Speaker 1: If this is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast, you can't
Speaker 1: predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you
Speaker 1: by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands,
Speaker 1: or scouting for ELK. First Light has performance apparel to
Speaker 1: support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at
Speaker 1: first light dot com. F I R S T L
Speaker 1: I T E dot com. Okay, join today by Heather
Speaker 1: du Ville Holy col Thanks for coming over.
Speaker 2: Thank you, happy to be here, beautiful.
Speaker 1: You live in Craig, Alaska.
Speaker 2: I do. I'm born and raising Craig, born and.
Speaker 1: Raising Craig on the outside. But we what we here
Speaker 1: at the inside of the island called the outside of
Speaker 1: the island. Wait say it again, we call that the outside.
Speaker 2: Of the Prince Wales Island.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the west side of the island, the outside
Speaker 1: of the island. Yeah, okay, And you were born and
Speaker 1: raised there, and uh, I gotta plug something and then
Speaker 1: I'm then I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna plug it by asking you a question. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're launching a new thing called me Eater Radio Live,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be a show where we get it's
Speaker 1: it's live now, Media to live. Media Radio Live is
Speaker 1: live now and it's a show where we get call
Speaker 1: and reports from people from around the country about what's
Speaker 1: going on. And you need to I'm gonna pitch you
Speaker 1: on being a correspondent.
Speaker 2: Oh I love it.
Speaker 1: Where you'll call in. We'll be like, what the hell
Speaker 1: are you doing right now?
Speaker 2: Oh that would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Please, Yeah, you'll be our You'll be our correspondent from
Speaker 1: the outside of Prince Wales's Islands. So folks can check
Speaker 1: out me Eat a Radio Live. It goes live. It's
Speaker 1: live on Thursdays and then lives everywhere you get your
Speaker 1: podcast lives on YouTube. So you we will meet you
Speaker 1: now in great detail and then we will check in
Speaker 1: with you on that. If this is cool with.
Speaker 2: You, oh I love it, Thank you, and yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: honored to be here.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start with this. Your cling it, I'm explain
Speaker 1: that to me. Explain that to me like I'm five
Speaker 1: years old.
Speaker 2: Okay. So it's pronounced like cling it thhl sling it,
Speaker 2: cling it, but a lot of people say clink it
Speaker 2: because you know, when settlers came, it was easier for
Speaker 2: them to say that, but my great grandma would say
Speaker 2: sling it. So a lot of our traditional words and
Speaker 2: traditional language is now difficult to pronounce for many folks.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm clinkt. My ancestry is from here. These
Speaker 2: are our traditional homelands. My great grandma came from a
Speaker 2: goon where's that. It's in a little village north of
Speaker 2: here in southeast Alaska, but traveled down here when the
Speaker 2: cannery opened in Klook. Okay, Yeah, it was the first
Speaker 2: cannery in Alaska.
Speaker 1: So that's what brought your mom to this island.
Speaker 2: My great grandma, great great to this island. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so then my grandma lived here, and my dad was
Speaker 2: born in Craig and I was born and raised here too.
Speaker 2: So yeah, these are our traditional homelands. And I'm really
Speaker 2: honored to be able to carry out the traditions of
Speaker 2: our people and practice our culture today still. And i
Speaker 2: just feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants,
Speaker 2: and I'm really proud to be here and be able
Speaker 2: to share my culture with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the funny thing, because I'll catch like ill
Speaker 1: now and then get the feeling all like, man, we've
Speaker 1: been coming here for seventeen years. Don't tell me about dad.
Speaker 1: I've been fishing here for seventeen years. I can't even like.
