Speaker 1: This is Me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening un podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't protet anything presented by first, like creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
Speaker 1: for every hunt first like go farther, stay longer. Isn't
Speaker 1: Bill Smith the most popular name? Listen, start the machine.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you listen. There are some names that the
Speaker 1: world's gonna run out of, Yes and Bill, the world
Speaker 1: will will there will be like the world will run
Speaker 1: out of bills before people get back in the name
Speaker 1: of their kids Bill, Like after Harry Potter came out,
Speaker 1: everybody named their kid Henry. They wanted to name him Harry,
Speaker 1: but they thought they knew that people know that it
Speaker 1: was because they liked those books, so they named him Henry.
Speaker 1: Huge proliferation to Henry's. I didn't know that well they were.
Speaker 1: We almost ran out of Henry's and not. Now you
Speaker 1: can't throw a rock without hitting the Henry Under all
Speaker 1: ten years older Under, I feel like we're not even
Speaker 1: runn out of bills. What about Frank? Frank seems to
Speaker 1: be dying to Okay, Yeah, my dad was frank. We
Speaker 1: almost named our daughter Frankie, so I was gonna name
Speaker 1: her frank after her paternal grandfather, and then Rose, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Rose after her paternal grandmother and great grandmother. So
Speaker 1: I was gonna name her Frankie Rose, and then found
Speaker 1: out that there's some musician named Frankie Rose and just
Speaker 1: change it to Rosemary because that's my mom's name. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll probably run out of Frank's, but they'll Frankie's. What
Speaker 1: about George. I think we'll get very low on George's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but do you think there's gonna be revival. It's hard
Speaker 1: to know what's going to be revival. No one saw
Speaker 1: it coming that everyone was going to name their kid Henry.
Speaker 1: They named their kids Henry because I think they thought
Speaker 1: that they'd be smart. I like the name Henry, but
Speaker 1: I had no clue. There's like a majority of kids
Speaker 1: now are named him. I know nobody. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it was a city. You go to a city,
Speaker 1: you can't throw a rock at a playground without hitting Henry,
Speaker 1: and you think it's for Harry Potter. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's like my theory? I think it's a sound theory,
Speaker 1: but it's just I think they were, like, I really
Speaker 1: want to name him Harry, but then everybody's gonna know
Speaker 1: I like those kids books. So they named him Henry
Speaker 1: cause that seemed because it reminded them. I thought you
Speaker 1: were pulling legitimate research into that, But that's just your feelings.
Speaker 1: There's certain theories I'm into that are hard to substantiate.
Speaker 1: Like my brother Danny believes that he can't untangle in
Speaker 1: his head that Bill Clinton became president and all kids
Speaker 1: started wearing bike helmets, Like he feels that there's like
Speaker 1: he feels that something he doesn't he hasn't untangled it yet,
Speaker 1: but he feels that there was a somehow a link
Speaker 1: mhm between the Clinton presidency and for how many hundreds
Speaker 1: of years kids didn't have bike helmets and then they
Speaker 1: all got a bike helmet when Bill Clinton became president.
Speaker 1: That's his theory. So I don't know. I don't share
Speaker 1: the theory. I'm saying, like some theories are hard to
Speaker 1: like prove and disprove. They all started playing saxophone in
Speaker 1: their boxers too. Now, in terms of names, it would
Speaker 1: be interesting to know, like, just to tie this all together,
Speaker 1: did Monica drop off in prevalence following the Clinton presidency.
Speaker 1: I could see that happening very probable. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because that was during that Friend show where the peak
Speaker 1: friends popularity. Like right now, I wouldn't be surprised. And
Speaker 1: if this podcast had a different if we had a
Speaker 1: different sort of focus, we could dig into this stuff
Speaker 1: a little bit more. I wouldn't be surprised if Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: if there were some people who were going to go
Speaker 1: with Jeffrey, had a change of heart. I'm not falling
Speaker 1: the fellow named Jeffrey Epstein I'm following was hung to
Speaker 1: death in his jail cell. No, I didn't say, no,
Speaker 1: that's right. If I put it like hung to death,
Speaker 1: like someone did it, I feel like I think there's
Speaker 1: a chance that's true. Which, since we're off topic, do
Speaker 1: you want to know the leading do you want to
Speaker 1: know the leading conspiracy theory? Someone explained I didn't understand,
Speaker 1: like what they're leading. You want to the lead conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory about Epstein? This might be now, but like at
Speaker 1: a time, this was the one has explained to me
Speaker 1: by someone who traffics heavily and conspiracy theories. It was
Speaker 1: that Epstein was a massad agent. That's good man, that's
Speaker 1: old news man. Listen, Tode, I didn't if I made
Speaker 1: it up, I would have said I made it up.
Speaker 1: I'm saying this is so you know this, Sean. You
Speaker 1: follow this kind of stuff. Oh you're talking about that
Speaker 1: rabbit hole for like two years. Um, Shawn's here, Sean.
Speaker 1: We were's here to talk about ducks. But somehow and
Speaker 1: he's not a big and he's not a big Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein expert o. Can you tell us the theory? Sean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the link or the thing that they say
Speaker 1: is that I'll tell you this. No, you did not
Speaker 1: tell me this. Mm hmm. Is that Gallaine Maxwell, the
Speaker 1: lady that was just on trial. Yeah, as it goes,
Speaker 1: her dad was a massad. That's what they say. It
Speaker 1: starts to make some gravy m Yeah, but here you're
Speaker 1: not filling it in. Let me just fill it in.
Speaker 1: This is we're so far off. This is not what
Speaker 1: this show is about, ladies and gentlemen. It's just not
Speaker 1: what it's about. In fact, Stue Miller from Coon Creek
Speaker 1: Outdoors is here and he's supposed to be flipping a
Speaker 1: bobcat hide right now, which he's gonna explain in one second,
Speaker 1: So bear with us. We're gonna get into appropriate subject matter.
Speaker 1: Epstein was a massad agent. How he served the Massad
Speaker 1: was he would get prominent academics, politicians, financial individuals into
Speaker 1: compromising situations, film them, film them whatever he did, and
Speaker 1: then later, when Israel needed them to do or not
Speaker 1: do something, okay, they would say, oh, and by the way,
Speaker 1: we happen to have a very interesting video. You might
Speaker 1: not like to be out. And as the conspiracy theory goes,
Speaker 1: that was why Jeffrey Epstein had to be silenced on
Speaker 1: that fateful night in his jail cell while the guards
Speaker 1: slept in the security camera malfunctioned. M plausible mm hmm. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Phil looks very titillated. You can tell Phil like really
Speaker 1: want us to get into it, but he's also uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: How off subject matter this is to introduce yourself, Oh, Brodie,
Speaker 1: real quick, Brodies here Chester the die Master, which Chester
Speaker 1: is a very dying name. It's just been hanging on
Speaker 1: for like a hundred years. I feel like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like that might be why I like you so much,
Speaker 1: because you're the only Chester I've ever known. The pets
Speaker 1: are keeping it alive though like dogs. Yeah, Rick Huttons here,
Speaker 1: Ses here, we're gonna talk about sets up coming wedding
Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm here, high folks. Yeah, we're also joined.
Speaker 1: He's remote, but I still feel his presidents. Sean Weavers
Speaker 1: here and he's gonna hit us with the latest installment
Speaker 1: of Shawn's Duck Report, which is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things we do. What's up, Sean, what's going on with you? Well?
Speaker 1: I just finally got off the road after two straight
Speaker 1: months of film and Duck lawre are you duck hut
Speaker 1: and show Um I'm actually the reason I'm doing this
Speaker 1: remote is I got a little sick, got a little
Speaker 1: ran down from being on the road that long. The
Speaker 1: utility company actually called while I was gone and they
Speaker 1: wanted to check if my water meter was broke because
Speaker 1: I hadn't used any water in my place for two months,
Speaker 1: so he's been like dead or Yeah. It was kind
Speaker 1: of a nice wellness check. Knowing the utility companies got
Speaker 1: me coming, like, dude, at least someone knows what I've
Speaker 1: been gone. Also, Duck Lore, the first episode is coming
Speaker 1: out February, and that's a Texas teel hunt with me
Speaker 1: and Jean Paul and I like it. It's it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Walk us through a couple more episodes that are gonna
Speaker 1: be coming up. Yeah, so first few episodes are going
Speaker 1: to be Texas Teal, then Callahan and Me in North Dakota,
Speaker 1: Janna in Nebraska, and yourself in Michigan. So jumping kind
Speaker 1: of all over the Midwest. Ads. Yep, learn a lot
Speaker 1: about ducks with a guy that knows a lot about
Speaker 1: duck Seawan Weaver. Uh but okay, now, stew introduce yourself alright.
Speaker 1: So I'm Stu Miller. I uh run a couple different
Speaker 1: YouTube channels. Uh, con Creek Outdoors is the one that
Speaker 1: that I'm here for um and I'm kind of a
Speaker 1: trapper more or less. So that's how I came to
Speaker 1: meet Steve. And uh yeah, I dabble in uh trapping
Speaker 1: and for handling. So tell her everybody where you're from.
Speaker 1: I'm from Illinois, Southern Illinois. Oh we get into this
Speaker 1: for a minute. So this is on point, Phil, don't
Speaker 1: don't get nervous. I have a problem with I have
Speaker 1: a real problem with people in southern Illinois who think
Speaker 1: they're southern. And I told you to if people ice
Speaker 1: fish in your state. You are not Southern, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't care where the Mason Dixon line is. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people ice fishing right now because
Speaker 1: they call this is the perfect time for this. You
Speaker 1: can't be a Southerner in a state where ice fishing
Speaker 1: is occurring. Stu says that he explained to me that
Speaker 1: there's so much dissatisfy that there's such a cultural divide
Speaker 1: between the greater Chicago area and then like the agricultural
Speaker 1: segment of Illinois, and I am I okay to say this.
Speaker 1: There's such a cultural finance, like just as a huge
Speaker 1: cultural divide that that it's pushed southern Illinois to the
Speaker 1: south in mentality rather than be associated with with the
Speaker 1: the political corruption and ongoings in Chicago. I'm saying it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get somebody five miles south of Chicago and they're
Speaker 1: gonna say they're from southern Yeah, they're like by which
Speaker 1: I mean not Chicago, not Chicago. I fell in love
Speaker 1: with Steve's videos because I would go, um, I found
Speaker 1: you in a totally organic way. I would be curious
Speaker 1: about how to do something with her handling, Like for instance,
Speaker 1: last year, UM a little over well over uh fourteen
Speaker 1: months ago. Um, we got onto a couple of red
Speaker 1: foxes one morning and got the red foxes. I had
Speaker 1: a little uh seventeen h mr with me. We got
Speaker 1: a breeding pair of red foxes, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I wanted to get him tanned and put up real
Speaker 1: nice And now they adorned my daughters. Actually they hanged
Speaker 1: for my daughter's bunk bead thing and she loves him,
Speaker 1: but and I wanted to like get him tanned for myself.
Speaker 1: And I used to put up red foxes and sell
Speaker 1: them when I was young. But I was just kind
Speaker 1: of curious about how to do the feet, you know,
Speaker 1: and all that kind stuff different than how you do
Speaker 1: for fur handling for fur trade. And I would get
Speaker 1: typed in like how do you do x Y and Z?
Speaker 1: And I'd wind up on your thing, or how do
Speaker 1: you do x Y and Z with a skunk? And
Speaker 1: I'd wind up on your page. So then I sent
Speaker 1: you an email and it's been we've been interacting ever since.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, every day I asked him a question. No,
Speaker 1: it's been it's been fun. So, Um, that's how we met.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about that. Now. Here's what I wanted
Speaker 1: we had a lot of stuff we gotta cover off on.
Speaker 1: But I want you to to explain Grab the Bobcat
Speaker 1: and explain what's been done and what people can listen
Speaker 1: to you now do like why we did what we
Speaker 1: did and where we're at with it now. Alright, So yesterday, um,
Speaker 1: we took a bobcat that was skinned and then Steve
Speaker 1: you fleshed it and we tubeskin. Tell everybody with tub
Speaker 1: skin skin. So basically, um, the way that furs are
Speaker 1: sold through the fur market is their tube skin. And
Speaker 1: that's basically where you're gonna make a cut kind of
Speaker 1: on its back end and you're gonna kind of peel
Speaker 1: the hide off, very similar to it like taking off
Speaker 1: a sock. Basically, Yeah, that's you know, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: peel that that critter down and you're gonna end up
Speaker 1: with it. As you say, a tube of it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be cut open where you know, if you've seen
Speaker 1: like traditional pictures, you know you see where they split them,
Speaker 1: split them up the belly across the back and imagine
Speaker 1: that you're like the the incision being that like when
Speaker 1: you're gutting a deer, you make that incision all the
Speaker 1: way up to his chin, and then you've got like
Speaker 1: an open hide. So then you would lay the hide
Speaker 1: or the pelt flatways, Um this is it's not gonna
Speaker 1: look like a bear rug when you're dumb. No, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be all all together. And as like you said,
Speaker 1: a tube skin you cut, just think about like this,
Speaker 1: cut around and like the only cut you make through
Speaker 1: the hider around the ankles. Right, Yeah, that's it. So
Speaker 1: imagine that you cut around the back, cut around the
Speaker 1: rear ankle, a circle around it on each leg, and
Speaker 1: then you run a slit up to the anus, and
Speaker 1: then the whole thing comes off just like that, peel
Speaker 1: it right off. So that's what I did to that bobcat.
Speaker 1: That's a small female bobcat, small female bobcat. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then so after it's my favorite my prize possession. My
Speaker 1: favorite thing I owned used to be my buffalo skull
Speaker 1: that I found that I wrote a book about. But
Speaker 1: now it's that we better not screwed up there. So
Speaker 1: now after you after you fleshed it, then we put
Speaker 1: on flesh and beam and we used the flesh and
Speaker 1: knife to flesh all the all the all the membrane
Speaker 1: and the fat and all the residual fats. So we
Speaker 1: got it just down to the skin. And after we
Speaker 1: did that, we split the ears because you're gonna tan
Speaker 1: it for yourself, so we wanted to make sure. You know,
Speaker 1: that's something I never had done before, So we split
Speaker 1: the ears and then we put it on a board.
Speaker 1: So different critters are sold different ways and with like
Speaker 1: a canine. So your fox or coyotes and your bobcats,
Speaker 1: all those are sold for out so you can see
Speaker 1: the the presentation the pelt. Uh. Some of your other
Speaker 1: critters like muskrats, minks, and coons, they're all sold for in.
Speaker 1: So do you know why Seth and I were speculating
Speaker 1: about that the other day? Who decided that has does
Speaker 1: it ever change? Have you ever heard of changing? Back
Speaker 1: in the day they sold coons actually flat, you would
Speaker 1: split them up. The reason that I always been told is,
Speaker 1: you know, with with a bobcat, say, and a coyote,
Speaker 1: you're you're using basically all of that. So you want
Speaker 1: to be able to visually see that that whole hide.
Speaker 1: You want you want to see the fur all of it.
Speaker 1: So whereas like on a coon, you know, we we
Speaker 1: boredom for in, but you also cut a window and
Speaker 1: inspection window and the greater will actually grade that. And
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of the prized part of that hide
Speaker 1: is what's in that inspection windows. He can get a
Speaker 1: good general idea of the quality of that hide through
Speaker 1: that inspection window. Take a muskrat, for instance. I remember
Speaker 1: selling muskrats at auction and they would still sort of open.
Speaker 1: They would bend it up to look inside it, to
Speaker 1: look at the back. For why is a muskrat not
Speaker 1: just stretched first side out? I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it is so they can see the prime nous of
Speaker 1: the pelt, you know, because you know how a muskrat
Speaker 1: so muskrats and we'll kind of talk pelt prime nous.
Speaker 1: But you know the reason that we trapped critters in
Speaker 1: the winters, because that's whenever the furs prime, the pelt
Speaker 1: is prime. And if you ever, it's because it's because
Speaker 1: you do it between big game hunting and ice fish.
Speaker 1: You know, it's because there's a month when you might
Speaker 1: get bored. Now, this goes way way back. This goes
Speaker 1: why they set regulations in Europe like four hundred years
Speaker 1: ago to trapping regulations, so where you would actually target
Speaker 1: prime critters. And uh so if you ever heard the
Speaker 1: term a blue pet pelt, Okay, so blue pelt is
Speaker 1: essentially kind of an unprimed pelt early season pelt or
Speaker 1: or late So that's point out. I mean literally blue.
Speaker 1: It's blue like if you ever kill a deer, like
Speaker 1: an early if you live in a state where you're
Speaker 1: allowed to, like get rolling in September something, you skin
Speaker 1: that deer and it's like the leather is blue. It's blue. Yep.
Speaker 1: So that's what they call it blue pelt. And what
Speaker 1: happens is a lot of people are in the assumption
Speaker 1: that temperature is what makes that for a prime and
Speaker 1: that's actually false. It's actually based more on daylight hours,
Speaker 1: which has a correlation to temperature obviously. So you know,
Speaker 1: as as winter progresses further north you are, you're losing
Speaker 1: daylight quicker than south, so the pelts will generally prime
Speaker 1: up quicker. So like the winter, the hell they call
Speaker 1: the shortest day of the year winter. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: when yany goes out burning log around his house bunch times.
Speaker 1: People hits all kinds of lavian things. Um when he's
Speaker 1: doing that. Uh, the shortest day of the year like
Speaker 1: peak prime nous. Well, not necessarily, no, not well, because
Speaker 1: there's other factors too. So you know, for instance, um,
Speaker 1: whenever we're talking with coons, they have a running season,
Speaker 1: which is you know, kind of right now, a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago and we're talking, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the middle into January where I'm from. So they will
Speaker 1: actually go from Dan to Dan to DN to rut,
Speaker 1: no different than like a buck will. But what will
Speaker 1: happen is going from Dan to Den to DN, they'll
Speaker 1: start to get a patch and rub fur on their
Speaker 1: back and it will actually become bald from squeezing into
Speaker 1: the hole from running around so much from Dan to
Speaker 1: DN to DN. So you've seen I was here like that.
