate wolves so much and wolves
Speaker 1: mean there's no game, why would you go to Alaska?
Speaker 1: They must not have any game because they have wolves.
Speaker 1: So everyone winds up being on all sides of it.
Speaker 1: You hear so many people being just intellectually dishonest because
Speaker 1: they're like I someone's saying, I hate to see a
Speaker 1: predator get killed because I view them as being special.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to say that, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to throw you some bogus ecological stuff that I
Speaker 1: don't really understand. Conversely, someone would say I believe that
Speaker 1: if there's a renewable resource, a renewable sustainable resource on
Speaker 1: the landscape, and that we can extract some harvestable surplus
Speaker 1: off that renewable resource without damaging the resource. I believe
Speaker 1: that we should have the right to do that. But
Speaker 1: instead I'm gonna frame it around ideas of the safety
Speaker 1: of my neighbor's pets, or I'm gonna frame it around
Speaker 1: ideas of saving big game from extirpation. It invites all
Speaker 1: this intellectual dishonesty. Yeah, I'm ardently, ardently, unapologetically pro trapping
Speaker 1: and pro hunting of sustainable resources because they're on the landscape.
Speaker 1: If we protect the habitat, we'll have surpluses of animals,
Speaker 1: and we can harvest animals responsibly and not have a
Speaker 1: long term negative impact. Yeah, that's a long way of
Speaker 1: setting up The question is why do you feel people
Speaker 1: always need to dress this up, to dress this dialogue
Speaker 1: up and things where they wind up us, they wind
Speaker 1: up role playing, Yeah, with what their actual motivations are. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you say that so well.
Speaker 2: You probably say that better than anybody I've ever heard
Speaker 2: say it, you know, with kind of an intellectual dishonesty.
Speaker 2: And I tried to. I hope this film portrayed that.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I was fully effective at that
Speaker 2: or not, because I didn't go interview a biologist. Like
Speaker 2: some people criticized the film and said, well, it was
Speaker 2: just this backyard biology by David Bennett's, you know, just
Speaker 2: saying well, there's more deer when we trap out wolves.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I did not go interview biologist.
Speaker 2: We didn't get into the deep technical, technical research of
Speaker 2: wolves in that area. And I did that on purpose.
Speaker 2: I wanted to present it like what like what what
Speaker 2: you said? That we ought to just be able to
Speaker 2: go and extract a resource and not be hurt by it.
Speaker 2: And honestly, golly, if anybody knows wolves up there, it's
Speaker 2: David and he can tell you they're not hurting the
Speaker 2: wolf population. What was your original question, Steve, I gotta
Speaker 2: I got the I got sidetracked on my thought there.
Speaker 1: Oh, wasn't so much a question as an observation about
Speaker 1: people's need to on both sides of this issue, people's
Speaker 1: need to be a little bit or be a little
Speaker 1: bit like assume rhetoric that they don't maybe feel. And
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm pointing to both sides. It's like I've
Speaker 1: I've laid I've laid back, like I've really laid out
Speaker 1: my personal perspective on it, which I said is unwavering, right.
Speaker 1: But when I hear someone, if someone gets a mountain
Speaker 1: lion and an ay and then they get called out
Speaker 1: on it, and they want to put position that they
Speaker 1: were doing it out of the best interest of unknown
Speaker 1: strangers pets. I don't know. I don't think that they
Speaker 1: were out there because of their neighbor's pets. Yeah. Yeah. Likewise,
Speaker 1: the thing I've observed in the past, people like to
Speaker 1: hunt prairie dogs or ground squirrels, and they'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: I do it for the rancher. And I'll be like,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to help that rancher, if you went
Speaker 1: to that rancher's house and you said, man, I'm here
Speaker 1: to help. What is the number one most effective thing
Speaker 1: I can do to help you as a rancher. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna be prairie dogs. I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be fixing fence.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Look at what he does when he wakes up in
Speaker 1: the morning.
Speaker 2: He didn't go grab his two twenty three.
Speaker 1: He's like, by god, I gotta get up early tomorrow
Speaker 1: for prairie dogs. No, it's like I gotta get up,
Speaker 1: I gotta feed Coyle's check Kyle's fixed fence, do chores,
Speaker 1: and that's like the thing most top of mind. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I get a little I just end up
Speaker 1: getting a little tired of I end up getting a
Speaker 1: little tired of the bs. But but on management though,
Speaker 1: it's the eight seven pounds of me to day. Right,
Speaker 1: something's dying if they're living, sure, And it's been proven
Speaker 1: time again that that predator management, if done in a
Speaker 1: way that's precise spatially and precise temporarily, it's effective. As
Speaker 1: you're pointing out, you were involved in a kind of
Speaker 1: non event, right, No doubt during the following weeks, some
Speaker 1: fewer number of deer and moose died because they're going
Speaker 1: to make a kill it, you know, a killer two
Speaker 1: a week, whatever it is up there, No doubt some
Speaker 1: fewer prey animals died. No doubt those wolves will be
Speaker 1: replaced by the wolves who fill in the vacancy and
Speaker 1: the habitat. And you participated in you participated in an
Speaker 1: ecological non event, right, yeah, you know, I think, go ahead,
Speaker 1: go ahead, No, no, that's all.