Speaker 1: That's the thing it is hard to imagine, is for me,
Speaker 1: is it's hard to picture being in a place where
Speaker 1: it's not that your grandparents came there, your grand great
Speaker 1: grandparents came there from some foreign land. But it's hard
Speaker 1: to picture what it would feel like to be in
Speaker 1: a place where your people have been there for thousands
Speaker 1: of years, right because in my culture, like in my experience,
Speaker 1: it's so uprooted, you know. I know, some people came
Speaker 1: from Italy in the early nineteen hundreds and I don't know,
Speaker 1: like at this point, we don't even know where the
Speaker 1: hell they came from, you know. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: it's so like for us to get a sense of
Speaker 1: having been here, you know, like sixteen years feels like
Speaker 1: a good run, you know, And I can't That's what
Speaker 1: It's got to be amazing to have that, probably, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I mean you can tell me, but I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: painful in some ways because change, But in some ways
Speaker 1: it's gonna be disinvigorating. Yeah, to have that long of
Speaker 1: a history.
Speaker 2: You're right, it's you know, and our history has been
Speaker 2: passed down through storytelling. You know, we didn't have it documented.
Speaker 2: There was no paper pens, people weren't writing it down.
Speaker 2: So our culture has stayed alive for over ten thousand years,
Speaker 2: and our cultural traditions that we practiced today are you know,
Speaker 2: still a part of our lives today because of you know,
Speaker 2: the people that came before us, and they had a
Speaker 2: responsibility to carry that on and pass that down, and
Speaker 2: a lot of that is done through storytelling. So my
Speaker 2: great grandma would say, you know that her you know,
Speaker 2: grandparents came from upriver, so like up the Yukon area
Speaker 2: is right, and then made so they're inland clinkets and
Speaker 2: then made their way down to Angoon. And Yeah, despite
Speaker 2: all of the attempts for Indigenous people to not be
Speaker 2: here anymore, we are still very much here in practicing
Speaker 2: our culture and carrying that on. And I feel like
Speaker 2: I have a responsibility to pass that on to the
Speaker 2: next generation, you know, to honor the people that came
Speaker 2: before me. And that's just a part of who we are.
Speaker 2: And you're right, sometimes it is pain focused. So much
Speaker 2: has been lost, you know, through colonization, and what we
Speaker 2: can just really do today is really practice it and
Speaker 2: revitalize it and honor who we are and share it.
Speaker 2: And I'm really glad to be here today and share
Speaker 2: this with you, and me being able to tell my
Speaker 2: story and share with you about my culture is part
Speaker 2: of that storytelling and and I hope you know that
Speaker 2: you go and share that with other people. And that's
Speaker 2: just how it stays alive and has for ten thousand years.
Speaker 1: When I go to say the word like you're talking
Speaker 1: about pronunciation, I'll hear people say, like people who not
Speaker 1: familiar with the language. You know what, let me let
Speaker 1: me do this before I say what I say. No,
Speaker 1: I'll say what I was gonna say. Then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask you another question. I hear cling it and cling
Speaker 1: it right is one of those closer.
Speaker 2: No, it's cling it?
Speaker 1: Oh be your hat. That's like people aren't gonna fell
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. People say clink it, clink.
Speaker 1: It, yeah, And that sounds cool. That sounds close to
Speaker 1: right for you, I'm saying for me.
Speaker 3: And when you hear people say that, are you just like.
Speaker 1: Take a stab you say it once? Clink it Okay,
Speaker 1: it's good.
Speaker 2: I think it's clink Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, good, it's good. Do you do it once? Fling it,
Speaker 1: cling it, fling it. It's like a like a th
Speaker 1: h fling it. I can't. I'm not gonna run around.
Speaker 3: Clink and it's good.
Speaker 2: My dad would say, your great grandma would say it
Speaker 2: like this, you do that. That's how he like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, what does your dad say?
Speaker 2: Same?
Speaker 1: Yeah, give me a since we haven't established how I
Speaker 1: can say it. Yeah, you can cling it, cling it,
Speaker 1: fling it can get trying to up? Uh? Is that
Speaker 1: do you guys like from Okay, for me, like coming
Speaker 1: from from my influences and stuff. We would look and
Speaker 1: we'd be like, it's an Athabaskan culture. Is that like
Speaker 1: a is that the thing you guys talk about? No,
Speaker 1: like a family, a language family, like the Athabaskan language family.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think we look at it that way.