Speaker 1: They're rubbed. You've seen it where they actually wear their
Speaker 1: hair out squeezing into holes and logs. It will become
Speaker 1: infected that they will rub it down raw raw meat
Speaker 1: from going. I mean, they get crazy. It's just no
Speaker 1: different than a deer and rut. You see, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it. I've seen it worn down. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it worn down like raw. It'll be scabbed over. And
Speaker 1: you know that's obviously I'm not prime pelt, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to trap, so you know, even though
Speaker 1: there's a season for him, generally quit trapping. Then you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta interrupt you real quick. So I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I don't want to establish a rivalry between you and Seth.
Speaker 1: But there's something you need to know about Seth. When
Speaker 1: Seth was a little boy, he uh would go down
Speaker 1: to a fur buyer in in Uh flesh and stretch raccoons.
Speaker 1: In high school. That was my job. Piece work, no hourly,
Speaker 1: no piece work, peace work, piece work. How would they
Speaker 1: give you for one not much? Is like three or
Speaker 1: four bucks? Sound like more than stuff's worth. Now anyway,
Speaker 1: I was like, I forget what it was. No, it wasn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem well at the time, it seemed like
Speaker 1: a lot. Oh, I U appeal log home logs for
Speaker 1: thirty five cents a foot, which at the time it
Speaker 1: was pretty good. I wouldn't be able to feed one kid.
Speaker 1: I would be able to feed one of my kids
Speaker 1: on that. Now it was a good night. Then it
Speaker 1: was a good good night flash And then oh man,
Speaker 1: it all depended because we would sometimes we'd like get
Speaker 1: behind freeze a bunch of hides. You know, we we
Speaker 1: guys would guys would bring him in either like you know,
Speaker 1: like whole animal, or they would bring him in skinned
Speaker 1: all already. Just I just needed to flash and put
Speaker 1: them up. But would you go down and skin the
Speaker 1: whole ones too? Yeah? Oh you would, okay, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you get paid more for like one that you had
Speaker 1: to skin, flash and put up. Yeah. It was like
Speaker 1: it was like two two or three bucks to skin it,
Speaker 1: two or three bucks to flesh it and put it
Speaker 1: up something like that. Um, but I mean we used
Speaker 1: to do we should flash from dark to dark some
Speaker 1: some like start early in the morning, start before it
Speaker 1: got light out, and quit after the dark. And what
Speaker 1: might you do in today? You know you remember I
Speaker 1: don't remember at all more than ten oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do, like ten or so in an evening after school,
Speaker 1: m sometimes more. Sometimes it all depends on what people
Speaker 1: were bringing in going to school all greasy, No I
Speaker 1: was after school. Um yeah. So anyways, I don't want
Speaker 1: you to I don't want you, you and Seth to
Speaker 1: have like a little thing in an hour you like
Speaker 1: feel like you're at odds with one another, And I
Speaker 1: just want you to know you're you're across from across.
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel I feel like we're brothers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a crossing. You're sitting across from a former professional.
Speaker 1: It's a dying trade. So like, yeah, that's very young.
Speaker 1: So this isn't that long ago. If I say high school,
Speaker 1: it's like people look like that, Like, uh, like, you
Speaker 1: know a lot different back then. Alright, So go on
Speaker 1: and circle background of the damn Bobcats too. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: keep getting me dist They go into holes, they rub
Speaker 1: their hair off. Talking about I was trying to make
Speaker 1: the claim that like prim nous might be the winter solstice,
Speaker 1: but you're saying there's other factors that override that, a
Speaker 1: lot of other variables. Yeah, kyotes, you know, their prime
Speaker 1: nous is usually earlier in the season. They'll start to
Speaker 1: degrade fairly quickly. Um, you know, a lot depends on
Speaker 1: like his hair, the hair wears out or what, depending
Speaker 1: on where they're at. If they're in like an open country,
Speaker 1: you know, where they're not having to like push through
Speaker 1: a lot of brush and stuff, they're gonna stay you know,
Speaker 1: prime longer. Where if you're out you know west, where
Speaker 1: they're pushing through a bunch of sage brush and different things.
Speaker 1: Like that that'll slowly wear out that fur. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different variables. Yeah, they tell about
Speaker 1: the one that happens the beavers in the spring. So
Speaker 1: what d what what sort of ends the season on beavers.
Speaker 1: So beavers will actually start fighting as they come out,
Speaker 1: depending on if you have ice or not, but they'll
Speaker 1: start fighting and they'll start biting each other. And so
Speaker 1: whenever the beavers start, they'll have bite marks on them,
Speaker 1: very similar to muskrats to do the same thing. Whenever
Speaker 1: you start getting beaver with a bunch of bite more
Speaker 1: and two marks on them, it's time to quit. And
Speaker 1: that might happen before the season even ends. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no difference in like like the ar coon season right now, Um,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna get coons that are rubbed during season.
Speaker 1: They are still in so you've got to make that
Speaker 1: decision to either release them or quit trapping or you
Speaker 1: know whatever. So you know, let him growing on a
Speaker 1: better pelt. Yeah, and you'll see that, you know, because
Speaker 1: especially on your boar coons, they'll have a big scar patch,
Speaker 1: usually right on the back and it'll be from years
Speaker 1: and years and years. Really, Yeah, it's all you'll notice
Speaker 1: it will be a darker patch right down the center,
Speaker 1: and that's all scars. And whenever you're skinning and flesh them,
Speaker 1: you've got to be kind of careful of it too,
Speaker 1: because that's not like all scar tissue, and it's all
Speaker 1: scar tissue. Yeah. On a lot of your older big boards,
Speaker 1: you'll see that. And as you as the pelt dries,
Speaker 1: you'll see that kind of brownish, darker brown hue right
Speaker 1: down the back. And that's that's from them rubbing year
Speaker 1: after year after year going into squeezing into dense just constantly. Yep,
Speaker 1: they just go from densite to denside, didn't. They will
Speaker 1: run themselves. I mean you'll see them out in the daytime.
Speaker 1: They'll get real skinny and just just just like a
Speaker 1: buck and rut, they'll just run themselves stupid covering ground. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to the Bobcat. Back to the Bobcat. So we've
Speaker 1: got the Bobcat and uh so we put them on here.
Speaker 1: You know what we're talking about his wife for in,
Speaker 1: for out and all that. Okay, yeah, yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: what we got distracted on. So we put the Bobcat
Speaker 1: on a board yesterday. Um, because this Bobcat is going
Speaker 1: to be we want them fur out um and that's
Speaker 1: how they're sold, which you're gonna tan it. So it
Speaker 1: really doesn't matter because on a Bobcat, the buyers want
Speaker 1: to see they want to see the spots. You know,
Speaker 1: that's your prime. You know, on a coyote, it's kind
Speaker 1: of that back or the belly. Um a coon, it's
Speaker 1: the back. But on the Bobcat, they really want to
Speaker 1: see those spots. That's that's where the money is at,
Speaker 1: the spotted belly, that spotted belly and generally, you know,
Speaker 1: the clear more predominant spots are you're hired dollar furs.
Speaker 1: So I've heard guys say that if the belly like,
Speaker 1: they'll go buy you. How many fingers the belly strip is? Like,
Speaker 1: if you have a belly strip that's like four fingers
Speaker 1: wide and nice bright clear spots, that's a good one. Now,
Speaker 1: I gotta admit the one your hand on right there
Speaker 1: is a two f it's got a two finger belly
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah. I just got a pretty nice one
Speaker 1: believable Bobcat. Yeah, that was a nice one. That's like
Speaker 1: two hands wide belly. That was a big boy. And
Speaker 1: if you look at them compared to like the Western
Speaker 1: bobcats versus the Eastern bobcats. You know these bobcats out
Speaker 1: here a lot clearer our Our Eastern bobcats are just
Speaker 1: almost brown. Yeah, totally different trash cats. Yeah, not not
Speaker 1: worth so uh okay, tell everybody it's on a split board.
Speaker 1: A splain all that. So we we boarded this cat
Speaker 1: on a split board. Um, you know you can board
Speaker 1: them on a solid board or split board. I have
Speaker 1: a preference of a split board simply because with the
Speaker 1: split boards we're going to flip this heide anyway, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to manipulate them, and the split board
Speaker 1: just allows us to remove the animal from the board
Speaker 1: just a little bit easier. Now, if if, if it
Speaker 1: needs to be if it needs to be fur out,
Speaker 1: why did we start it for in because we want
Speaker 1: to get that critter to dry. There's a there's and
Speaker 1: depending on who you talked to, some guys will what
Speaker 1: they call skip the flip, which is they will that's
Speaker 1: a good T shirt, skip the slip flip. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we need an illustration Hunters. We need to call Hunter
Speaker 1: Spencer and see if he can capture in an image
Speaker 1: a man who has simply not flipped it. Skip the flips.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of because it's a picture of a
Speaker 1: dude with a bobcat. How do you know if he
Speaker 1: flipped it or not. It's a hard illustration. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: think about that. How would you capture that illustration? And
Speaker 1: then it would say skip the flip. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: flip this one because the reason why we're gonna flip
Speaker 1: it is we want to make sure that hide is
Speaker 1: good and dry and that we're not going to have
Speaker 1: any issues with you know, molding or drying issues. So
Speaker 1: we bore did this thing for in on a split
Speaker 1: board and we've let it sit, you know, depending on
Speaker 1: temperature and humanity, everythings like that. Twelve sixteen hours. But
Speaker 1: that one, because of because of our schedule day, he's
Speaker 1: been sitting and sitting a little longer, a little longer,
Speaker 1: so it's gonna be a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: trick now. One day I called stew and I asked,
Speaker 1: I was doing a martin and I had to leave town.
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna be around to flip, so I didn't
Speaker 1: know the slogan skip the flip, And I said, can
Speaker 1: I skip the flip, and he said, people do and
Speaker 1: it's something that you can get away with. And that's
Speaker 1: some of a bit dried on that board. I was.
Speaker 1: I got to where I was thinking about how I
Speaker 1: was going to try to destroy the board because somehow
Speaker 1: get my I wanted the Martin more than the board,
Speaker 1: and I was like, maybe I can split this board
Speaker 1: and crack it into little pieces and somehow get it
Speaker 1: out of there. And then after much trial and error,
Speaker 1: I eventually got that some bitch off but dried on
Speaker 1: the board. When I do him right for in overnight
Speaker 1: and then flip it, it just falls off just so
Speaker 1: much easier, no different than this. So I see you
Speaker 1: guys got it salted too, or a little bit of borax.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that now, Phil, Sorry not Phil. You know
Speaker 1: I don't want to Phil talking about that. But Bill,
Speaker 1: Phil his name Bill, he'd know, Uh yeah, explain the
Speaker 1: borax a little bit, A little bit borax. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people assume use salt for whatever reason. I guess,
Speaker 1: just an old timey thing you salted hide. If you're
Speaker 1: selling to the fur trade, that's actually you don't want
Speaker 1: to use salt. And the reason being is the salt
Speaker 1: interacts with the hide negatively, whereas the whenever they actually
Speaker 1: go to tann it, you know, it has a negative
Speaker 1: impact on the hide. So we use borax, which is
Speaker 1: just twenty mule team borax. It's just detergent, is all
Speaker 1: what it is. And it just helps us. Uh. In
Speaker 1: areas that would be like under the arms that are
Speaker 1: not able to have air circulate quite as good, use
Speaker 1: a little borax just to help help the drying process.
Speaker 1: A trick I learned on Coon Creek Outdoors that I
Speaker 1: need that you need. You need some feedback on is
Speaker 1: uh where you live it's more humid. So you were
Speaker 1: talking about you have a block of boax, like you
Speaker 1: let it sit out and it turns into a brick
Speaker 1: and you just rub it on. Yeah, so you have
Speaker 1: a thing that looks like a bar of soap, but
Speaker 1: it's a block of boax and you rub it on.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, that's like a ship. It works great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't get that here. I don't care how long
Speaker 1: you let that stuff sit in your garage, it will
Speaker 1: not turn into a block. It's too arid. Put it
Speaker 1: in the bathroom with you take a shower, let it
Speaker 1: collect a little bit moisture, then go stick it outside.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea. You need to make a video
Speaker 1: addendum to your video and then you need it. It It
Speaker 1: needs a pause and like you hit a certain button
Speaker 1: if you're from the air. It was see me in
Speaker 1: my bathroom in the shower of block of box. So
Speaker 1: you think i'd be able to get a block of
Speaker 1: boar X. If I did that, you're putting humidity to
Speaker 1: I almost was gonna have you send me a block
Speaker 1: of boar. Actually, I thought he'd get to where I
Speaker 1: live and dry out the fall turn back into powder.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of goods. There's not a situation
Speaker 1: where you'd salted. No, no, not. The only situation if
Speaker 1: you're gonna salt it is if you are going to
Speaker 1: tan it yourself, So then you're actually gonna use and
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a lot of different ways to tan.
Speaker 1: But essentially what the salt does is really remove all
Speaker 1: the oils from the hide and pull all the oils out.
Speaker 1: But the tanning process that you're gonna do at home
Speaker 1: versus a tanning process that's done commercially is different. So
Speaker 1: the salt kind of has a negative impact on it
Speaker 1: in that manner. So I've heard people describe I'm curious
Speaker 1: if you'd agree with this. I've heard people describe home
Speaker 1: tanning as more of a preservation method than like uh
Speaker 1: then than uh kind of like an archival. I'm not
Speaker 1: finding the right words, but that that you're talking to quality, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that it's more like it's it's pretty temporary home
Speaker 1: tan job. Like maybe you get ten years out of it,
Speaker 1: but you're not gonna get out of it what you
Speaker 1: get out of it from a commercial tannery. Do you
Speaker 1: agree with that or not agree? Not necessarily. I think
Speaker 1: it's all it's all how much love you put into
Speaker 1: tanning it. You know, that's where a lot of people
Speaker 1: will fail. A lot has to go into the breaking
Speaker 1: process and the way that further or tan commercially, they're
Speaker 1: able to be broken like like garment material, you know,
Speaker 1: very soft, you know, but home tanning, you know, you
Speaker 1: can brain tan something, which is what the Indians did.
Speaker 1: So there's I was at a museum yesterday and there's
Speaker 1: still stuff around from this been brain tanning. That's that
Speaker 1: was that was brain That's kind of what I was
Speaker 1: hearing about brain tanning is that it didn't um that
Speaker 1: like moisture can really be hard on it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all in how you like I said, how you
Speaker 1: tann it. A lot of the brain tanning involves like
Speaker 1: a smoking process to water proof it, keep the bugs
Speaker 1: out of it. You know what, You're basically just replacing
Speaker 1: the natural tannins in the hide with some sort of
Speaker 1: synthetic material for the majority of your home tanning. So
Speaker 1: like if you've seen the orange bottle or the different
Speaker 1: acid I mean there's a million different ways acid tanning.
Speaker 1: There's some egg white tanning. I mean, you're what methods
Speaker 1: do you do? You use? I brain tan and I
Speaker 1: use the Orange bottle Hunters and Trappers high tanning formula.
Speaker 1: Those are my two favorite that I've had a lot
Speaker 1: of success with deer brains, any brains. It's the I
Speaker 1: believe it's the landeline. I believe is what it is
Speaker 1: in the brains. And there's tell me what all kinds
Speaker 1: of brains you've used. I've used everything everything I can
Speaker 1: get my hands on deer. Deer brains are the easiest,
Speaker 1: you know, to acquire during the season. But there's this
Speaker 1: kind of a myth, and I've found it to be
Speaker 1: fairly accurate where whatever animal you have, basically their brain
Speaker 1: is sized accordingly to tan there and I've found that
Speaker 1: to be fairly act. Yeah, So which I I just
Speaker 1: save everything up at the end of the year and
Speaker 1: mix it all together. And big old bucket of brain,
Speaker 1: big old bucket of brains. I'd like to see that
Speaker 1: big old bucket of brains. Don't drink that. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to the Bobcat because then we gotta cover off
Speaker 1: on some stuff. I just want to get to the
Speaker 1: part where you're flipping it, okay, and tell people how
Speaker 1: not to tear it. All right, So this thing's dried
Speaker 1: on the board for set a number of ours and
Speaker 1: it's uh, I don't know if you can hear it
Speaker 1: through the microphone, but it sounds almost like dry paper.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what you're going for. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't want it to be to dry it's gonna
Speaker 1: be hard to flip, but you also don't want it
Speaker 1: to be too wet where you're gonna have mold issues.
Speaker 1: So we've got it to that point right now. You
Speaker 1: know what, Brod, I gotta tell you something. You really
Speaker 1: distract me on this, but I'm trying to but to
Speaker 1: your credits I'm trying to get everything that you know
Speaker 1: outright for a wall, because that's gonna be a wall hanger.
Speaker 1: Stu turned the ears, which is not something that most
Speaker 1: like trappers for the commercial market would do, but he
Speaker 1: turned the ears out of concern for my wall hanger. Bobcat,
Speaker 1: you better explain that, all right. So we split the
Speaker 1: ears side, Yeah, split them. We split the ears. And
Speaker 1: traditionally anything from below the ears up in the commercial
Speaker 1: trade is not used. So generally, you know, flashing process,
Speaker 1: different things like that, we don't normally use that. But
Speaker 1: since you're gonna tan it and use it for a
Speaker 1: wall hanger, we went ahead and split the ears. And basically,
Speaker 1: on on an ear of of most critters, you have
Speaker 1: an inner ear kind of in an outer ear. The
Speaker 1: inner ear is actually what has the cartilage and on
Speaker 1: like a coyote, say, that's what makes the ears pronounced
Speaker 1: stand up, and then the outer skin has the fur
Speaker 1: on it that you see. But on a bobcat there's
Speaker 1: fur on both sides, and you want to keep that
Speaker 1: so in order to let the tan solution penetrate. And
Speaker 1: this is just over my ears of doing it. If
Speaker 1: you actually separate the cartilage from the skin in the ear,
Speaker 1: you're able to let that tan solution kind of penetrate
Speaker 1: up the ear and ideally save both sides of the ear,
Speaker 1: and then by doing so, you've actually saved the cartilage
Speaker 1: as well. So after you get your tan pelt back,
Speaker 1: your ears still look like ears. Basically, it don't look
Speaker 1: all all wrinkled up, you know and kind of shriveled up.