Speaker 2: I said something that probably confused some people at the end,
Speaker 2: because I think, really, what on one side of the story,
Speaker 2: we're talking about making something sacred. And our society since
Speaker 2: the reintroduction into Yellowstone, and you know, we have sacralized
Speaker 2: wolves as this animal that is above other animals. And
Speaker 2: in some ways that's a positive thing. That's a celebration
Speaker 2: of this great beast, which humans love to do. That
Speaker 2: every culture that's ever lived has sacralized some animal. And
Speaker 2: I said in my closing statements on this film, I said,
Speaker 2: I said, I think as a society we can sacralize
Speaker 2: the wolf, but we also need to responsibly be able
Speaker 2: to trap them and hunt them. I think we can
Speaker 2: have our cake and eat it too, And I think
Speaker 2: that's what hunters can do that. It's hard for someone
Speaker 2: to understand. It's like, well, shoot, if you think a
Speaker 2: wolf's sacred, you don't need to be abut trapping them.
Speaker 2: And man, I think we can do it all. I mean,
Speaker 2: I like to see a wolf and have a sense
Speaker 2: of awe and have a sense of wow, this is
Speaker 2: a special moment, this is a special beast. Like I
Speaker 2: think that, Like I don't walk up to it and
Speaker 2: think this is a non just a another day of
Speaker 2: my life, just gonna dispatch this wolf.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think we can kind of have our cake and
Speaker 2: eat it too. I really do.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, that's at this point, that's proven. It's empirically true. Idaho, Wyoming, Montana,
Speaker 1: Alaska have wolves on the ground, and they have hunting
Speaker 1: and trapping seasons for wolves, and they're going to continue
Speaker 1: to have wolves on the ground. I do some I
Speaker 1: do some kyote hunting. I do some kyote trapping. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting by a little stringer of kyote pelts hanging
Speaker 1: on the wall of our studio. I get excited and
Speaker 1: happy when I see a kyot track. I like running
Speaker 1: into them. I set out trail cameras specific defeckly to
Speaker 1: catch images of coyotes. I also like to get some
Speaker 1: Those two things are not incompatible. Yeah, and having recovered
Speaker 1: populations of wolves on the ground and having some extraction
Speaker 1: of the resource, these are not incompatible ideas. We do
Speaker 1: it all of the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Let me can I ask you a question, how
Speaker 2: do you do you think us talking about and showing
Speaker 2: this is beneficial for our cause?
Speaker 1: Man, I would say I would say yes, and I'll
Speaker 1: position it. I'll explain the two perspectives on this stuff.
Speaker 1: One perspective is that hunters and trappers ought to try
Speaker 1: to hide in plain sight, the idea being that if
Speaker 1: you carry on your activities and you just hide and
Speaker 1: keep it secret, the broader world will not realize you're
Speaker 1: there and they will never mess with you. Also, this
Speaker 1: kind of notion that if you don't, if you're off
Speaker 1: of So if hunters and trappers stay off social media,
Speaker 1: the broader world won't know you're there and they won't
Speaker 1: come mess with you. But I invite that perspective, but
Speaker 1: I would invite them to look at a timeline and
Speaker 1: look at the timeline of the loss of hunting and
Speaker 1: trapping rights and pace that over a timeline of the
Speaker 1: introduction of social media. There's no correlation Colorado lost trap Like,
Speaker 1: look at places losing spring, bear hunts, places losing lion hunting,
Speaker 1: places losing trapping. That's pre social media. It's pre Internet
Speaker 1: for the most part. Colorado lost trapping back in the
Speaker 1: late eighties, early nineties. Yeah, pre Internet. There's no like.
Speaker 1: You can't look and say that the ability to discuss
Speaker 1: hunting and trapping has somehow is somehow correlated to a
Speaker 1: loss of rights. But that's this idea that you should
Speaker 1: go hide and if you go hide, no one will
Speaker 1: ever notice you're there. But you know what, you'll get noticed.