Speaker 2: You always say like, this is how we were taught.
Speaker 2: This is how my great grandma would say it, instead
Speaker 2: of like categorizing us into a certain you know what
Speaker 2: I mean language? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then you say a handful of things just.
Speaker 2: For different areas.
Speaker 1: Hit me with a handful of things just to get
Speaker 1: a feel for the language.
Speaker 2: Sure, So like thank you in our language is goodness cheese,
Speaker 2: And I don't know a lot, so I guess I
Speaker 2: should start by saying, you know, like I'm learning, I'm
Speaker 2: always going to be learning. A lot of our culture
Speaker 2: and language is lost and I hope to be fluent
Speaker 2: in my language one day. And so I'm a work
Speaker 2: in progress and always will be. So you know, I
Speaker 2: hope those who know more than me will forgive me
Speaker 2: for if I don't do or say something right, but
Speaker 2: know that I'm learning and trying my best. So yeah,
Speaker 2: my dad, like when we're cutting fish, he'll say plita
Speaker 2: height and that means give me the knife height, and
Speaker 2: that's like, give me the knife if you mess up,
Speaker 2: typically like your aunties or your grandma, I would say,
Speaker 2: that's like no good Like.
Speaker 1: So that sounds that sounds like my kids.
Speaker 3: Humor, and they.
Speaker 2: Like, there's really one of our values. So I think clink.
Speaker 2: If people are indigenous people just always incorporate humor into everything,
Speaker 2: just a part of I think our healing too. But
Speaker 2: my dad jokes or like I've heard people joke about, say, oh,
Speaker 2: I thought my traditional name growing up was my traditional
Speaker 2: name is Kutink. I'm named after my grandma's best friend.
Speaker 2: Her English name is Irene Pradovitch from Klook. I don't
Speaker 2: know what my name means, but that's my traditional name.
Speaker 2: My clan is sean Quaiti, so it's a really old
Speaker 2: clan and if you look at the clan lists of
Speaker 2: clan names online, it's not even on there. It's so old.
Speaker 2: This is my clan crest. It's tattooed on my hand.
Speaker 2: This is permanent regalia. So after like missionaries came here,
Speaker 2: the government made it illegal to have permanent regalia tattooed
Speaker 2: on on you. Yeah, this is killer whale. So my
Speaker 2: clan is Shuanquiti and I'm eagle killer Whale. So then
Speaker 2: later you'll see a lot of like jewelry like this
Speaker 2: with carved clan crests on them, which is also eagle.
Speaker 2: Eagle wolf, killer whale. That's me. This evolved after that
Speaker 2: government ban of permanent regalia because it could be removed
Speaker 2: when it had to be removed in public.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean like when they banned tattooing, people just
Speaker 1: used jewelry instead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was it was like a culture ban. You
Speaker 2: couldn't practice peak language to have your regalia when.
Speaker 1: They put when they took kids and put them in
Speaker 1: school and stuff too.
Speaker 2: My grandma went to boarding school and wrangel and.
Speaker 1: Survived, and they enforced that stuff, but she came back.
Speaker 2: And didn't speak her you know, our language again, so
Speaker 2: it was lost. But luckily my dad remembered a lot
Speaker 2: of it from his great or from his grandma, be
Speaker 2: my great grandma. Yeah, so this is permanent regalia, but
Speaker 2: this is my clan crest, and then this is you know, bracelet,
Speaker 2: So this is kind of how it evolved. But you
Speaker 2: actually take your you follow your mother's lineage. So like
Speaker 2: western cultures, you'd take your dad's last name. In our culture,
Speaker 2: you follow your mother's lineage. So I would have my
Speaker 2: mom's clan crest and my dad would be my opposite.