Speaker 1: But I like a way to imagine it is imagine
Speaker 1: that you're going to cut off your own ear and
Speaker 1: tan it, because I think about like, like grab your
Speaker 1: ear flap, right, you have skin and skin, Yeah, you'd
Speaker 1: have to get like how are you gonna you know,
Speaker 1: you'd want to get in there and split it open
Speaker 1: so that you were getting each side of the skin
Speaker 1: to keep your ear properly tanned up. Yeah, And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, just from my experience over the years, it
Speaker 1: just seems like if you don't split the ears, generally
Speaker 1: that inner part where the cartilage sets, it won't take
Speaker 1: the tan solution very well, and then it'll end up
Speaker 1: slipping the ferral slip, which basically just means it it'll
Speaker 1: fall off. So, yeah, we tried to do a favor
Speaker 1: here and split the ears and hopefully whenever it gets
Speaker 1: tand it'll they'll come out right. So we did that,
Speaker 1: and now it's time to finally flip this this critter.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna take it off the board. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of different ways to flip it. And basically, like
Speaker 1: I said, we've got this thing tube skin, so we
Speaker 1: want to turn it out outward and we're gonna roll
Speaker 1: it kind of like you would turn a sock inside out. Um. So,
Speaker 1: generally you have a lot more tendency to rip the
Speaker 1: hide if you start from the bottom and go up.
Speaker 1: But if you turn them from the nose in and
Speaker 1: kind of push the head in and roll it down,
Speaker 1: generally that's a safer bet uh to not not ripping
Speaker 1: the hide or tearing the hide. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: has to go on how far you let this thing dry.
Speaker 1: There's just that fine window uh in in flipping the
Speaker 1: hides that you know you kind of need to hit.
Speaker 1: But I think we'll I think we'll be okay. Is
Speaker 1: there some critters that their hide tears a lot easier,
Speaker 1: so like fox have really thin skin. Um. There there's
Speaker 1: a big number trapper that I follow and he's skipped
Speaker 1: the flip on foxes for years. You know. Uh, he
Speaker 1: puts them up on wire too, so a lot of wire.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's just there's one way to do it,
Speaker 1: and then there's a hundred other different ways to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, there's not really one set way, which is
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. So it depending on who
Speaker 1: you talk to and what part of the country it's.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna do it this way because it's the
Speaker 1: way I've always done it, and we're gonna basically start
Speaker 1: at the nose and we're gonna just kind of need
Speaker 1: that head down through the body and and pull it
Speaker 1: through and then we'll have the have the bobcat fur
Speaker 1: out and you'll be able to see your cat. All right.
Speaker 1: So Stu Miller, Coon Creek Outdoors, he's gonna start turning
Speaker 1: do it as loud as you can because we're gonna
Speaker 1: cover off on our other stuff and I want people
Speaker 1: to be ablit to hear you doing it, and I'll
Speaker 1: keep people posting on what's going on. Let's hope I
Speaker 1: don't rip it. Oh, if you rip it, dude, first
Speaker 1: thing it's gonna happen is this show is over. If
Speaker 1: you rip it. Stew All you have to do is
Speaker 1: say just do it yourself next time. Then I ripped
Speaker 1: a few of my day people get pissed. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. Maybe I'll be living taking to someone
Speaker 1: else and here someone so mad that they become apoplectic.
Speaker 1: They'll be me. I've never heard of that. If Steve
Speaker 1: rips my bobcat All right, so we gotta touch off
Speaker 1: on this. You weren't even here when I was talking
Speaker 1: about this. What are you are you going? I was
Speaker 1: going to run in the bathroom quick, but I'll stick
Speaker 1: around talking about your marriage. Oh yeah, I had better
Speaker 1: stick around. Um am I still officiating. Yakay, No we haven't.
Speaker 1: We haven't found someone else. Uh, because if you want to,
Speaker 1: Yeah that I was reading up on what I gotta
Speaker 1: do very simple to become a minister. No, you didn't
Speaker 1: tell me, but I listened to the podcast, okay the listeners,
Speaker 1: and I had a guy was pointing out interesting thing
Speaker 1: that you can get married. Um, in Montana you get
Speaker 1: married by proxy. Mm hmm. You could have a wedding
Speaker 1: that you're not at. I didn't realize this. Montana recognizes
Speaker 1: what's called a double proxy marriage. So both of us
Speaker 1: don't to be here. There's a marriage. Yeah, you could
Speaker 1: get married here where no one shows up. Huh that yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let me I'll run that by Kelsey. See what she says.
Speaker 1: The guy that wrote and this is interesting about the
Speaker 1: the US military. So the guy wrote in his active
Speaker 1: duty military we're to the front legs. Now, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be hard. Do you like it that there's a loud
Speaker 1: noise in the background. I mean, I think it's great.
Speaker 1: Normally I would hate it, but in this circumstances, what
Speaker 1: I'm worried about. Here's what I'm worried about, is how
Speaker 1: he's gonna get those legs inverted. It sounds like paper crinklin.
Speaker 1: Like you know, guy, this guy's active duty military. And
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this, but it makes sense. The military
Speaker 1: does not recognize engagements in terms of like shuffling you around,
Speaker 1: so you could get sent somewhere else there. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could be like, oh, we're engaged, like it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: to them. No, no paperwork or price speak of this
Speaker 1: a little bit um. So he and his woman were
Speaker 1: getting a PCs, a permanent change of station where they
Speaker 1: be sent to different military basis. But they're both gone
Speaker 1: on they were both gone uh un deployment, so neither
Speaker 1: of them is there and they got married anyway double proxy.
Speaker 1: Then they were able to move back to the same
Speaker 1: location because in the military recognized their union. Isn't that
Speaker 1: happy ending, Phil, That's great because you get to skip
Speaker 1: all the bullshit and just have a party later. I
Speaker 1: don't want to call you outside. But you don't seem
Speaker 1: like you're too warm to that idea. Well listen, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: Kelsey is not gonna be warm to that idea. Do
Speaker 1: you guys have one of those little registries going? No,
Speaker 1: you can do that. I think you should get one going.
Speaker 1: We should advertise it on the podcast. What else we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking do single We gotta get to that
Speaker 1: to find stew more girlfriends. Um no, no, So we're
Speaker 1: not doing the registry thing. We're saying like, if you
Speaker 1: if you feel if you feel like you want to
Speaker 1: wanna give us something, just throw us a little cash
Speaker 1: because there ain't no, there's no registry out there. It's
Speaker 1: gonna like knock a wall out in my house. I
Speaker 1: got it. So you're just like you just want money, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. You don't need China. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: need like kitchen aid mixer or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's Kelsey going to listen to this podcast and here
Speaker 1: you throw her under the bus so savagely like that. No,
Speaker 1: she is, She's totally on board with this. No I
Speaker 1: I was going about the double proxy. Yeah she ain't
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, okay, yeah, uh in Florida right now? Update?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, we're gonna give up Bobcat update. Look
Speaker 1: at that. You know, I should have brought my fur brush,
Speaker 1: my fur home, because right now he's the way can
Speaker 1: I can I see it from ittt Oh? You know,
Speaker 1: while we're speaking of updates, I just want to up
Speaker 1: there our listeners that the kayak is sold. So tell
Speaker 1: tell about what the guy that bought it gave us.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so the the guy that bought the kayak,
Speaker 1: I should I forget his name? Man, I'll look it up. Um,
Speaker 1: did you have a lot of people wanted the kayaka? Um?
Speaker 1: The guy that bought the kayak was. He's active duty military.
Speaker 1: He's up at stationed up in Great Falls, and he
Speaker 1: gave Steve and I a hundred and five millimeter shell casings,
Speaker 1: which my son is very interested in that. Uh, we're
Speaker 1: fired on a deployment. And I think he said like
Speaker 1: Afghanistandard or Iraq or Syria. I got. I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do with my It's sweet. Here comes
Speaker 1: the front legs? Oh? Is he doing the front legs? Now? Okay,
Speaker 1: the Bobcat is now revealed. We can see the hide
Speaker 1: the beautifully speed years and he's trying to do the
Speaker 1: final thing of get the legs inverted, which is tough
Speaker 1: because you left him so long whenever you skinned him.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to pull them through like I left
Speaker 1: him too long. Well that's differen a wall hanger and
Speaker 1: in a commercial trade Bobcat, it's very exciting. Uh. In Florida, see,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the weather is going. I want
Speaker 1: to cover off on a news bit. But the problem
Speaker 1: is this, this isn't gonna release right away. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be a couple of days. So the cold snap might
Speaker 1: be over, but there was a national cold snap um
Speaker 1: still going on right now. And in Florida, they they
Speaker 1: they're releasing warnings about the iguana is falling from trees.
Speaker 1: So Florida is full of gotta got an invasive iguana problem.
Speaker 1: We actually had some of that iguana fat, and uh,
Speaker 1: Kevin Gillespie made us iguana fat cookies, which are wonderful,
Speaker 1: like sugar cookies with a on a fat um. And
Speaker 1: the guy rode in how these frozen iguanas fall from
Speaker 1: trees and get stunned and they're just laying around on
Speaker 1: roads and sidewalks. We have a bunch of pictures of
Speaker 1: just iguana as it fell from outer space, laying around,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of wandering about if there's like an
Speaker 1: ethical dilemma to picking up in to dispatching iguanas that
Speaker 1: are in such a compromised position, kind of like shooting
Speaker 1: cariboo in a river or something like shooting cariboan a
Speaker 1: river or whatever, shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're also thinking about whether or not this falls under
Speaker 1: the umbrella of chetica. I feel that does not. What
Speaker 1: do you think, Chester, No, it's more of an ethics thing,
Speaker 1: just a moral dilemma, which Karin, what did she right
Speaker 1: up there? Cheffical? Is it cheftical? I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a moral dilemma. I think if you knew how
Speaker 1: good that fat was for making cookies and if you
Speaker 1: like eating them, why the heck not? They want them
Speaker 1: out of there. Um, But this guy's moral dilemma is
Speaker 1: like some of these are too small to eat, so
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to damage the resources. Like he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to damage the resource. He doesn't like killing things
Speaker 1: that he doesn't eat, you know, So so he's weighing
Speaker 1: out do I serve the goal of eliminating the iguana
Speaker 1: from Florida or do I serve my personal ethic, which is,
Speaker 1: don't kill stuff you're not gonna eat, which Trump's which? Man?
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like these guys really have a problem. Um,
Speaker 1: are you clear of what the problem is? What do
Speaker 1: we do A lot of burrowing and like sea walls
Speaker 1: and house foundations and things. That's the problem. It's not
Speaker 1: like a biological issue, I don't think so, Like I
Speaker 1: don't think they're eating native bird eggs and stuff off
Speaker 1: like that that I that I know of. And you
Speaker 1: think that you think think that I thought they were
Speaker 1: like doing something to native that's possible, But what I've
Speaker 1: heard a lot is like they're doing damage to structures
Speaker 1: and like that. We have a headline in front of
Speaker 1: his cold weather could bring frozen too iguanas this weekend.
Speaker 1: It's just like a picture of some iguanas just taking
Speaker 1: a quick nap um. But yeah, I think like, if
Speaker 1: you take the ones you're gonna eat, you know, do
Speaker 1: a little a little both there. I don't know, no,
Speaker 1: I would think so man. But here's the thing I
Speaker 1: could weigh out. Let's say I really developed the taste
Speaker 1: for iguanas down there, okay, and I had like a
Speaker 1: little yard and now and that would get me a
Speaker 1: big fat iguana. And I was watching some small ones
Speaker 1: lurking around, and I knew that I I don't know
Speaker 1: what their life expectancy is, but I knew that they'd
Speaker 1: get big. And then I'd have like, I'm never eating
Speaker 1: I've eating their fat. I never eat. Let's add loved it.
Speaker 1: I could see a situation where one would fall from
Speaker 1: a tree, A little one would fall from a tree,
Speaker 1: and I would resuscitate it and warm it up in
Speaker 1: order to grow it big because I love the iguana
Speaker 1: met and not and not go out and do what
Speaker 1: I was supposed to do, which is go out and
Speaker 1: kill it. Here's the thing, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: legal or not. Why don't you just make a little
Speaker 1: iguana cage, take those iguanas, start feeding, and start raising
Speaker 1: them yourself. It's like, get out. Just thought of a
Speaker 1: real I just remembered the real world version of what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, not that this isn't the real world,
Speaker 1: but a personal version. You know how lake trout um
Speaker 1: got into Yellowstone Lake and started there real hard on cuts,
Speaker 1: not bull trout, yellowstone cutthroat. So someone thought was a
Speaker 1: good idea to let some lake trout go in Yellowstone Lake,
Speaker 1: which is in Yelsta National Park, and it's the head
Speaker 1: of the Yellowstone River. And it was it was very
Speaker 1: detrimental to the native cut wrote the east slope cuts cracked.
Speaker 1: I believe it was a yellow actually, which is like
Speaker 1: a more of a pumpkin colored orangeish yellowish cutthroat got
Speaker 1: it um. They at a point made it that you
Speaker 1: were not allowed to turn back a live lake trout.
Speaker 1: It was a mandatory kill situation. No like like catch
Speaker 1: and release became illegal. It might still be today. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I had a friend. I don't want to
Speaker 1: tell what his name is. I'll tell you. I don't
Speaker 1: want to tell his last name because he was a lawbreaker.
Speaker 1: His name was Mike Uh And Mike would always go
Speaker 1: and fish there and he really liked he made like
Speaker 1: smoke lake trout. He made lake trout sushi rolls. He
Speaker 1: was big time into eating lake trout. He would turn
Speaker 1: back the small ones and would be and wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to hit it too hard. And he was very nervous
Speaker 1: about what he called damaging the resource and just wasn't
Speaker 1: buying the whole thing about He was like, I love
Speaker 1: those fish. I hope they stay there forever. Yes, his
Speaker 1: take on it. I mean in an area like that,
Speaker 1: man though, like there's not many places in the world
Speaker 1: that have yellow stone cutthroat um and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of places in the world that have lake trout,
Speaker 1: Like you gotta get them out of there, and no,
Speaker 1: I know it's almost impossible, but like they've made some progress. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Chester, you know your idea about how you're gonna
Speaker 1: keep them and fatten them up. Yeah, I was saying,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's legal or not. Well, Karan
Speaker 1: um Uh just pointed out here that you would be
Speaker 1: in violation of law. And and so if if you
Speaker 1: know everybody has the joy cooking in their house, the cook,
Speaker 1: the joy cook cooking. I have one that's so old.
Speaker 1: There's information in it about how to fatten a possum. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've caught a possum and how to fatten it and
Speaker 1: like m put it on a good diet for consumption.
Speaker 1: That's not in there anything. It's not by now, it's
Speaker 1: not in there. That's pretty awesome. They have that one.
Speaker 1: So Chester has this idea like, Okay, a little dinky,
Speaker 1: little dinker falls out of the tree. You're trying to
Speaker 1: do the right thing by law, and you say to yourself, well,
Speaker 1: I feel bad letting it back out because I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to kill it. It's not big enough to eat. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna warm them up, resuscitate them, pen him, and fatten him,
Speaker 1: which is illegal. Turns out, so Florida has a list
Speaker 1: of like stuff you can't have. It's Florida's prohibited species list,
Speaker 1: and it has it had sixteen new and it had
Speaker 1: recently added sixteen new high risk non native reptiles you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to have in your possession. The Argentine black
Speaker 1: and white tigoose. What the hell is that? I think
Speaker 1: they're like monitor lizards. I think you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: have a tigu. You look it up, Brodie. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't have one of those in Florida. You can't have
Speaker 1: a green iguana. You can't have a nile monitor lizard.
Speaker 1: You cannot have a Burmese python, which is a big issue.
Speaker 1: They got no shorte of them done. Yeah, they look
Speaker 1: like a monitor lizard. They're pretty they're pretty big. You
Speaker 1: cannot have a reticulated python. You cannot have a green anaconda.
Speaker 1: H uh. I mean it makes sense, you know. They
Speaker 1: that's how they kind of got there. Right of them
Speaker 1: can survive in Florida. I was years ago in South
Speaker 1: America and m and I was with a Makushi, a
Speaker 1: guy who is Mkushi from the Mkuschi tribe, and we
Speaker 1: were standing there looking at a green anaconda. It's probably
Speaker 1: I don't know, fourteen a teen feet long. This your
Speaker 1: bullet anti Nope, no, different times he was telling me
Speaker 1: I wanted to It was just sitting there. I mean
Speaker 1: you could walk right up to it. And I was
Speaker 1: asking about is it okay if we kind of like
Speaker 1: jab it with a stick to see what it does, right,
Speaker 1: And he was pointing out to me like their in
Speaker 1: their mythology. He was saying, if I touched that antaconda
Speaker 1: with the limb of my bow, it will die a
Speaker 1: very painful death that takes about forty five minutes. But
Speaker 1: you can touch it with another stick and that's fine.
Speaker 1: But you can't touch it with a bowl limb just
Speaker 1: to bow limb or is it? What was it like weapon?
Speaker 1: He said, if I touch it with my bowl limb,
Speaker 1: that will kill it very painful. Really, Yeah, there's like
Speaker 1: a limit. I mean, it was just part of their mythology,
Speaker 1: and there was like a limit to how much we
Speaker 1: could communicate about it. But I gathered that much. Can't
Speaker 1: touch him with a bow limb, can't touch a green
Speaker 1: antaconda with a bow limb. You didn't try it, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't say, like, I just I thought
Speaker 1: that was a great little you know, a great little thing.
Speaker 1: Oh did you get one leg? Ste got one leg?
Speaker 1: He's close to getting there leg the bobcat is nearly inverted.
Speaker 1: Then it's gonna be exciting because it goes back onto
Speaker 1: the board. However, here's another ethics question. This is that
Speaker 1: this is This seems like an ethics question, but it
Speaker 1: ends up being a practical question. This guy works for
Speaker 1: a small town police department in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem,
Speaker 1: Regent and he he mentions that they are at the
Speaker 1: time of this writing in an ongoing c w D
Speaker 1: management hunt f w P. He's saying, the state Fish
Speaker 1: and Game Agency is allowing antler bucks to be harvested
Speaker 1: on this hunt. A lot of this guy's bodies believe
Speaker 1: the hunt should be since it's meant to lower the
Speaker 1: population to slow the spread of c w D. He's like,
Speaker 1: why is it that you can kill bucks? It seems
Speaker 1: like you'd be killing does because if you want to
Speaker 1: lower a deer population, the way to lower it is
Speaker 1: killing does. Like Bucks doesn't like have a long Killing
Speaker 1: Bucks doesn't have a long term impact on deer numbers.