Speaker 1: You'll get noticed because you have animal rights people that
Speaker 1: are going to find out about it. You know how
Speaker 1: I know that because they find out about it, and
Speaker 1: they found out about it way before the Internet, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna come after you.
Speaker 2: Hey, before you say your second thing to me, we
Speaker 2: have to be the people that tell our story. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's my body. That's the bottom line. If somebody's gonna
Speaker 2: talk and talk about trapping wolves in Alaska, I want
Speaker 2: it to be one of us that's doing it. You know,
Speaker 2: not necessarily me, but I want it to be. I
Speaker 2: want the narrative to be not a spun narrative, but
Speaker 2: the narrative the way we see it. When I first
Speaker 2: got into the national bear scene about ten years ago,
Speaker 2: I was confronted by some of the baarhound guys that
Speaker 2: were like, hey, we should You're making a mistake by
Speaker 2: talking about this, and basically I was like, I think
Speaker 2: you're wrong. I think we have to be the ones
Speaker 2: that tell the story. And I think in a world
Speaker 2: of social media, it's all the more impetus for us
Speaker 2: to be the storytellers because if we just went silent, radio, silent,
Speaker 2: media silent, like some people are saying we should do
Speaker 2: these days.
Speaker 1: Then not.
Speaker 2: We don't have this governing body that can tell all
Speaker 2: hunters to never post something on the internet, you know,
Speaker 2: or or somebody's going to do it, and so the
Speaker 2: worst of us are going to be the storytellers of
Speaker 2: why something's going to happen. So in a world that
Speaker 2: now communicates through social media, I mean, I feel like
Speaker 2: it's all the more important for us to stand up
Speaker 2: and tell our story in a reasonable way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's kind of an absurd request. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a writer and a creator, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about the things I care about. The oldest representational
Speaker 1: art in the world is people drawing pictures of their hunts.
Speaker 1: That's not good. I've never heard that said before.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: The the idea that that somehow these act that somehow
Speaker 1: hunting and trapping should be removed from any sort of
Speaker 1: artistic expression or any sort of expository expression to to
Speaker 1: to to tell people how you view things, what you
Speaker 1: think about them, because it somehow sits outside of what's
Speaker 1: polite to discuss. It's absurd. Yeah, Like I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about the things that I love. I'm gonna advance
Speaker 1: my perspective on things. I'm gonna defend the things that
Speaker 1: matter to me. How and like, how do I imagine
Speaker 1: defending the things that matter to me? Do I do
Speaker 1: it by obfuscating them or do I do it by
Speaker 1: elucidating them by bringing them to lie. I'm like, there's
Speaker 1: nothing I'm gonna take that I'm gonna love and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna like, ob fuse, skate it out of my love
Speaker 1: for it, right, I'm going to illuminate it out of
Speaker 1: my love for it.
Speaker 2: And you know, by us not talking about this stuff,
Speaker 2: it might work for a generation, but the very nature
Speaker 2: of it, I mean, today the world communicates with social media, bicyclist, guitarist,
Speaker 2: sports athletes, like this is the medium of the world
Speaker 2: to communicate with our generation. And so if we were
Speaker 2: exempt from that, it would work for one generation, but
Speaker 2: the second generation it would it would fail. Like it's
Speaker 2: not a long term strategy, Like we have to be relevant.
Speaker 2: The way for hunters to be less relevant to planet
Speaker 2: Earth would be for us to be less relevant in
Speaker 2: the communication of the times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, like I said, you've already seen
Speaker 1: it happen. I mean, there was a dramatic erosion of
Speaker 1: the rights of outdoorsmen in the eighties and nineties. This
Speaker 1: is not a it's not an Internet phenomena. Yeah. Yeah, well, Clay,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you joined us for a talk about wolf
Speaker 1: trapping in Alaska Wolf.
Speaker 2: Management, Wolf management, Alaska wolf Management.
Speaker 1: What's next? Beaver's no doubt, it's beaver trapping with Steve
Speaker 1: Beaver trap man. Okay, here's what we do, and we
Speaker 1: do Mark Beaver Martin longlining in the mountains.
Speaker 2: Man, Well, we could do that on mules or we
Speaker 2: beaver trap and follow followed the fur all the way
Speaker 2: to making a sweet cowboy hat for both of us,
Speaker 2: a Paris sweet cowboy hats.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not going I'm going to floppy brim Daniel
Speaker 1: Boone hat man. Yeah, well he.
Speaker 2: Wore beaver felt. Sure, that's what I'm saying. I mean,
Speaker 2: I just mean like a beaver felt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well thanks for coming me go.
Speaker 2: Ahead, Yeah, man, thanks to appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on. Quai. Thanks a lot, man,