Speaker 2: So a lot of what we do is really try
Speaker 2: to achieve balance, whether that's like out you know, we'll
Speaker 2: talk about sea otters later and like it's off balance
Speaker 2: right now with the population and the shellfish and and so,
Speaker 2: like there's two clan crests in our culture, it's ego
Speaker 2: and raven and their opposites. So Ego and Ravens can
Speaker 2: marry each other and you'll follow your mother's lineage. But
Speaker 2: that opposite clan crest coming together like brings balance. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 2: so we treat our opposites really we treat try to
Speaker 2: treat everyone really well, especially elders, but we always take
Speaker 2: really good care of our opposites. So if Ravens asked
Speaker 2: me to do something, I always do it for them,
Speaker 2: and it helps keep me grounded and balanced in my
Speaker 2: own way.
Speaker 1: Explain your other tattoo on the other hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this, this other one is a wood hook
Speaker 2: and in sling it it's called a nah and it's
Speaker 2: a sea monster. And this is.
Speaker 1: Can you get one out?
Speaker 3: Said?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the only wood hook that we've retired,
Speaker 2: and my dad and I loved it so much. It's
Speaker 2: caught hundreds of hal of it. So a little over
Speaker 2: a year ago we decided to get them tattooed on
Speaker 2: our hands.
Speaker 1: And you're holding the actual object.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, this is this is because.
Speaker 1: People there for sure, this is.
Speaker 2: The enough that we retired. So it's here and you
Speaker 2: can see.
Speaker 1: Explain everything about how it's made and how it's set
Speaker 1: and how you yeah you bet, and how you encourage it.
Speaker 2: So this this one is it was made in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six. It's caught hundreds of hell but you can
Speaker 2: see the teethmarks here, and each one has eyes so
Speaker 2: it can see what it's catching. And this one's a
Speaker 2: sea monster, and I brought thirty year old sea monster
Speaker 2: and then a new one that hasn't been fished yet,
Speaker 2: so you can see the color differences in the wood.
Speaker 2: And I also brought an eagle. But this is you
Speaker 2: would and this part is yellow cedar, and this is
Speaker 2: a post contact hook. So you can see there's some
Speaker 2: modern materials incorporated in to this. But traditionally this barb
Speaker 2: would be made from a bare bone, like.
Speaker 1: A sliver of shinbone.
Speaker 2: Or something, yeah, like a leg bone. Yeah. And then
Speaker 2: to secure that barb, and to also secure the two
Speaker 2: pieces of wood together, we would use spruce root. And
Speaker 2: then this part here, the line would be made from
Speaker 2: cedar bark cordage. And so these are set in pairs
Speaker 2: so they can compete against each other underwater. And they're
Speaker 2: set on like a long line, like a skate type
Speaker 2: of line, and they're set in pairs of two. And
Speaker 2: the sinkers we use as a rock with the groove
Speaker 2: carved in it and those yeah, yeah, And then traditionally
Speaker 2: the float on top of the water would be a
Speaker 2: inflated seal stomach that's dried. And then you have a
Speaker 2: tattletale booie, which is about you know, this long and
Speaker 2: usually they're in the shape of a corner app bird
Speaker 2: and so it got a long neck, you know, a
Speaker 2: beak and face and then a larger rounded body and
Speaker 2: so when you had a halbit, it would tip up.
Speaker 2: So I think these would be set and then the
Speaker 2: people would go to the beach and like build a
Speaker 2: fire and wait.
Speaker 1: If you got it.
Speaker 2: So these are baited with octopus, and you take an
Speaker 2: octopus and you kind of shave the tentacles off in
Speaker 2: a long strip, so it looks like a lot of bait,
Speaker 2: but it's really thin and it stays light because you
Speaker 2: don't want to put too heavy have a bait on
Speaker 2: here because it'll affect the way these float. And you'd
Speaker 2: wrap the octopus tentacles around this part and you tie
Speaker 2: it with this string.
Speaker 1: Oh, you secure it on it with.