Speaker 1: Killing dose does because you kill her and you kill
Speaker 1: every baby that she'll ever have. I would point out,
Speaker 1: if this gentleman really wants to get into understanding this,
Speaker 1: there's quite a bit of data that suggests that c
Speaker 1: w D is more readily transmitted by bucks. They move
Speaker 1: around a bunch, They traveled to daim much. I think
Speaker 1: there's a couple of reasons they're They're they want any
Speaker 1: deer eliminated right and to convince people that hunt white
Speaker 1: tails in February and Monte Hannah or January, you know,
Speaker 1: sweet sweeten the deal. Yeah, we're letting you get a buck.
Speaker 1: And then I remember some stuff with Doug looking at
Speaker 1: the and you know, all the things like c w DS,
Speaker 1: like COVID a little bit where the information changes so
Speaker 1: fast it's hard to keep hip to what, like what's
Speaker 1: actually the current sort of academic consensus. But at the
Speaker 1: time it was the young bucks dispersed more. They like
Speaker 1: young bucks left their population dispersed farther distances were more
Speaker 1: likely to be bringing c w D into introducing c
Speaker 1: w D chronic waste and disease into new herd groups.
Speaker 1: I read something recently about that, though, where in a
Speaker 1: study where they studied a certain amount of you know,
Speaker 1: let's say they study fifteen bucks and and twenty dos,
Speaker 1: the does traveling you know, five miles and the bucks
Speaker 1: were traveling like six miles on average, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: a crazy difference between the two. But again, now I
Speaker 1: was just saying that the like they've done studies. I
Speaker 1: was reading a recent study where they took a set
Speaker 1: number of deer and studied them how far they go
Speaker 1: and the distance between how far the dose traveled and
Speaker 1: the distance between how far the bucks traveled was not
Speaker 1: that um but that was just one article. So uh,
Speaker 1: you guys got you guys got the appetite for one more. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess two more etiquette, two more ethics etiquettes. People
Speaker 1: looking for feedback. Your dog kills a deer? What then?
Speaker 1: What then? My friend's dog killed a deer not too
Speaker 1: long ago. Well, this guy, this guy was asking, like,
Speaker 1: you know, should he eat it? You to do whatever?
Speaker 1: I think he did the right thing, he said. He
Speaker 1: called the local authorities, the game warden, which is a
Speaker 1: good thing to do, and then from there, you know this,
Speaker 1: it said, the warden determined it did not have c
Speaker 1: w D, which is you can't really necessarily. Um so
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure they're but like, well, because he okay,
Speaker 1: in this case, the warden did a little knee cropsy
Speaker 1: and saw that it had two busted legs. And that's
Speaker 1: why the dog is able to get ahold of it.
Speaker 1: And that's why it looks like what are the Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why it looks sickly, likes like what are the
Speaker 1: odds that had c w D and then broke two
Speaker 1: legs from a car hitting it. But what this guy
Speaker 1: seems to be trying to do is is like say,
Speaker 1: what his dog did is not like there's not a
Speaker 1: problem with it, Like that's what it seems to be
Speaker 1: getting at. Well. I mean, you don't want your dogs
Speaker 1: obviously killing deer, but when in a blue moon, you
Speaker 1: just never know what's gonna happen. So I think calling
Speaker 1: the warden, and then if this deer had two broken legs,
Speaker 1: he's also asking what should I do with the meat?
Speaker 1: I would say, if the warden lets you take it
Speaker 1: and eat it, eat it, But if it's got two
Speaker 1: broken legs, you might want to check for infection and
Speaker 1: stuff first as well. Um, you know, yeah, I would say.
Speaker 1: So it is an interesting conundrant because a lot of
Speaker 1: times in public land you're supposed to have your dog
Speaker 1: under control. So if you're on public land somewhere and
Speaker 1: your dog kills a deer, you might, I mean, you
Speaker 1: might find whether you self report or someone else reports
Speaker 1: you you're asked, might be in trouble with the state.
Speaker 1: There are places where if you're out hunting deer and
Speaker 1: you see a dog chasing deer, you can shoot the dog.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, there's definitely places like that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to train your dog to not mess with deer.
Speaker 1: You know, I've had a couple of bird dogs, and
Speaker 1: you can train and him just not pay attention to
Speaker 1: those deer. When our dog chases a deer, it comes
Speaker 1: back knowing it's in trouble, like it can't help itself.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like I know I did like I
Speaker 1: did it, I know I shouldn't have done it. And
Speaker 1: they come back like they know they're going to get
Speaker 1: in trouble, but they just couldn't help themselves. So I
Speaker 1: think a proper etiquette is just train your dog not
Speaker 1: mess with deer. But if it does, I think that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the salvage dude, call your call your game warden.
Speaker 1: That's probably the first step if you're deal with any
Speaker 1: of that stuff. Here's another one. This guy is righting in. Uh.
Speaker 1: This guy lives in the state Virginia. Were you allowed
Speaker 1: to hunt turkeys with a rifle? And he says, I
Speaker 1: believe rifles should be outlawed like it is in Maryland
Speaker 1: in most states. You can't quite say most dates. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of states. Three you can kill turkey with
Speaker 1: a rifle in the fall. He's got friends that killed
Speaker 1: turkey's at two yards with Varmitt rifle setups. What do
Speaker 1: you think about that? I just don't where's the fun.
Speaker 1: I just want to say this, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: laws and not laws and all that. Spring turkeys is
Speaker 1: meant to be something you do with a shotgun. There's
Speaker 1: there's a purpose to it, the calling, the getting them
Speaker 1: to come in. And we used to bush whag turkeys
Speaker 1: in the spring. I don't think there's any reason to
Speaker 1: shoot a turkey with a rifle in the spring. One thing,
Speaker 1: it's like it's dangerous, using camel out in the woods,
Speaker 1: making turkey noises, sitting against trees, trying to sit close,
Speaker 1: trying to be close to turkeys. When I was very young,
Speaker 1: you could hunt. I'm pretty sure you could hunt turkeys
Speaker 1: with a rifle in Pennsylvania in the spring. Really, I
Speaker 1: know you can changed it. Yeah, well, especially with decoys
Speaker 1: getting better and better every year, you know, dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I look at my own decoy. It's about going
Speaker 1: and the fall. It finds out hunting deer and had
Speaker 1: turkey tag in my pocket. I probably, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's different and what's interesting people people don't understand here
Speaker 1: is that in a lot of in states where you
Speaker 1: are allowed to kill turkeys in the fall with the rifle,
Speaker 1: you're often allowed to kill females. But they're also not
Speaker 1: I mean, they're spending time out in those open areas
Speaker 1: in the fall. But I feel like spring gets predictable.
Speaker 1: You know, those birds are gonna be out on strut
Speaker 1: zones and be out and open. So that's like another
Speaker 1: thing that's just makes it easier picking and the spring
Speaker 1: you shoot him, And why I don't, I don't personally
Speaker 1: like that. Or I just think if you're like sitting
Speaker 1: there in your truck and there's a turkey hunter fifty
Speaker 1: yards way out in the field, and you decided to
Speaker 1: take a couple of rips at it with your fifty
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't. It feels very dangerous to me
Speaker 1: because you don't know if there's some camel up dude
Speaker 1: and his kids sitting back there. Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: It just takes the fun right out of that spring
Speaker 1: turkey hunting too. Well. I hear the story one time,
Speaker 1: and I believe the story. I heard that, and so
Speaker 1: it was a time when Florida. You were allowed to
Speaker 1: hunt turkeys in the spring with a rifle, okay, And
Speaker 1: a lot of turkey hunters felt that it just was
Speaker 1: not a good idea. You got flat country okay, get
Speaker 1: people out in camel with decoys, like it's like a
Speaker 1: safety issue. And they even went to they took the
Speaker 1: time to go to the gun community and be like,
Speaker 1: this is not like, this is a safety turkey issue.
Speaker 1: Let's not make this like a gun gun right issue.
Speaker 1: This is a safety turkey issue. And it got turned
Speaker 1: into a like gun right, gun got turned into a
Speaker 1: gun rights issue when they were I remember someone telling me,
Speaker 1: who was on the side of not being able to
Speaker 1: rifle hunt turkeys, that they always felt a little bit
Speaker 1: disappointed that they couldn't get it framed. Outside of that
Speaker 1: the disc rushing about it, you know, it was more
Speaker 1: like I don't want to get shot. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a centerfire rifle. There was that one video that viral
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago with that the two there
Speaker 1: was two young guys turkey hunting and they were filming
Speaker 1: it and I think they were working a bird on
Speaker 1: the edge of a big opening and in the footage
Speaker 1: you too see like the all the dirt get kicked up.
Speaker 1: Someone shot with like a two forty three there decoy
Speaker 1: and they were on the opposite end and it blew
Speaker 1: into the tree next to him and bark went flying
Speaker 1: and everything, and they immediately jumped up. It was a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, but it went viral, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure you can find it on YouTube. But it was
Speaker 1: guys shooting at a decoy a centerfire rifle, and they
Speaker 1: were If he would have been a foot or even
Speaker 1: six inches offset, he would have hit one of those
Speaker 1: guys and killed them. So yeah, I've seen videos like
Speaker 1: that guy shooting a goose decoy, Sean, you might have
Speaker 1: seen something like that, but shooting a shooting goose decoys
Speaker 1: of centerfire rifles just like you know, totally illegally, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: There's nowhere you're allowed to do that. Well, New Zealand
Speaker 1: you can do that. I killed Uh, I killed a
Speaker 1: Canada goose in New Zealand with a seven millimeter m meg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like a that's a good shot, wonderful shot.
Speaker 1: All right, brought you ready for your book report? Oh,
Speaker 1: how's a bobcat that's ready to be bordered? I wish
Speaker 1: we had our fur home with us. Man. Snap it,
Speaker 1: You've got more room over there. Snap it real hard,
Speaker 1: set all the fur. Snapp it hard. A couple of times.
Speaker 1: Are you ready for your book? Your part, Brody? Yeah,
Speaker 1: my article report. Um. So, there's been a push to
Speaker 1: dlist grizzlies from the Endangered Species List from both Montana
Speaker 1: Governor Gene Forte and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon. So to
Speaker 1: give some background, Uh, grizzly bears were put on the
Speaker 1: e S A in I think something like that. There's
Speaker 1: like a hundred and fifty of them left threatened, not
Speaker 1: not in danger. Yeah, there's about a hundred fifty of
Speaker 1: them left in the seventies, hundred thirty six. And the
Speaker 1: g y E the thing that Steve hates saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm somewhat okay with that. You're okay
Speaker 1: with a greater Yellowstone ecosystem? Okay, a little bit okay. Anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: fast forward to current times, and the estimates vary, right,
Speaker 1: like minimum is seven hundred. A new population study model
Speaker 1: that Wyoming used places them over a thousand. But either way,
Speaker 1: the recovery goal was I believe five hundred bears in
Speaker 1: the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which was met you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years ago or so. Um, so there's there's been these
Speaker 1: off and on pushes to get them off the list.
Speaker 1: Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon is petitioning the US Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service to get him removed again. I said, the
Speaker 1: same things going on in here in Montana, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's this back and forth fight that never
Speaker 1: seems to end. It doesn't. Yeah, it's just NonStop. And uh.
Speaker 1: I was interviewed for an article for Fox News Digital.
Speaker 1: Um and and uh, apparently they think I'm a grizzly
Speaker 1: bear expert. They also interviewed, uh, Wyoming governor's Wyoming Governor
Speaker 1: Gordon was quoted pretty heavily in the article. Um and
Speaker 1: they quoted what is her name, Andreas A Cardi from
Speaker 1: a Center for Biological Diversity. They always have names like that,
Speaker 1: you know that that makes them sound like there's something
Speaker 1: other than what they are, which is like, you know,
Speaker 1: animal rights, anti hunting group. Um. The most interesting thing
Speaker 1: I think she said, She's said a couple of things
Speaker 1: that are interesting. There's no science to back the claim
Speaker 1: that grizzlies no longer need protection, meaning they I don't
Speaker 1: understand what that means. I don't know, but I mean
Speaker 1: there's plenty of science because their way past the stated
Speaker 1: recovery goals. Um. And that's such a such a subjective
Speaker 1: statement too, because to her, grizzlies will always need protection
Speaker 1: no matter what, everywhere. And uh. She also says, of course, Um,
Speaker 1: this outrageous request from my Wyoming's governor is the latest
Speaker 1: attack on animals like grizzly, embarrassed by states that see
Speaker 1: them as little more than targets for trophy hunters. Um, pushpins.
Speaker 1: Do you know? It was just like absolutely untrue. Um.
Speaker 1: Here's here We've covered to so many times. I ever
Speaker 1: wrote an op end the New York Times about this
Speaker 1: the last time they were trying to do it. The
Speaker 1: last thing the states are gonna do. That's what they
Speaker 1: the state Why Montana are not going to lobby their
Speaker 1: asses off for decades to get state management of grizzlies
Speaker 1: back in order to then really quickly kill them all
Speaker 1: and get them back driven back onto the endangered speed.
Speaker 1: The whole point is trying to get them recovered and
Speaker 1: off the list, right and then like they're just like
Speaker 1: they're like rubbing their hands, like who the minute I
Speaker 1: can get them off the list, I'm gonna put them
Speaker 1: back on the list again. Yeah, and let's say ridiculous
Speaker 1: Wyoming or mon Montana. Let's let's say they get taken
Speaker 1: off the list and and a hunting season gets approved.
Speaker 1: The number they're gonna be so careful with a number
Speaker 1: of tags that they issue for these bears. That's it's
Speaker 1: going to have absolutely zero impact on the Like, do
Speaker 1: you know how many tags the last go around? You
Speaker 1: know how many tags Idaho is going to issue one
Speaker 1: Wyoming I think was a total of low twenties. Maybe
Speaker 1: in Montana, I thought at the time. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a different administration now, so I think we'd have
Speaker 1: a different approach. I thought it was a little bit
Speaker 1: chicken ship. Yeah, And and you know, in a decision
Speaker 1: there was coming from people who I admire, just like
Speaker 1: an area where I disagreed with them is they were
Speaker 1: going to sit it out, obviously sitting it out because
Speaker 1: they didn't want to wade into the they didn't want
Speaker 1: to wade into the social Yeah. I respected Wyoming fishing
Speaker 1: game for how they just I mean, they knew it
Speaker 1: was gonna they were gonna take a lot of flak
Speaker 1: and heat for everything, and I think they did a
Speaker 1: great job and how they handled it, and that bummed
Speaker 1: me out. That f WP kind of I don't know
Speaker 1: but that But basically the gist of the article here is,
Speaker 1: and we've said this before, the point of the endangered
Speaker 1: species list is not to keep them on the list
Speaker 1: forever it stood, recover them, get them off the list,
Speaker 1: turnover management to the states. And these groups like this
Speaker 1: just used lawsuits to like postpone thing and delay things
Speaker 1: and keep them on the list, you know, potentially forever.
Speaker 1: So that's where we're at. Montana and Wyoming are trying
Speaker 1: to In Montana, it's the the Northern Continental Divide population
Speaker 1: that they're trying to get delisted. What winds up happening
Speaker 1: with this, I mean, like I said, we've we've covered
Speaker 1: the dickens out of this. Winds up happening UM around
Speaker 1: grizzly delisting, around wolf delisting is you have two situations
Speaker 1: where we had species that were legitimately imperiled, like wolves
Speaker 1: are legitimately imperilled at a time, UM, grizzlies were legitimately
Speaker 1: imperiled and they needed at that they that needed protections
Speaker 1: and they put protections in place, and you in in
Speaker 1: the different you know, stakeholders and has come together and
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, what does recovery look like? Right? And
Speaker 1: people agree on like, well, if we had this many
Speaker 1: of this, that many of that living in this many places,
Speaker 1: we would accept that that was like recovery at which
Speaker 1: will move on to the next problem. Um. What happens
Speaker 1: is people really kind of like get used to there
Speaker 1: being no hunting for these animals, and later when recovery
Speaker 1: objectives are met and hunting might be resumed, people just
Speaker 1: they get where they just cannot accept that. And so
Speaker 1: the way these things get held up in court, no
Speaker 1: one comes and argues that there aren't like no one's
Speaker 1: gonna argue in courts that there aren't enough of them.
Speaker 1: They're gonna argue in court weird little you know, like
Speaker 1: technical issues be like oh you did uh, you did uh,
Speaker 1: you did a study, but did you consider the potential
Speaker 1: impacts of white bark pine blister rust and if anything,
Speaker 1: always didn't fully consider the impacts blister rust. So then
Speaker 1: a judge and it's always that it's always a judge
Speaker 1: of Missoula because that always winds up in that district
Speaker 1: and a judgement rule and throw all the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: based on a technicality and why they're not they're never
Speaker 1: arguing the main point. Yeah. And another thing that kind
Speaker 1: of never comes up is that there's like, like take
Speaker 1: the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, Like you can't have bears every
Speaker 1: grizzlies everywhere. There's only so many places that can support them.
Speaker 1: And so in the g y E there's like a
Speaker 1: finite number of grizzlies that that place can support. And
Speaker 1: then they start moving out into like the urban uh
Speaker 1: wild interface like around here in Bozeman, and they get
Speaker 1: in trouble and then they get shot for getting in
Speaker 1: a dumpster. Um. There's like a carrying capacity there, And
Speaker 1: you can't have bears running around in Golden Gate Park.
Speaker 1: You say, grizzlies. I wish they were everywhere, Sure, but
Speaker 1: I have a high tolerance. It's just not possible, but
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah. The other part of this that gets
Speaker 1: really technical is is people instead of saying like, like,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna what is the entirety of grizzly bear range,
Speaker 1: the entirety of grizzly bear ranges um basically the Hunter
Speaker 1: Meridian and westward like everything. If you're if you're like
Speaker 1: west of the Big Bend in the Missouri Um, you're
Speaker 1: in grizzly bear habitat. So people are like, it's not
Speaker 1: really plausible that we're going to cover bears across the
Speaker 1: entirety of the American West. So let's pick adequate areas
Speaker 1: where they could feasibly be, and then when one of
Speaker 1: those areas is full, you delist the area. And people
Speaker 1: are always using they're always attacking that logic, Well, we
Speaker 1: can't recover them everywhere. But you know, I always point
Speaker 1: out elk are only recovered across what of their native range?
Speaker 1: How come no one says that about elk elkrt recovered
Speaker 1: in Illinois, but you can hunt them in Utah? Yep?
Speaker 1: Why would someone not say, we haven't recovered elk across
Speaker 1: the entirety of their range. You shouldn't be allowed to
Speaker 1: hunt out. Yeah, they should be an endangered species in
Speaker 1: Illinois by their logic. Yeah, it should be that no
Speaker 1: one in Utah should be able to hunt an elk
Speaker 1: because Illinois doesn't have them yet they need to hire
Speaker 1: us to do these arguments. I like that the Broidy
Speaker 1: gets some you're such a that from doing these book
Speaker 1: reports and stuff that you get to go on the
Speaker 1: news and talk about it. Yeah, man, it was fun.
Speaker 1: But you know what bugs me is that they never
Speaker 1: interviewed a damn biologist for these articles, like a from
Speaker 1: the US Fish and Wildlife Service or from a state
Speaker 1: game agency. Do you point that out to him? I did.
Speaker 1: He said he should talk to some of those people.
Speaker 1: Did you say, like, you shouldn't talk to me, you
Speaker 1: should talk to them. I said, I am not a
Speaker 1: grizzly bear expert. I have an opinion you should talk
Speaker 1: to a grizzly bear expert. Yeah. You know what it
Speaker 1: might be is that they're not going to get a
Speaker 1: fiery They're not going to get a fiery opinion of either,
Speaker 1: like a like a grizzly bear expert isn't gonna give
Speaker 1: a fiery opinion because they only need to be careful
Speaker 1: what they say. They had to get a raging hot
Speaker 1: like Brodie Henderson. Yeah, Brody smoke coming out of his
Speaker 1: years all the time. Alright, Sean, you ready you bet
Speaker 1: Shawn's duck report. Yeah, you have an assignment. You gotta.
Speaker 1: We gave you an assignment, right, Yeah, you did last
Speaker 1: last time we did a duck report, you had brought
Speaker 1: up that you wanted uh age demographics to be discussed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like what's the old asked duck. Mm hmm. And you
Speaker 1: had referenced a sand hill crane you'd shot when you
Speaker 1: were in Texas that you said you believed was seventeen
Speaker 1: years old. And to be fair, I called Dr Chris
Speaker 1: Nikolai from Delta Waterfowl about this because age demographics gets
Speaker 1: pretty complex, um, and there's a lot to it, but
Speaker 1: for starters, um. He told me to go look at
Speaker 1: the U. S g S website that they have a
Speaker 1: They have a cool called the Longevity Records of North
Speaker 1: American Birds and this tool allows you to look up
Speaker 1: all the all the band reporting and the age of
Speaker 1: those birds that are reported. And it's not just waterfowl,
Speaker 1: it's kind of everything. It's got snow buntings and sparrows,
Speaker 1: you name it, pretty much anything they can report, um
Speaker 1: on how old some of these birds live. It's on there.
Speaker 1: For example, I did look up a snow bunting, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, the oldest one reported was eight years
Speaker 1: and nine months old. Um. Anyway, I also went ahead
Speaker 1: and looked up sandhill crane. Since you had referenced shooting
Speaker 1: one seventeen years old, the oldest sandhill crane was thirty
Speaker 1: seven years and three months old, And which is so old?
Speaker 1: And it was banding older than Seth? Yeah, not way older,
Speaker 1: but I would have been in first grade. How Seth
Speaker 1: was born? How old can parrots live? I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: about birds in general, Yeah, because they're like I remember
Speaker 1: how I had a girlfriend whose mom had a great
Speaker 1: parrot and she had to have a will about what
Speaker 1: was going to happen to the parrot after she died.
Speaker 1: But that's living in a cage. Yeah, that's true. Because
Speaker 1: what happened to this and tell everybody what happened to
Speaker 1: this crane? Man, what happened to this crane is sad.
Speaker 1: So it's banded in Florida in nine two. And what
Speaker 1: finally got it was it got hit by a car
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin coming home from the bar. Coming home to
Speaker 1: the bar, hop up on cheese kurds, double bubble. No,
Speaker 1: everyone talks about hitting deer in Wisconsin, and nobody talks
Speaker 1: about hitting sandhill cranes. Thirties seven years old, super old.
Speaker 1: So then I went ahead and looked up. I went
Speaker 1: real down the rabbit hole looking up pretty much every
Speaker 1: speed sees I could looked up, like blue geese and
Speaker 1: snow geese. Which oldest blue goose was thirty years old
Speaker 1: and eight months oldest mallard was twenty seven years and
Speaker 1: seven months. Is this is that off banding data too?
Speaker 1: M hmm yep. So these are all and Chris Nikolai
Speaker 1: did bring this up as well. All these are based
Speaker 1: on either found dead or hunter harvest shot and removed bands.
Speaker 1: These are not recapture data. So Nikolai has had birds
Speaker 1: where they catch them in rocket nets, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: thirty five years later and they're they're putting third or
Speaker 1: fourth set of bands on birds that are still alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like all these birds that were looking at all these
Speaker 1: ages like this mallard it's twenty almost twenty eight years,
Speaker 1: it was lesser snow it's twenty seven and a half years.
Speaker 1: These are things that, um, they didn't die of old
Speaker 1: age mm hmm. Yeah, these these ones died of getting shot.
Speaker 1: So they're teal that got banded in Saskatchewan got shot
Speaker 1: in Cuba. Yeah, twenty three years later. That's crazy. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool by like Castro because that sounds like an
Speaker 1: a real life story. It's amazing because you look at
Speaker 1: it like you see a deer in a duck, and
Speaker 1: you have so much more empathy for a deer at lesa,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, It's got eyelashes and everything.
Speaker 1: They're like, you could fit seven deer lives inside of
Speaker 1: a duck. Yeah, it's crazy. You don't look you when
Speaker 1: you see a duck on a pond. You don't think like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's something that's twenty five years old. No, definitely not.
Speaker 1: It was wild turkeys a long time. Oh yeah, wild
Speaker 1: turkeys like dude, I'm lucky to get become too well.
Speaker 1: To be fair, though, where these numbers are these ages
Speaker 1: really become wild is when you start calculating what the
Speaker 1: average age of waterfowl is like, when you get down
Speaker 1: to what's actually probably gonna happening actual. So the numbers
Speaker 1: that Dr Nikolai had given me to work with our
Speaker 1: survival rate year over year on Drake Mallard's and sixties
Speaker 1: six on hen Mallards, those are not exact numbers, but
Speaker 1: they're close and they flesh out the thought experiment here. Um.
Speaker 1: I'll also come back to the why there's a difference
Speaker 1: between drake and hen survival rate. But if so, if
Speaker 1: you start with a hundred of each, you know, year one,
Speaker 1: you get down to seventy drakes and sixty hens. By
Speaker 1: year two, year at forty nine drakes and thirty six hens.
Speaker 1: So now you're below fifty how alf or dead. So
Speaker 1: there's your average age um. Your average age for a
Speaker 1: duck is two years for a drake mallard and not
Speaker 1: even two years for a hen mallard. So it makes
Speaker 1: a seven year old mallard that much more impressive. The
Speaker 1: hens live shorter because they just are they getting so
Speaker 1: beat up from you know. Yeah, that's what I was
Speaker 1: wanderings why hens? I was thinking maybe because of they're
Speaker 1: sitting on nests and getting eaten while they're on nests. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's the average then, Yeah, the average age man is
Speaker 1: twenty seven years. Imagined the attrition rate of friends. You
Speaker 1: go through a lot of friends, and that if you're
Speaker 1: that mallard that made it to twenty seven years, how
Speaker 1: many friends have coming gone? Yeah? How is it that?
Speaker 1: Like you remember in Sand County Almanac, Uh, in Sand
Speaker 1: County Almanac when he's doing the stuff with the chicken,
Speaker 1: eas like he's like catching a chicken ee Elder Leopold.
Speaker 1: This isn't the twenties. He's like catching chicken's. He made
Speaker 1: up a little chickenie trap and he's like putting a
Speaker 1: band on chicken eas and you know they all just die.
Speaker 1: But this one that just never makes a mistake and
Speaker 1: he gets a year after year after year after year
Speaker 1: at the same bird feeder. I don't remember that part
Speaker 1: of that, but everyone else just gets dusted like he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He's like very special. I wonder what the O dometer
Speaker 1: would be on a seven year old Mallard the miles
Speaker 1: he's put on, Sean, that's a good one for your
Speaker 1: book report, dude, Okay, I'll start. You know, there's uh
Speaker 1: some real cool GPS work being done by a group
Speaker 1: called Osborne Labs. I'll see what the highest sodometer they've
Speaker 1: got on a GPS tracker is right now, Yeah, that'd
Speaker 1: be really cool. So where that survival rate gets even
Speaker 1: more nuanced, right, is that that's based on pretty much
Speaker 1: a going from year one to year two and then
Speaker 1: year two to year three, so to speak. That's not
Speaker 1: counting when they're in the egg or even once they've hatched.
Speaker 1: And are going through, you know, the whole process of
Speaker 1: growing up to be old enough to fly. So Chris
Speaker 1: gave me some even more staggering numbers that make you
Speaker 1: wonder how we even have any ducks to hunt to
Speaker 1: begin with, Like, how there's any around at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing that there's even ducks. So right now, a
Speaker 1: good nest success is point one five or fIF so
Speaker 1: fifteen eggs even ever hatch out of a hundred eggs
Speaker 1: laid then from then from not catching enough raccoons. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's the real end of the story here. Um,
Speaker 1: So if fifteen eggs hatch, half of those will die
Speaker 1: before they ever get too old enough to fly. But
Speaker 1: she brings you down to you know, seven and a
Speaker 1: half ducks eggs that hit the ground m hmm, and
Speaker 1: then won't make it through that first fall roughly, so
Speaker 1: you get too about after that first fall, you got
Speaker 1: about three ducks out of a hundred eggs, and then
Speaker 1: some duck went on and lived in twenty five years.
Speaker 1: So I'll circle back to the hen and drakes survival
Speaker 1: rate thing, and we already kind of touched on it.
Speaker 1: But the reason that hens have a lower survival rate
Speaker 1: than drake's. Especially right now is nest predation. If drake's,
Speaker 1: you know, drake's don't have to go sit in grassland,
Speaker 1: they don't have to risk um, risk getting jumped on
Speaker 1: on a nest. He can hang out out in the
Speaker 1: middle of some big lake. Mm hmm exactly. And what
Speaker 1: that's led to the last thirty or forty years, they've
Speaker 1: really noticed it since the late nineteen eighties is we've
Speaker 1: seen a population wide change in the sex ratio. We
Speaker 1: have more drakes than hens, and not by just a
Speaker 1: little bit. Um. In the late nineteen eighties, pintails were
Speaker 1: about one point to drakes for every hen, and now
Speaker 1: they're at four and a half drakes to every hen.
Speaker 1: So we're at a hen shortage and a drake surplus
Speaker 1: by a lot. And that's been going over how long, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's going up every year. But it's been really
Speaker 1: noticeable Incline since the late nineteen eighties. They do they
Speaker 1: relate that to low fur prices. Delta waterfowl definitely points
Speaker 1: to miso predators because there's a there's a Turkey biologist
Speaker 1: that we had on the show one time, um that
Speaker 1: you know, he felt that was a very interesting argument,
Speaker 1: is looking at for prices relative to predation of birds.
Speaker 1: That's kind of when you got out of the professional
Speaker 1: trapping game when in the late eighties, I set my
Speaker 1: last trap for seth No. I set my last trap
Speaker 1: for commercial purposes in nine but it was dismal by then.
Speaker 1: Ten years earlier it had been really something, but I
Speaker 1: was only ten years old. Another thing Chris had brought
Speaker 1: up there like North Dakota hadn't even described raccoons living
Speaker 1: there until the nineteen fifties and now they're everywhere. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Uh, well, we'll talk more on that in
Speaker 1: another Duck report because there is so much interesting information
Speaker 1: about the sex ratio and predation on nests and all that.
Speaker 1: But the age disparities are are wild. How you can
Speaker 1: have a thirty year old or thirty three year old
Speaker 1: Canada goose, but then you know a lot of them
Speaker 1: never even make it out of the nest. And Barry
Speaker 1: Lopez's book Arctic Dreams, he's with a pilot and they're
Speaker 1: doing some polar bear work and they're talking about how
Speaker 1: old polar bear can get and didn't get pretty old,
Speaker 1: and he mentions how the biologist says to him, if
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any mistakes, you know, which is just
Speaker 1: not something you'd like that, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: It's just not something you think about. If it doesn't
Speaker 1: make any mistakes, it never messes up. It's never like, hey,
Speaker 1: that looks like a real duck even though it's not moving.
Speaker 1: It seems Sean, I have a question for you through
Speaker 1: that research did that? Is there anything about that like
Speaker 1: snowball ing or turning in and eat, like that separation
Speaker 1: of how many hens to drake's because of the drake's, Like,
Speaker 1: since the drakes are so rough on hands usually when
Speaker 1: they're mating, like with that many drake's to low hand ratio,
Speaker 1: couldn't actually start killing more hens and lower that and
Speaker 1: that separation, that gap is gonna widen. Is there anything
Speaker 1: research you know? I don't know. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any talk about I don't think Drake's. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess I can't speak for biologists, but I don't think
Speaker 1: they kill enough hens to have a Okay, you don't
Speaker 1: think it's like a right now, It's definitely a definitely
Speaker 1: a habitat and predation story. You know, when you buy
Speaker 1: a dozen or six pack of decoys. It's like mostly Drake's.
Speaker 1: It turns out that's actually accurate. I wonder if that
Speaker 1: by I thought you feel like you're getting more value
Speaker 1: or just a contrast thing easy for the duck to
Speaker 1: see the Drake's. I don't know. I don't know either. Oh,
Speaker 1: they're probably just doing it because we like looking at
Speaker 1: the pretty decoys. Right, So you're good on at Sean, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's what's the next report? What are you working on? Well,
Speaker 1: I think we'll dive more into the predator story. Oh
Speaker 1: some of the people start thinking ran I predator, which
Speaker 1: I'm not. But you're gonna get into that little bit
Speaker 1: predation mm hmm yep, definitely. I'm ready for you. Man.
Speaker 1: What Stu I'm gonna slowly transition is into talking to you.
Speaker 1: You want to see how I'm gonna do it. Can't
Speaker 1: wait check this one out. Uh. We were talking on
Speaker 1: previous episodes about mistaken song lyrics. When you all your
Speaker 1: life you think they're saying one thing, you realize of
Speaker 1: saying something else. Um, there's a song and you heard
Speaker 1: this damn song Loggins and Messina, who's that? Kenny Loggins
Speaker 1: and oh they Andy Loggins. You said I looked like
Speaker 1: him one time. Well, you know when your hair was long.
Speaker 1: Oh so the Loggins and Messina's Kenny Loggins. What a
Speaker 1: weird groove. He had gone for a while of doing
Speaker 1: movies movie the main songs, and movies foot loose, what's
Speaker 1: the one with the pilots Top Gun? So they got
Speaker 1: a song called Danny Song and in the song they
Speaker 1: say Pisces that they get into astronomy. Pisces virgo rising
Speaker 1: is a very good sign. This guy thought he was
Speaker 1: saying the price of fur is rising. It's a very
Speaker 1: good sign. I like when this dude wrote in he
Speaker 1: signed off with negative tempts here in West Michigan making nice. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get a new, big old thing about where
Speaker 1: trappers and predator hunters are having a versus hound hunters
Speaker 1: in Virginia. We're gonna put that on hold. That's very
Speaker 1: interesting to me though, in fighting hunter, in fighting and
Speaker 1: unlikely enemies. We're gonna cover this very soon, how trappers
Speaker 1: and predator hunters are and and hound hunters are all
Speaker 1: at each other's throats. Mhmm, cannibalism. I don't see it.
Speaker 1: I hound hunt and I trapped, Stu hates himself. It's
Speaker 1: a rich field of inquiry. We're gonna cover it, but
Speaker 1: I want to do a real quick one. Colorado, who
Speaker 1: seems like every other day as bannings trying to ban something. Uh,
Speaker 1: this time they were trying their eighteenth time to ban lying.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. They always throw in links. That's the thing, man.
Speaker 1: They are like, didn't Arizona include jaguar When they tried that,
Speaker 1: they always got a sneak in an animal that you
Speaker 1: can't hunt anyway, because people because they're standing out in
Speaker 1: front of the whole foods getting signatures for these things, right,
Speaker 1: and so like here comes someone lady hasn't seen a
Speaker 1: wild animal three years. Uh, comes the long and they're like,
Speaker 1: were you sign our petition? Right? And they want to
Speaker 1: sweeten the pot. So they're like in band links, honey,
Speaker 1: because he's like, Jesus, I can't. They're killing links, like
Speaker 1: you can't kill links in Colorado, but they're gonna ban it. Yep,
Speaker 1: lest I don't know. Yeah in Arizona, like and no
Speaker 1: killing jaguars by the way, Yeah, you can't kill jaguars,
Speaker 1: but they like the because yeah, I think it is
Speaker 1: adds like it sweetens the pot. You know. The great
Speaker 1: thing about this one is it didn't get dragged out
Speaker 1: over a long period of time, but like came up
Speaker 1: and whamo got rejected right away. It's great. Crim was
Speaker 1: pointing out that a guy named Vinny from New Jersey
Speaker 1: road in, which makes that the second Vinny to ever
Speaker 1: have anything to do with this podcast. So at this
Speaker 1: point we had two Vinny's, both New Jersey mentioned on
Speaker 1: this show, and not a cat lady from New Jersey.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that builds over, it'll come up again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just like, here's the thing, man, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This is all I want in the world. I want
Speaker 1: there to be a I want the environment to be
Speaker 1: extremely clean, clean air, clean water, healthy wildlife. I don't
Speaker 1: want to I want to leave as much of it
Speaker 1: as pristine as humanly possible, even to the point where
Speaker 1: we have to make sacrifices. I want the earth to
Speaker 1: be the let's just keep in the country. I want
Speaker 1: this America to be full of pristine wild places, full
Speaker 1: of animals that we have access to as renewable resources.
Speaker 1: It's not that complicated. If you want to help cats,
Speaker 1: help habitat yeah, if you want to help the How
Speaker 1: many links are in Colorado right now? Not very many?
Speaker 1: Secure Linx habitat, Yeah, sure, Lynx habitats. What what there
Speaker 1: is in Colorado is doing. It's great, you know, like
Speaker 1: will betterly protected wilderness areas. You know, keep it secure,
Speaker 1: keep it secure. That will be the thing if you
Speaker 1: want links in Colorado. The thing that will make it
Speaker 1: that there's links in Colorado is that there's habitat. Quit skiing.
Speaker 1: Quit skiing too. There's I can hear people typing already.
Speaker 1: There's a battle over those skiers and big horns down
Speaker 1: in Jackson right now. If you want the links to
Speaker 1: be fine, make it that there's a shipload of links habitat,
Speaker 1: and then all your problems will be solved. It won't
Speaker 1: be because someone who can't anyways were too. It's just
Speaker 1: you're missing the point. Yeah, let's move on, all right,
Speaker 1: ste how on the Sam Hill. Because here's the thing,
Speaker 1: here's my biggest question for you, here's my excuse for
Speaker 1: becoming a trapper. I was born in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: the great fur boom of the of like seventy eight
Speaker 1: to eighty two. I was born in seventy four, and
Speaker 1: so I was aware of that, and I didn't set
Speaker 1: a trap till the last year of the fur boom,
Speaker 1: but I was informed by the fur boom like all this,
Speaker 1: you know, this is in four dollars, seventy five dollar
Speaker 1: red fox, fifty dollar mink, forty dollar raccoons, eighty dollar beavers,
Speaker 1: seven dollar muskrats. Somebody, Phil, what was all? What's all
Speaker 1: that mean in today's dollars? And that was in the round.
Speaker 1: Can you can you real quick explain why the prices
Speaker 1: were so high at that time, like just based on
Speaker 1: demand for I think there was at that time there
Speaker 1: was still strong domestic demand. And I'm guessing I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe still remembers are better. But the big consumers China,
Speaker 1: South Korea, Russia, right so at times Italy. So I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that those economies were very strong. I'm guessing the
Speaker 1: oil prices, well, we know oil prices got incredibly high.
Speaker 1: Their economies are strong. Oil prices are high, and you
Speaker 1: had tons of consumer demand, and you had domestic you
Speaker 1: had us demand for luxury stuff. One hundred dollars in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four would be about five hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: nine dollars according to okay, so tell me what a
Speaker 1: seven dollar telling me would have No, tell me what
Speaker 1: at I did. A forty dollars in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: would have been a hundred nine dollars today. Okay, So
Speaker 1: a hundred nine dollar mink today pretty good money. And
Speaker 1: I was seduced by those figures because we mow a
Speaker 1: lawn for five bucks and a muskrat was worth more
Speaker 1: than well, it depends on who's law. Like the Musselmans
Speaker 1: paid fifteen bucks to molder lawn. Yes, you have to
Speaker 1: take a lunch break. You couldn't get it done at
Speaker 1: one shot. You had like mo a bunch and then
Speaker 1: like you'd go home and eat and go swimming and
Speaker 1: ship and go back and mow again. So two muskrats
Speaker 1: was like musculiman's lawn. That's why I got into it.
Speaker 1: There were guys, but there were guys taking two weeks
Speaker 1: of vacation and then like teaming it up with like
Speaker 1: their holiday vacation and buying trucks with muskrat money. Pretty
Speaker 1: cool considering you could go, I built up, I built
Speaker 1: a barn. You could really live off the land back then.
Speaker 1: So what's your excuse? How old you you missed all that.
Speaker 1: I missed all that occasionally though, right occasionally, every now
Speaker 1: and then, something like last year or two years ago,
Speaker 1: like Western coyotes, it was like, yeah, boom, they were
Speaker 1: worth a lot of months a good point now and
Speaker 1: then to be a freak. But it's because of some
Speaker 1: type of weird niche market typically, right that like typically
Speaker 1: so like the fur boom, like you're talking the fur
Speaker 1: room that I remember with the upper case F. Yeah,
Speaker 1: would have been like two thousand eleven, two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: Well that's what you called your that's my that's my
Speaker 1: generation for boom, that's your generation muskrats. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: selling fourteen dollar muskrats. I averaged almost twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: on coons that year. I sold several coyotes, you know,
Speaker 1: which we were talking Midwestern coyotes, so yeah, pretty bad ones,
Speaker 1: you know, and having an average of seventy seventy on them.
Speaker 1: You know, that was a good little fur room. I Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did really good then. So yeah, you were making money.
Speaker 1: I was making money. Yeah, I was actually making money trapping.
Speaker 1: Now you're just doing it pretty much for the hobby
Speaker 1: of it. But fur prices definitely have gone down. But
Speaker 1: that's the fur boom that I remember. So is that
Speaker 1: what got you into it? No? So you know, traffing
Speaker 1: is traffic is hard, like it really is hard. And
Speaker 1: you know, growing up, I I was outdoorsman. You know.
Speaker 1: I deer hunted, I bow hunted, I duck hunted. I
Speaker 1: did everything. You know, ski though, did you I did
Speaker 1: not ski, being a Southerner, we just didn't have the
Speaker 1: ability there, so I didn't ski. But you know I
Speaker 1: was I was hunting everything. There was a season four
Speaker 1: I was fishing for everything that there was a season,
Speaker 1: you know, we could catch and trapping. Just it was hard.
Speaker 1: And I remember this was kind of never hard, like
Speaker 1: technically hard or physically hard. I know the answer both both.
Speaker 1: And I remember this is kind of whenever. Like inline
Speaker 1: muzzleloaders were really becoming a thing, you know, like really
Speaker 1: and in Illinois we can't use rifles centerfire rifles, and
Speaker 1: so it's shotgun or muzzleloader or pistol. And I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, muzzleloaders were coming out, and I bought a
Speaker 1: real good in line muzzleloader. And remember I shot a
Speaker 1: deer like two hundred fifty yards. You know, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: it's I'm done like what you peeked, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean it's just deer walk out across forty acre field
Speaker 1: and you just drop him. You know, It's there's not
Speaker 1: much to that. You know, it's sitting a deer stand.
Speaker 1: And I'd always trapped as a kid, and you know,
Speaker 1: after that, I remember I kind of I bought some
Speaker 1: sets and you know the time, there wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of education about it or information. You know, you pretty
Speaker 1: much had to kind of learn on the fly or
Speaker 1: was self taught, and uh, they just slowly progressed from there.
Speaker 1: You know, Trapping is one of those things that if
Speaker 1: you get past the whole Disney thing where you know,
Speaker 1: you go out and set three sets and you come
Speaker 1: back next day and you have three critters, what Disney
Speaker 1: youre talking about? That's what everybody always tells me, you
Speaker 1: know that that's the assumption I would say, is that
Speaker 1: there's Disney movies where people have super high catch rates. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you get the Big Bear traps,
Speaker 1: and you know, just the the illusion of that people
Speaker 1: have of that trapping is almost like a there's just
Speaker 1: like it's just mayhem blood. I call it Disney, But
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, actually the general assumption, you know,
Speaker 1: which it's not. Um. You know, you're going out there
Speaker 1: and you're trying You're going out in an area that
Speaker 1: this critter, you know, he knows the same as you
Speaker 1: know your backyard. You're going out in their area, and
Speaker 1: you are trying to trick that animal. For the most part,
Speaker 1: to step on an area that is the size of
Speaker 1: a top of a soda can, that's pretty hard to do.
Speaker 1: You know, consider that that critter could go anywhere he wants,
Speaker 1: and that's what you're trying to do. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what drew me to it more than anything like
Speaker 1: a thousand acre home range, is the challenge to step
Speaker 1: on a beer can, the top of a beer can.
Speaker 1: You're trying to get that critter to put his foot
Speaker 1: on and that's that, to me was kind of the
Speaker 1: allure of it. That's what drew me to it. Was
Speaker 1: was the challenge, because I mean, you've trapped, you know,
Speaker 1: you've trapped. Trappers are a different breed, you know. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean that being like the you know, Jeremiah
Speaker 1: Johnson or old Dingy construction worker, you know, one of those,
Speaker 1: which I him. But I mean, you've got to be driven,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a different mentality to it to trap,
Speaker 1: and you there's a lot of work involved with it,
Speaker 1: um physically, mentally, you know, I'll say so deer hunting,
Speaker 1: a lot of people can relate to deer hunting. So
Speaker 1: you're gonna deer hunt, and you're gonna you're gonna deer
Speaker 1: hunt every day in December or every chance you get. Right. So,
Speaker 1: for the majority of us that work a forty hour week,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to hunt during the week.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be able to hunt on the weekends, right
Speaker 1: because sunrises it seven o'clock and sets at four thirty.
Speaker 1: So you hunt every single chance you can. During December,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get to hunt eight times eight days basically. Right.
Speaker 1: If I want to go trap and I want to
Speaker 1: trap every day in December, I'm in the woods thirty
Speaker 1: one days in December. That takes a lot of drive
Speaker 1: and a lot of you know, a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: you just gotta be involved with it so much more.
Speaker 1: And I think that's that's what drives me to do it,
Speaker 1: is just the challenge of it. That's a pretty good
Speaker 1: point where one of the four years that I really
Speaker 1: trapped hard. Would be like my last two years of
Speaker 1: high school where I got where I could get out
Speaker 1: of school early. I'd go early, but get out earlier,
Speaker 1: and i'd get out pretty like remarkably early, be done
Speaker 1: like one forty or something like that. UM. And then
Speaker 1: in my two first years of college, I did community college.
Speaker 1: I took all night classes so I could trap, so
Speaker 1: I didn't have to show up until five. No, I
Speaker 1: either had to be there at six or seven, and
Speaker 1: I only went four days a week and i'd be
Speaker 1: there until ten at night. UM. I would start October
Speaker 1: fifteen when Fox opened, and I would be in the
Speaker 1: woods every single day. Every day between October and the
Speaker 1: end of January. I would have some business in the
Speaker 1: woods every day. And don't you feel that you have
Speaker 1: a kind of a little better relationship with kind of
Speaker 1: I guess the outdoors or your area, and you're seeing
Speaker 1: stuff every single day. You're in the woods way more
Speaker 1: than like the average deer hunter. I mean, you're interacting
Speaker 1: with stuff that most people can't, and that to me
Speaker 1: is just that's cool. You know, looking for tone ail
Speaker 1: marks in the mud, Yeah, that's all you're prints in
Speaker 1: the mud. But no, to me, That's that's what draws
Speaker 1: me to it is just the challenge. And then you know,
Speaker 1: for my instance, I go ahead and I take it
Speaker 1: a step further if you will, with with my fur
Speaker 1: handling side of it. So, I mean, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of people selling the round or they sell green,
Speaker 1: which is just a skinned critter um and it round
Speaker 1: is hole on the carcass. You caught the thing, you
Speaker 1: dispatched it there lays that's in the round, and like,
Speaker 1: who explain who the hell you'd sell a raccoon in
Speaker 1: the round. Two. So whenever we have times of high
Speaker 1: fur prices, um, there are you know the auction companies
Speaker 1: of fur buyers that will buy that, you know back
Speaker 1: like your fur boom, remember people talking about that's they
Speaker 1: wouldn't even bother taking the time to skin their coons
Speaker 1: because the price difference between finish fur and in the
Speaker 1: round it wasn't enough to justify going through all the
Speaker 1: trouble of it. They could just go out and catch
Speaker 1: more coons and there every night dropping by the fur buyer,
Speaker 1: or you could freeze them, you know, depending on depending
Speaker 1: on your climate too. But yeah, selling in the round
Speaker 1: or selling in the green, um, nafa there at the
Speaker 1: end of their kind of run. They were offering um skinning.
Speaker 1: You could you could, you could send them green furs
Speaker 1: and they would flesh them and stretch them. So a
Speaker 1: lot of buyers, to a lot of your county buyers
Speaker 1: sometimes prefer having green fur or or in the round,
Speaker 1: mainly just green, simply because they know you're not gonna
Speaker 1: screw it up. Got so, I mean, they know that
Speaker 1: they've got a skill set. They're gonna flesh and stretch
Speaker 1: it just how they want it. Because your local buyers
Speaker 1: are selling to the auction houses anyway, so they want
Speaker 1: to get a premium and they want to have it right.
Speaker 1: So you want to know something that's gonna increase tension
Speaker 1: between you and Seth, and it's going to create tension
Speaker 1: between you and Rick, making all sorts of enemies. Seth
Speaker 1: had a top lot mink, Yeah, which he's gonna tell
Speaker 1: what that means. And you had a top lot something.
Speaker 1: I had a top lot gray fox. Okay, tell tell
Speaker 1: Stu all about that. What that means? Oh, the top lot, uh,
Speaker 1: Stu priority knows. Yes, Stu knows about the top lit guarantee.
Speaker 1: I've had a few. Yes, we talked about it. What
Speaker 1: hurts me more is I got that top lot and
Speaker 1: seth He's like, hey, Rick, you're gonna back up, back up,
Speaker 1: back up. Okay, who wants to explain what the hell
Speaker 1: the top lot is? I've never had one, but I
Speaker 1: can do it. Yeah, whoever go for to explain the
Speaker 1: top lot? Yes, his for knowledge is because this is
Speaker 1: for handling one on one okay. So a top lot
Speaker 1: and generally when we we're talking top lot, we're talking
Speaker 1: about selling through the auction houses. So you've got a
Speaker 1: few different ways to sell. Obviously, you can sell to
Speaker 1: your county or local buyer, and then normally they will
Speaker 1: actually sell to the auction houses. So a few years
Speaker 1: ago there were two main auction houses. There was NAPFA,
Speaker 1: which was North American for auction and then FH for harvesters. Right,
Speaker 1: NAPFA went under a few years ago, so now there's
Speaker 1: just for harvesters. So these auction houses they will gather
Speaker 1: up giant lots of fur and they will grade them
Speaker 1: down by size, by color, whole, different whole, different lists
Speaker 1: of stuff. So to get a top lot basically means
Speaker 1: that you have your your pelt in the very top
Speaker 1: of what's selling. So you've got the best color, the
Speaker 1: best size, the best quality. You've got the best of say,
Speaker 1: all the coyotes that are being sold at that auction,
Speaker 1: that top lot. You've got your your pelt in that
Speaker 1: lot that's being sold. And I mean it's a pretty
Speaker 1: big honor really, you know, to be able to get
Speaker 1: that um and they give you a hat, they give
Speaker 1: you a hat, they give you a pen, they give
Speaker 1: you a little certificate with your name on it. It
Speaker 1: tells you so you gotta hear rix very sad story though,
Speaker 1: So it was. It was actually because or maybe actually
Speaker 1: yeah it was. And uh, I gotta this certificate in
Speaker 1: the mail the top lot for that gray fox. And
Speaker 1: I told Seth about it, and he was like all
Speaker 1: pumpt He's like, hey, when you go sell for next time,
Speaker 1: you could take your certificate and show the driver and
Speaker 1: you'll you'll get a hat. And I'm like, oh, sweet,
Speaker 1: well explain what the driver's Oh yeah, okay, so well
Speaker 1: Stu can talk so much better this, but you gotta
Speaker 1: it's a very it's a weird. It's a weird. So
Speaker 1: I'll back up even more. You're doing something illegal to
Speaker 1: the point, and the gentleman Seth used to work for.
Speaker 1: We're kind of my trapping mentors, and they're telling me.
Speaker 1: He's like, all right, you gotta sell your fur now,
Speaker 1: you gotta. I'm like, how do I do that? So
Speaker 1: they're explaining they you gotta go with the th a
Speaker 1: truck seven thirty and drive around back just a truck stop.
Speaker 1: And I thought, Seth and this, gentlemen, we're messing with me,
Speaker 1: and side to show up and then I'll just know
Speaker 1: what to do. And I have my little my little
Speaker 1: bag they gave me and my my sat my Napha sack,
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting there and then when you get there,
Speaker 1: pull your pants, don't and it's always a sketchy And
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and I started noticing all these other
Speaker 1: trucks pull up and I'm like, okay, I think, and
Speaker 1: it's yeah, like six in the morning. Then this budget
Speaker 1: rental truck comes ripping into the parking lot, just parks
Speaker 1: in the middle back. Guy gets out, opens the back door,
Speaker 1: and I think, I told you. I felt like it's
Speaker 1: like when you're young kid going into gym class for
Speaker 1: the first time in the showers and I'm like, have this.
Speaker 1: I have this little bag I'm like, yeah, I got
Speaker 1: twenty furs in here, and then these dudes are just
Speaker 1: on loaded white bags. I'm like, oh shit, wow, that's
Speaker 1: a lot um. But that was the first couple of times.
Speaker 1: So you you you go there and you get in
Speaker 1: the line, hand in all your bags. They give you.
Speaker 1: It was like the old certificate styles, like they'd write
Speaker 1: on it. They'll be like a pink sheet, a yellow sheet,
Speaker 1: and you'd have to throw one in the bag and
Speaker 1: they'd hand you your you know, and I'm butchering this
Speaker 1: stup and no money changes hands. But that's the pickup
Speaker 1: I'm referring to. So a couple like in the next year,
Speaker 1: I'm at this pickup and I'm like, I have last
Speaker 1: year's top Lot certificate in my hand and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to get that naff a top Lot trapper hat.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds so stupid because I was so
Speaker 1: into it great because the Golden broadered anyway feel and
Speaker 1: I walked up. I was one of the last guys
Speaker 1: in line. We did my for exchange. He uh did
Speaker 1: my sheet and I was like, sir, I also have
Speaker 1: a top Lot certificate here. I was like, I'm wondering
Speaker 1: do you have the hats. And it was this old guy.
Speaker 1: He looks right, just so serious. He's like, oh, I'm sorry, son,
Speaker 1: I'm all out of those hats. I just gave them all,
Speaker 1: like my last one out. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's all right, you know. But I was so crushed.
Speaker 1: I walked off like I was tough, but I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. All I wanted was a damn hat.
Speaker 1: To this day, I don't have one in it. Like
Speaker 1: you're tearing up right now. Man, it's emotional. Yeah, see, man,
Speaker 1: I want to see. I've never had a top lot
Speaker 1: but kind of what I mean, I never would and
Speaker 1: you should be shot if you do. But I'd be
Speaker 1: very tempted to wear that hat. Yeah you got you got?
Speaker 1: What did you wore? And got exposed? People like, let
Speaker 1: me see your certificate? Do you know I'm gonna I
Speaker 1: was gonna frame my certificate. After we talked about it
Speaker 1: a few months, I was like, you have it, I
Speaker 1: still have it. Can hang in the studio here of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about You're like you should frame that, and
Speaker 1: I was like sitting in your truck, like you know
Speaker 1: what I should? Yeah, I've got mine frames? How many
Speaker 1: top lots you got, I've got three through NAFA for
Speaker 1: which ones. I've got a coon, I've got a beaver,
Speaker 1: and I've got a kyote because see the problem is
Speaker 1: now I say a kyote because I'm from Illinois, Midwest, right,
Speaker 1: So there's kind of this thing amongst trappers. You have
Speaker 1: your top lot and then you have your top lot sections.
Speaker 1: So like my beaver, I my beaver was the top lot,
Speaker 1: My coon was the top lot. My coyote was the
Speaker 1: top lot of the section. So like the top the
Speaker 1: best of the ship. It's like you're standing on the podium,
Speaker 1: but the guy your top of the podium, but there's
Speaker 1: still somebody just above you because it's not the top top,
Speaker 1: but it's still the top of that section. The Western
Speaker 1: Pales would be top. They are top. Like I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna get a top lot kyo or I trap ever,
Speaker 1: It's just not gonna happen. But I got the top
Speaker 1: lot of the section. Do you got three hats? No?
Speaker 1: I got one hat because I've got two similar stories
Speaker 1: to what they really dropped the ball on the hats.
Speaker 1: I've got three pins though, yeah, I see how don't
Speaker 1: know the pins with so I cheated out of a
Speaker 1: pin and and yeah, man, but the hats were cool,
Speaker 1: like ninety I've wore mine until it was so ratty
Speaker 1: and nasty. Stu, you kind of talked hat and I'm
Speaker 1: not a hacky. I don't. I very rarely actually wear hats.
Speaker 1: But that was like a badge of honor because I
Speaker 1: do think in the tear of like outdoorsman, trapper is
Speaker 1: a pinnacle and like not a lot of people in
Speaker 1: our generation, we're in the trap and that's what it's like.
Speaker 1: I want that hat so I can wear it, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, I just yeah, I felt like it
Speaker 1: was like a metal And when that old man told
Speaker 1: me I couldn't have one or didn't have it, I
Speaker 1: was like, where's your hat, Seth. I think it's back
Speaker 1: at my mom's place in Pennsylvania. Do you have your certificate?
Speaker 1: I think it's there too, somewhere. Can you ever hunt
Speaker 1: it down? Yeah? You probably have her. Look look around
Speaker 1: for it. Do you want to plug your mass Boot company?
Speaker 1: While we're talking about the Center Boot Company in Belfont, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: check it out. If you need to buy boots, don't
Speaker 1: buy him anywhere else. Don't buy him at Zappos. Don't
Speaker 1: buy him at Amazon. Drive to Seth's Mom's store Center
Speaker 1: Boot Company, um Work Hunting Western. They also sell all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff like belt buckles and leather good If
Speaker 1: you're over there in Pensylvan If you're ever here, go
Speaker 1: to Schnads. If you are there, go to Sasma check
Speaker 1: them out. I have a booth at the the the
Speaker 1: Big Sportsman Show in Harrisburg. Here you can actually go
Speaker 1: meet the real Sess mom. Go go look up their
Speaker 1: booth if you're gonna be there and ask her if
Speaker 1: she can please find Sess hat and top lots certificate.
Speaker 1: Yes that I'm sure that hats because you had it
Speaker 1: in college. You had it on like your wall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of lost track of it. I don't know
Speaker 1: where it is. But you see, they only give top
Speaker 1: lots for certain species. So for some reason where I'm at,
Speaker 1: we grow like awesome possums. I don't know why, right,
Speaker 1: but back in the day you could pay for all
Speaker 1: your gas by by putting up possums. What is the
Speaker 1: day eleven through fourteen? That's that's my fur boom. Okay,
Speaker 1: so explain the possum market. Well, I mean, you know
Speaker 1: you've got kind of a lower end market with the possums.
Speaker 1: But normally you catch them as I catch and I
Speaker 1: would put them up and I mean, we we grow
Speaker 1: some big possums there, and I would remember, I can't
Speaker 1: say the exact I want to say, like seventeen dollars
Speaker 1: I sold a possum for back in the day. I
Speaker 1: mean I averaged like twelve dollars on them. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: is that is that market collapse now? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to even get rid of them right now.
Speaker 1: But you were saying. One thing you're telling me that's
Speaker 1: interesting is the skunk for market doesn't fluctuate, not really, No,
Speaker 1: depending on who you go through in the different avenues
Speaker 1: you go through. Skunks are at least what I trapped
Speaker 1: in my area. They're the most consistent cell every year,
Speaker 1: mainly just because their novelty item. So who do you
Speaker 1: sell the skunks to. I've got a couple of private
Speaker 1: buyers who I'm not gonna say, but got you. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a it's it's a niche market, right,
Speaker 1: So I mean, you know you flood the market with
Speaker 1: these niche buyers, then you know you're not gonna have
Speaker 1: your market but yeah, it's it's a very consistent market.
Speaker 1: And how many skunks did you put up this year?
Speaker 1: Probably I don't know number. I'm saying between sixty and
Speaker 1: seventy so far you flushed and stretched between sixty and
Speaker 1: seventy skunks this year. You don't even smell, Like, how
Speaker 1: do you dispatch them? Because that's that's always real controversial. Uh,
Speaker 1: A lot of guys will inject them with acidtone. I
Speaker 1: I shoot everything. I'm not going to take the time.
Speaker 1: I'm running in gunning the whole time, So I do
Speaker 1: a center body shot, try to hit the vitals. I
Speaker 1: think the trick is a very slow bullet, something that's
Speaker 1: not going to create a lot of impact, and you
Speaker 1: probably get maybe one out of eight, one out of
Speaker 1: nine that spray because I want the essence, right, So
Speaker 1: that adds to the value of the skunk, is that
Speaker 1: you sell the fur. But then you there's also a
Speaker 1: market for the essence, and so essence right now is
Speaker 1: you know right about ounds average? Yeah, So how much
Speaker 1: do you get out of one skunk about? I mean, like, oh,
Speaker 1: since wise, So it just depends on if they spray
Speaker 1: or not, if they're full, you know, all over half
Speaker 1: an ounce. So you take a skunk that's you know,
Speaker 1: if he's got good white stripes, and if he's full essence,
Speaker 1: you know, throw another ten to twelve dollars on it.
Speaker 1: That's not a bad deal for something you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: targeting either. I mean there are guys that target them,
Speaker 1: but for me, there by catch, ye, So well why
Speaker 1: not just set specifically for him because I'm out there
Speaker 1: targeting other species And I say by catch and the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm in the same general area so I
Speaker 1: catch them in a lot of my coon sets is
Speaker 1: where I catch them. Because you're gonna catch them whether
Speaker 1: you're targeting him or not. Yeah. So, and like I said,
Speaker 1: you want that, you want the good ones. Um, you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna get a little bit more money for
Speaker 1: the good white stripes. That's what they want. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's what the novelty market is wanting. But no,
Speaker 1: the skunk is an underrated for for sure. And if
Speaker 1: you have never seen a skunk for in general, they've
Speaker 1: got all some for it's real long, kind of silky
Speaker 1: for I mean, it really is a student you say,
Speaker 1: they're trappers even starting to target them now just because
Speaker 1: of that market for sure. Yeah, there there's several guys
Speaker 1: that I know that they go out and pretty much
Speaker 1: target them. You know, do you think me and Rick
Speaker 1: would be all pull top Lot off those giants I
Speaker 1: was showing you earlier today, we'll see. That's one funny.
Speaker 1: I never did get a top Lot skunk. I don't
Speaker 1: think they give out the certificates. That's a funny, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of I haven't gotten that hat. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I never sold a skunks. I don't know because those
Speaker 1: are some big skunks though. You have to Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have to go to Fern harvests now. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if they give out for forgiven my ignorance here,
Speaker 1: what is the market for the essence? Like what are
Speaker 1: people using it for? What do they want it for?
Speaker 1: So the main market is for bait makers. Um, it's
Speaker 1: also you can google essence and come up with I
Speaker 1: mean it it is there's a large market for The
Speaker 1: main market is essence for for lure, for trapping. That
Speaker 1: takes a lot of it. Um. You know when it's
Speaker 1: so like we were running Martin sets, right, There's not
Speaker 1: a lot of skunks in the mountains, so those guys
Speaker 1: can't access you know they don't have access to skunks.
Speaker 1: So but there are different different markets for it too
Speaker 1: as well. Um, I think I could be wrong. I
Speaker 1: think there's some food additives that stu you might have hurt.
Speaker 1: I feel like years ago was used in perfumes a
Speaker 1: lot perfect. They would pull apart the scent, but like
Speaker 1: what sticks and there's some way to break it down?
Speaker 1: Casts huge? Yeah, casts a hundred bucks of pound right
Speaker 1: now casts a hunter bucks. So like castor is always
Speaker 1: funny because like around the holidays, we're talking about it.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a thing that like when you skin
Speaker 1: a beaver on each side of the vent, it would
Speaker 1: be like if you're like if you reach down and
Speaker 1: grab on yourself male or female whatever, above your how
Speaker 1: would I put it? What would be that little area?
Speaker 1: I know, a vulgar term for that little area exactly
Speaker 1: between the in between zones, not your taint. It's like
Speaker 1: just like a vulgar term for what that is? What
Speaker 1: is it like if you were gonna I don't know,
Speaker 1: like above your genitals and on either side it's like
Speaker 1: a little soft area where your legs join up to
Speaker 1: your body. What is that called that spot? If you
Speaker 1: had a hernia. Oh yeah, picture you had a hernia
Speaker 1: on a beaver, there sits. If you had a double hernia,
Speaker 1: growing area, Yeah, you're growing area. There sits. These two
Speaker 1: sacks full of castor, it looks like a brain, looks
Speaker 1: like two brains hiding out down in there um. And
Speaker 1: they use it for imitate like artificial vanilla. Vanilla extracts
Speaker 1: a big one, a lot of the goals. I think
Speaker 1: there's a big market in Turkey for something. They fume.
Speaker 1: It's huge and perfume because it really does have a
Speaker 1: sweet smell. Hundred bucks of pound right now, the castor.
Speaker 1: If you get a beaver loaded with castor, his caster
Speaker 1: is worth more than all of his other parts. Is
Speaker 1: that has I've been with Steve sitting on a bunch
Speaker 1: of pounds of it trapping? Is it the weight the
Speaker 1: dried out weight? Yeah? Generally there's a few different ways,
Speaker 1: but generally the accepted way is to have it dried.
Speaker 1: Can I give you a huge bag of beaver casters
Speaker 1: and then you'll like on me like a stretcher or
Speaker 1: something like that. Were already gave me two stretchers. If
Speaker 1: I give you a big bag of beaver casters, we
Speaker 1: call it into even get that hat from him? Would
Speaker 1: you fly home with the beaver casters? We can fly
Speaker 1: home with. I don't know. I'm gonna let you home
Speaker 1: with a bunch of beaver casters. Now you need him
Speaker 1: for bait, because that's one universal bait. I know, it's
Speaker 1: a universal attracting No beaver caster is is where it's
Speaker 1: at if you're trapping right now. So I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you a bunch of beaver cast and the oil sacks too.
Speaker 1: You can also take the oil sacs. I kind of
Speaker 1: quit saying because me and Seth here we're old lure makers.
Speaker 1: I don't let you know that, and we would we
Speaker 1: made We made like a lot. Oh yeah, is that
Speaker 1: that stuff we used the other day? Is that's still
Speaker 1: from the main stuff? We made like a couple of
Speaker 1: quart jars of that stuff, and we took a valerian
Speaker 1: root appalescence and a lot of beaver caster and a
Speaker 1: lot of glycering. I should work that stuff now, the
Speaker 1: castor definitely where it's at. Are you selling castor I'm
Speaker 1: selling caster? I take what because I make a lout
Speaker 1: of my own bait, So I take every year what
Speaker 1: I need to get me through Basically the next year
Speaker 1: and then I'll sell the rest. Let me give you
Speaker 1: a couple of bags of it. Okay, that's why you'd
Speaker 1: have it. I want it. What's your beaver pressure like
Speaker 1: in southern Illinois is is there a lot of people
Speaker 1: trying to catch beavers there? There's not a lot of
Speaker 1: beavers where I'm at. Okay, So that's that's the problem,
Speaker 1: more than anything, is that you've got to be very
Speaker 1: conscious about. You know, I've always said where I'm at
Speaker 1: right now, if I wanted to, I could take two
Speaker 1: weeks and I could basically trap out my my area.
Speaker 1: And so I've got to be very conscious about how
Speaker 1: I trapped the beaver. I trapped far away from the house,
Speaker 1: trying to get the big, the big you know, parent
Speaker 1: beat far away from the beaver house. Yeah, because generally
Speaker 1: the further way you get from the house, you'll kind
Speaker 1: of keep yourself from catching the small kit beavers. They
Speaker 1: just don't travel as far. Uh. And then I just
Speaker 1: you know, once I go in, I'll take you know,
Speaker 1: two or three out of the house and then I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'll leave it just to kind of have seed for
Speaker 1: next year. And that's just like how big is your
Speaker 1: trapping area. Like, so my trapping area is dictated a
Speaker 1: lot by my work, being that I work construction, so
Speaker 1: I have a giant range that I've worked over the years,
Speaker 1: and over the years I've set up sort of trap
Speaker 1: lines to correlate with where I'm working, you know, because
Speaker 1: I mean I'm working every day, so I want to
Speaker 1: be able to run the line on the way back
Speaker 1: home from work. You know, tell tell priority this, This
Speaker 1: will help them conceptualize it. Like if you tell them
Speaker 1: how many permissions permissions, how many permissions you maintain at
Speaker 1: any given time, between a hundred fifty landowner permission getting
Speaker 1: that many white tail permissions, it would never happen. Well,
Speaker 1: because that's the only way I can trap. So we
Speaker 1: have very We have no public land where I'm at.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he mad, but you don't give him your spiel. Yes,
Speaker 1: So I mean he walks up with traps and starts
Speaker 1: jamming his hands into him. Don't give him an education,
Speaker 1: you know, because I mean the first So in general,
Speaker 1: people are worried about their dogs. So in general, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get nine knows to one yes, even for trapping permission. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's people, don't they don't understand. They don't want you
Speaker 1: on it, which you know, it's their lands whatever, But
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of my ratio is is nine
Speaker 1: knows to one yes. So you'll go up, you'll have
Speaker 1: a conversation with them. That's better than Spencer's white Tail
Speaker 1: ratio wasn't like a hundred and fifty and he got
Speaker 1: one or something. He got one a hundred and fifty letters.
Speaker 1: He got like an A plus. He was like grading.
Speaker 1: He got like an A plus, a couple of season
Speaker 1: a D minus. Anyway, go on, So no, I'll go
Speaker 1: up and try to, you know, more than anything, try
Speaker 1: to educate the people about trapping, because I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people just don't know about it, you know.
Speaker 1: And then, like I said, then they have the illusion
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna go trap where you're gonna bring out
Speaker 1: a giant bear trap with teeth, you know, and and
Speaker 1: you know it's just not the case. So you know,
Speaker 1: if that fails, I'll normally get out traps and I'll hear,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm gonna use, and you know, nine
Speaker 1: times out of ten, I'll stick my hand in him
Speaker 1: and show, you know, I'm not losing fingers or breaking
Speaker 1: bones or anything. And you know for me where I'm at,
Speaker 1: because I do live in what I would consider a
Speaker 1: fairly populated area. Kind of last resort, I'll go to
Speaker 1: the dog proof traps, which if you not understand what
Speaker 1: a dog proof is, it's basically a cylinder and so
Speaker 1: like a coon of skunk apossum, they all have a
Speaker 1: lot of dexterity in their paws. They kind of have
Speaker 1: a hand, if you will. So with a dog proof trap,
Speaker 1: if you can picture about a three inch tube that's
Speaker 1: about an inch and a quarter in diameter and very
Speaker 1: bottom of it as a lever on it that you
Speaker 1: actually have to pull, as opposed to a foothold trap,
Speaker 1: where you know, the critter just puts his paw in
Speaker 1: it and then the jaws closed around. With these dog
Speaker 1: proof traps, the opening is small enough that that ideally
Speaker 1: a dog can't get his paw down in there, and
Speaker 1: you have to actually have dextery to pull up on
Speaker 1: that track. You can only catch things that could pick
Speaker 1: a lot pretty much. So I will use that as
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a last resort so to speak,
Speaker 1: to get permission, you know, and say hey, I can
Speaker 1: you know, with the right bait, I can trap around
Speaker 1: all your cats and you know, your farm dogs and
Speaker 1: everything like that, and sometimes that kind of seals the deal.
Speaker 1: If you have a hunter, let's say you had a
Speaker 1: how many you got like a hundred permissions? If you
Speaker 1: let's say that hundred permissions, how many those are dog
Speaker 1: proof only? I would say close to half. Huh, close
Speaker 1: to half. I mean that's the only way I can
Speaker 1: do it. And that's the reason I use so many
Speaker 1: dog proofs in my trapping is because you know, I've
Speaker 1: gotta do what I gotta do what I like. You
Speaker 1: can't do kyote work on those places. Can't do kyote work,
Speaker 1: can't set one and A have no two twenties. Have
Speaker 1: you had any luck like getting permission where like a
Speaker 1: hunting leases where they're like after white tails or turkeys
Speaker 1: or waterfowl because those guys want you coming into there's
Speaker 1: a few. Yeah, they want the predators gone. Um, you
Speaker 1: know which they always have stipulations though, I don't want
Speaker 1: you in here a week before season or you know,
Speaker 1: a week after season, and they want to really make
Speaker 1: you work for it, you know, which is at least
Speaker 1: in Illinois. You know, we've got a shotgun firearm season
Speaker 1: starting November. Every other weekend for a month and a half.
Speaker 1: So it makes it really difficult to work around, you know,
Speaker 1: so you've got to do a lot of planning and
Speaker 1: and different things like that to be able to work
Speaker 1: around and actually trap an area like that. Explain your
Speaker 1: we talked about otters today, Explain how it works for you,
Speaker 1: like in a regulatory sense when you talk about like
Speaker 1: you talk about like getting my honors, so to get
Speaker 1: my orders in Illinois, we got a season. I guess
Speaker 1: it was eight nine years ago or so by now, Uh,
Speaker 1: so I can go out in Illinois. I'm allowed five
Speaker 1: orders for my license, so I can go out and
Speaker 1: and target the order. Once I catch it, I make
Speaker 1: a phone call to the d n R and they
Speaker 1: send me a a site tag and then I tag
Speaker 1: that order wants it as a site tag on it,
Speaker 1: Then I'm good to sell it. And you every year
Speaker 1: can get five. I can get every yeah, every year.
Speaker 1: And what do you do with those five? I sell
Speaker 1: them to taxidermy trade or fur trade. I sell a
Speaker 1: couple every year to taxidermy, but the majority of them
Speaker 1: goes to fur trade. Normally I can find somebody local
Speaker 1: that wants I'm as a wall hanger that I could
Speaker 1: sell them to, you know, because we're only dealing with five.
Speaker 1: So it comes and goes back in the day. You know,
Speaker 1: I was selling them back in the day again, you know,
Speaker 1: there's more money and so on them at the fur
Speaker 1: trade than it was selling them local. But what was
Speaker 1: the highest and otter Pelt went for it that you
Speaker 1: can remember in terms of your furbroom. I remember selling
Speaker 1: a couple for fifty bucks, So I mean nothing crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, which whenever you're looking at a fifty dollar
Speaker 1: or you're looking at a huge critter, you know, you
Speaker 1: feel like you should be getting more for him anyway,
Speaker 1: you know. But so how is it that you wand
Speaker 1: up deciding to do like all the instructional videos. Did
Speaker 1: you do it as a way to like did you
Speaker 1: think it would be a way to make money? No? No,
Speaker 1: because there's there's no money in it. But there's no
Speaker 1: money just making YouTube videos not for me, because YouTube
Speaker 1: so restricted and you don't have and you don't have
Speaker 1: you don't sell equipment or anything. No. No, so YouTube
Speaker 1: so restricted on their stuff that you know, everybody hears
Speaker 1: about monetization of videos, and my content is not monetization,
Speaker 1: you know, the YouTube won't let you monetize your videos,
Speaker 1: or YouTube won't monetize because of my content because they
Speaker 1: feel that it's it's like an animal cruelty issue, and
Speaker 1: there's a fine line you to play. You know, YouTube
Speaker 1: is huge with blood. You know you can't show blood,
Speaker 1: and you know there's a strike rule too, so you're
Speaker 1: always kind of walking that fine line of you know,
Speaker 1: even if this is demonetized per se, I've still gotta
Speaker 1: not get a strike on my channel because then they
Speaker 1: could just you could wake up one morning and it
Speaker 1: could just be done. You know. But you've never lost
Speaker 1: your channel, never lost my channel. I've had two strikes before.
Speaker 1: And you're telling me that too, that YouTube's policy makes
Speaker 1: it that you're afraid to like redo and make new
Speaker 1: versions of your high performing videos. Correct. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: a lot of my videos, which I guess to kind
Speaker 1: of get back to your initial questions. So we're talking
Speaker 1: back back in the day. Um, this was ten years ago.
Speaker 1: I've been doing YouTube now for this is my tenth
Speaker 1: here doing it, and uh, which kind of correlates right
Speaker 1: with the middle of the last fur boom. And I've
Speaker 1: been trapping for a few years, you know, and I've
Speaker 1: been putting on my fur and you know, not to
Speaker 1: pat myself on the back, but I mean I kind
Speaker 1: of felt like I knew what I was doing. And
Speaker 1: I remember, like what was Rick was saying. You go
Speaker 1: up to the NAFA truck, you know, and you're sitting
Speaker 1: there and it standing there, and you know, of course
Speaker 1: during a fur boom, you've got a lot of new
Speaker 1: guys coming in. You know that that aren't there because
Speaker 1: they're just there for the money. And red fox are
Speaker 1: pretty rare around my area, you know, not very common.
Speaker 1: And at this time, you know, ten years ago, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of literature out there about trapping. You know,
Speaker 1: you were fur fishing game, you were trappers, but there
Speaker 1: was just a few magazines, you know, but for the
Speaker 1: most part, there wasn't a lot of information out there.
Speaker 1: It was kind of secretive. Really. I remember walking up
Speaker 1: to the NAFFA truck and there was this guy and
Speaker 1: he must have found a pocket or red fox, which
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, around my are is pretty rare,
Speaker 1: and he had him hanging there and he didn't have
Speaker 1: an alfa back because it was the first year and
Speaker 1: those things were just butchered. I mean, they you could
Speaker 1: just tell the guy did not know what he was doing.
Speaker 1: And I remember that I told myself. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I could do this. I could. I could put out
Speaker 1: content you know that people could could view and put
Speaker 1: up there their fur right, you know, because I feel
Speaker 1: like you're gonna take the animally, might as well do
Speaker 1: it justice and put it up right. And it was
Speaker 1: actually that night I went home, made a YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: And then that following season, Yeah, that following I was
Speaker 1: the first thing you launched on it. I was hunting
Speaker 1: with my coonhound because the season was still in the
Speaker 1: season was still in for that. So that was the
Speaker 1: first video I ever uploaded. Was was hunting with my coonhound.
Speaker 1: And then that following year, uh, that following trapping season,
Speaker 1: I started with the for handling videos, and I did
Speaker 1: for handling videos on them just about all the all
Speaker 1: the critters in my area from you know, the processes
Speaker 1: catching them, skinning them, fleshing. I'm stretching them, the whole deal.
Speaker 1: So and and talk about why you can't why you
Speaker 1: don't want to redo them. So I've tried to redo
Speaker 1: them a couple of times, and every time I upload them,
Speaker 1: they very quickly get demonetized, which sucks because you know,
Speaker 1: they find it because it's new, Yeah, because YouTube finds it.
Speaker 1: Because so all my old videos are demonetized anyway, but
Speaker 1: they're still up there, so it's not like they can
Speaker 1: strike me on them. You know, they've already demonetized them,
Speaker 1: but new videos, so they don't go strike you about
Speaker 1: ten year old stuff. No. I woke up one morning
Speaker 1: a few years ago and I had like seventy five
Speaker 1: videos that were all demonetized, and I had a strike overnight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just all yellow on my on my page. They
Speaker 1: hit me hard. I couldn't I couldn't upload for fifteen,
Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty days. I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 1: They like banned me from it. So yeah, no, I've
Speaker 1: tried in the past because I said, obviously I didn't
Speaker 1: know what the hell I was doing back then. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a borrowed camera that I set up in
Speaker 1: my shop, you know. And do you ever think about
Speaker 1: doing what's that called? Were you like a lot of
Speaker 1: podcasts are doing it Patreon? Right, have you ever thought
Speaker 1: about trying to do a fur handling thing? Um, a
Speaker 1: fur handling series like Patreon where people just donate like
Speaker 1: people just come in and view and donate a little money.
Speaker 1: So I actually do have a Patreon I and I've
Speaker 1: tried it. The problem is, especially nowadays, YouTube is where
Speaker 1: the traffic is I understand. So you the video streaming
Speaker 1: service on the plan. So you've got to have that
Speaker 1: audience in that draw to be able to So if
Speaker 1: you do on yourself, you're just never gonna people are
Speaker 1: gonna find it. You're gonna go find something find and
Speaker 1: very few people I mean especially now. You know, back
Speaker 1: then I was one of the first people. I was
Speaker 1: putting out trapping content, you know, and and that kind
Speaker 1: of content. Now everybody and the Brothers got a channel.
Speaker 1: You know, they're putting out the content. So people aren't
Speaker 1: gonna go pay to watch something that you know, they
Speaker 1: can just go right down the search bar and go
Speaker 1: search too. So it's tough. You know, you're in a
Speaker 1: real pickle. Pickle, Yeah, but it's been fun. Can they
Speaker 1: just still support though? Anyway? Yeah, I've got to pay
Speaker 1: be set up for it. But I mean it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of traffic that goes towards it. Like
Speaker 1: I said, huh, some people it just searched con Creek
Speaker 1: Outdoors on on Patreon, but you won't find it through YouTube. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's and a link underneath all my videos. So if
Speaker 1: people are out there to listen to this that like
Speaker 1: Stue Miller's Coon Creek Outdoors for handling and trapping videos,
Speaker 1: they would need to go to Patreon and then find
Speaker 1: you there and give you a little jingle. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: one way to support, you know. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: why I'm gonna give you all that beaver cast, because
Speaker 1: I haven't been in that page to pay you. There's
Speaker 1: not there's not a lot there, and I don't honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't post a lot of videos there simply just
Speaker 1: because the traffic there is not justifiable to all the
Speaker 1: work that goes into it. But no, it's like I said, I,
Speaker 1: you don't do it for the money, you know, just
Speaker 1: like Rick probably knows. You know, you don't trap for
Speaker 1: the money either, not right now. I mean you can
Speaker 1: trap for the heritage and the sport of it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah that romantic Yeah, it just drips the roman you know,
Speaker 1: you're all about traditional practices and trapping is one of
Speaker 1: the oldest. You know, it drips the romance. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: all I wanted to read about when I was a
Speaker 1: kid man, because kids want to go live out in
Speaker 1: the woods and make the living off the woods. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know about writing. I thought you had to
Speaker 1: do it through trapping. What was I am for a surprise?
Speaker 1: Do you ever do uh any uh like road trip
Speaker 1: trapping vacations for stuff you don't get to trap for
Speaker 1: this year near home? This was my first year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, the one to me, Stu came out
Speaker 1: and me and Rick and Stu uh got abused out
Speaker 1: in the that was that was a hard, hard trip.
Speaker 1: But no, that's a tough road to home. Podcast is
Speaker 1: not from that trip, is no, No, definitely not. No.
Speaker 1: That is one thing that YouTube has given me. It's
Speaker 1: it's let me meet people, go places and do things
Speaker 1: that I would never been able to do. You know,
Speaker 1: So plug your plug your hunting fishing channel. So if
Speaker 1: you want to check me out, you can search Coon
Speaker 1: Creek Outdoors. That's where the good stuff is. That's where
Speaker 1: the gold is. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's where I put
Speaker 1: up all my content. When I say the gold, that's
Speaker 1: where like the stuff that like, Um, I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: that cause I want to hack on yourself saying that's
Speaker 1: where like like you excel um at like a skill
Speaker 1: set that's not widely known, and like the fur handling
Speaker 1: trapping information like to me is like there's I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anyone When I want to know something, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go look at that. I appreciate that, you know
Speaker 1: that means a lot. But yeah, I pride myself on
Speaker 1: on the put up and the fur handling side of it.
Speaker 1: So I mean, you know, there's nothing special about what
Speaker 1: I do, you know. I mean I'm not the best
Speaker 1: trapper and I'm not the best of putting up stuff.
Speaker 1: But you made a boat from scratch. I made a
Speaker 1: boat from Yeah. I came across the video at one
Speaker 1: time looking up just like looking up boat stuff on YouTube. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well welded a boat because he likes to fish, catfish.
Speaker 1: He likes fish crappy, so he weld it up a
Speaker 1: catfish crappy combo boat, Sweet che On. That's on my
Speaker 1: main chapel, Conker Outdoors. Okay, tell peopleout the other channel though,
Speaker 1: So I've got another channel branched off of my main
Speaker 1: channel simply because the audience just wasn't there. But I've
Speaker 1: got a fish and channel that I do a lot
Speaker 1: of content on in summer. It's a couple of years
Speaker 1: old now called Total Angling Experience. And that's that's where
Speaker 1: I'm slowly trying to put all my fishing content and
Speaker 1: you know, educational side electronics and different things like that.
Speaker 1: Because you like, you like cats, like cats, and like
Speaker 1: crop That's that's what I fished for home. So cats
Speaker 1: and croppies speaking, if you're interested in that kind of stuff, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I don't bass fish, so catfish and croppies where
Speaker 1: I'm at. I think that everyone out there needs to
Speaker 1: send stum Miller a few pounds of beaver castor or
Speaker 1: go to the Patreon deal and throw a little jingle
Speaker 1: this guy's way. Well, you're you're your fishing stuff is
Speaker 1: probably not demonetized, right, Fishing stuff is not demonetized. That's
Speaker 1: that's another reason, you know, I wanted to have kind
Speaker 1: of a backup, if you will, you know, just because
Speaker 1: all the problems with YouTube, you know, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's a huge deal right now with just kind of
Speaker 1: all the outdoor community with YouTube, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: demonetizing and picking what they want to see. Man a
Speaker 1: conversation we have all the time is how can you
Speaker 1: come in and, ah, how could you come in and
Speaker 1: create an alternative for outdoor How could you come in
Speaker 1: and create an an alternative for outdoor pursuits that would
Speaker 1: get that you would build up so big that it
Speaker 1: would actually have traffic, would be a reliable place to
Speaker 1: go look. But it's like YouTube is so that the
Speaker 1: most it's where all the traffic is, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you want to know something, you search it on you
Speaker 1: think I don't know what it is. Every minute, four
Speaker 1: hundred hours of stuff gets up volded to YouTube or
Speaker 1: something like that. YouTube is a Google company, aren't they?
Speaker 1: Man like if somehow? But it's it's almost like it's
Speaker 1: like the Q tip thing. It's just YouTube's not even
Speaker 1: it's just where do you find information? It's not it's
Speaker 1: a It's bigger than just seeing I feel like socially now, No,
Speaker 1: we launched, we put every day every day our company.
Speaker 1: We put material on YouTube every day, like I'm not
Speaker 1: hacking on it. But what I don't like is I
Speaker 1: don't like the hostility to the hostility to the disciplines.
Speaker 1: It's like uncertainty in that environment, right, you never know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen like putting out that kind of content. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they can take it. They can take it away from
Speaker 1: you tomorrow if they really want, without any questions. Because
Speaker 1: their platforms, so you know, as much as you want
Speaker 1: to be on their love it or right it, you
Speaker 1: still got played by their rules. I do want to
Speaker 1: say just is a very humble person. But I started
Speaker 1: trapping right around the time student and Just. I love
Speaker 1: old trapping books, but there's a lot of times I
Speaker 1: read that where I'm like, yeah, someone's gonna have to
Speaker 1: show me how to actually do that, like ses or
Speaker 1: the black and white photos that are so horrible on
Speaker 1: my I was gonna ask to like how, Like where'd
Speaker 1: you learn it all? How did you get good at it?
Speaker 1: I was self taught for the most part everything, you know,
Speaker 1: because like I said, I did learn a lot um
Speaker 1: for fishing game. I've had a subscription to them forever,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of educational stuff then a
Speaker 1: lot was just trial and error. I thought Trapper and
Speaker 1: Predator Collar blew fur fishing game away on instructional that
Speaker 1: you think. So when I was a kid, fur fishing
Speaker 1: game was more fun to read, but instructional I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of it. And like like Rick said, you know,
Speaker 1: you can read and you can watch somebody do it,
Speaker 1: but a lot of us just getting out there and
Speaker 1: doing it trial and error. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of real rough DVDs out there that will get you by.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your channel, though. You kind of one thing
Speaker 1: and we talked about what we were trapping, was you
Speaker 1: you cut through the bullshit pretty well because I went
Speaker 1: down rabbit holes on like Trapperman Forum and stuff where
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, I gotta I gotta wear
Speaker 1: it has matt suit. So when you're making a set,
Speaker 1: you need to squint your left and your left hand
Speaker 1: and I you know, I guess the work. I got
Speaker 1: so wound up on that. And your channel is really good.
Speaker 1: It cuts through it and it's so yeah, everyone, don't
Speaker 1: you go subscribe to Con't Creek Outdoors. And I appreciate that. No,
Speaker 1: that means a lot. And like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of guys are just out there to make content.
Speaker 1: But like so, I mean, it doesn't take a lot
Speaker 1: of people overthink trapping. They really do. Like you said,
Speaker 1: they go down a rabbit hole and they got to
Speaker 1: be this and nine inches sit back and four inches
Speaker 1: over and this, that and the other. You know, there's
Speaker 1: whenever you really break it down, there's there's a few
Speaker 1: simple things that you gotta do to be able to
Speaker 1: be successful at it. And once you have those few
Speaker 1: fundamentals down, you're golden. I want to just touch on
Speaker 1: one of the things you taught me that I walked
Speaker 1: away from our little trip with that I ignored very much,
Speaker 1: and I think it's that romantic little side of it.
Speaker 1: You were like set on sign and every time we
Speaker 1: came to a picture perfect area, you were like, well,
Speaker 1: is there a sign here? Because if there's not, we're
Speaker 1: not putting trap. And it hit me such a reality checks, like, man,
Speaker 1: I put traps in areas like this is what the
Speaker 1: manual tone to do. This is what that little book
Speaker 1: told me, and this is perfect. I don't see any
Speaker 1: sign here, but I'm gonna put a set here. And
Speaker 1: these animals are so dumb they don't know they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be. Uh So, just something like that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: took away from that stew and yeah, so no, you
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta be setting where the critters are, you know,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people I'm trying to catch kyotes
Speaker 1: and I can't catch because everybody gets a heart on
Speaker 1: for kyotes, right, Like that's like kind of the pinnacle predator.
Speaker 1: You know, well, if you're gonna catch a kyle, you
Speaker 1: gotta be where a kyo it is. You know, you
Speaker 1: gotta be where he's gonna travel. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing with a lot of things we're doing
Speaker 1: in the outdoors, like fishing. You gotta be fishing where
Speaker 1: the fish are. And yeah, I mean it's easy set
Speaker 1: you know, you can say that and people like, of course,
Speaker 1: but you gotta put your time in scouting, and sure
Speaker 1: there's a lot of you're not setting where you want
Speaker 1: them to be. It's do you do social media too? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. I got Facebook, Instagram, So tell people
Speaker 1: where that's at. Conkerg out Wars. It's all you need
Speaker 1: to remember. Coon Creek Outdoors as simple as it gets.
Speaker 1: Let's say you fella has a Kyle, they're out deer hunting.
Speaker 1: Here comes a beautiful cow run along. They're like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hang that sucker on my wall. What do
Speaker 1: you do? Go to Coon Creek Outdoors you can find
Speaker 1: videos of how to set the traps, skin and flesh,
Speaker 1: and I've got videos on tanning for home use and
Speaker 1: garment use everything else. So remember send him a pound
Speaker 1: of castor or go to what's it called not Pantheon patrion,
Speaker 1: don't go there? Who stude? Thanks for coming out, man,
Speaker 1: No appreciate. It's been a blast. Man, it's been awesome.
Speaker 1: Speaking of wall hanger coyotes. You know what you're doing next.
Speaker 1: Now we're doing stuff going over to my garage, all right, man,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much,