Speaker 2: Strings and it kind of disguises this a little bit,
Speaker 2: but you bait the whole yellow cedar part and then
Speaker 2: you lower them down. When you get to where you're
Speaker 2: gonna fish, you lower them down, and you have your
Speaker 2: rock that goes first, and then about one or two
Speaker 2: fathoms six to twelve feet, you'd have your first hook,
Speaker 2: and it floats like this far off the bottom.
Speaker 1: And what would be a deep set for you guys, A.
Speaker 2: Deep set, I mean they can go like forty fathoms,
Speaker 2: you know, or you know we've caught fishing forty feet
Speaker 2: of water or less thirty feet and this yellow theater
Speaker 2: part will float level. So you don't want it to
Speaker 2: float like this or like this, So the two different
Speaker 2: wood woods help it float properly. And then the way
Speaker 2: you bait them, so then you set.
Speaker 1: So those have like a real like uh. You have
Speaker 1: to be very careful about the size and relative amount
Speaker 1: of each kind of wood because I can't picture ever
Speaker 1: getting that thing to float how you'd want it to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the shape, and then my dad measures the distance
Speaker 2: by going like this, so it's like the width of
Speaker 2: your hand.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 2: So you had your sinker, your first hook, and then
Speaker 2: you have about two more fathoms your second hook, your
Speaker 2: second rock sinker, and then your line up to your
Speaker 2: float so it's not a big you know, it's not
Speaker 2: a long set. And then when you set them, you
Speaker 2: kind of like you said, you knock and hit the
Speaker 2: rock on the ground and make sure you wake up
Speaker 2: the albit. And then when palbot go to eat, they
Speaker 2: they can't see very good because they have you know,
Speaker 2: eyes on the top of their head. So they go
Speaker 2: up to whatever they're eating and they open their mouth
Speaker 2: and it creates a vacuum and it'll suck this in
Speaker 2: and then if they don't like it, they'll spit it
Speaker 2: out and it ejects that barb into their cheek and
Speaker 2: they can't get off here. You can't release halbit off
Speaker 2: of here either.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so sometimes you catch a really big one, you
Speaker 2: might not want to normally keep one that size, but
Speaker 2: these are not for catch and release. But the good
Speaker 2: thing is you're setting two hooks, so you know you
Speaker 2: can't catch more than two fish, and you don't want
Speaker 2: to over harvest. You want to make sure, you know,
Speaker 2: like we maintain that balance and don't take more than
Speaker 2: what we need.
Speaker 3: What's your ideal size?
Speaker 2: I think anywhere, like you know, like eighty pounds would
Speaker 2: be good, or fifty to eighty pounds because we like
Speaker 2: to have them filets like this long, because we take
Speaker 2: the filet and like leave the skin on the back
Speaker 2: of it and then cut like this long strips of
Speaker 2: about a quarter inch thick halibit and then dry it
Speaker 2: dried fish. We also lightly smoke it in the smokehouse
Speaker 2: and then dry it. So typically we fish for halibit
Speaker 2: to make dried fish.
Speaker 1: And you brind that dry fish, just put it in
Speaker 1: there fresh.
Speaker 2: We brind salmon, but we don't brind halbit. You just
Speaker 2: sprinkle a little salt on it and dry. We smoke
Speaker 2: it in the smokehouse and dry it in a dry shed.
Speaker 1: I say, when you use dry, you don't mean like
Speaker 1: you don't dry it out with fire. You just dry
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Yeah, we don't use a dehydrator, just we
Speaker 2: use spruce sticks and hang it over the spruce sticks.
Speaker 2: They can hold a lot of weight.
Speaker 1: And how do you can control is there a time
Speaker 1: of year, like how do you control flies and stuff
Speaker 1: when you do that? Or just that salt repels them.
Speaker 2: Yes, we have a fan on them. Yeah, we keep
Speaker 2: fan blowing on them. We have a little homemade drying
Speaker 2: shed out of wood. And the drying time really does
Speaker 2: depend on the time of year, the climate. You know,
Speaker 2: if it's hot out, it's going to take less time
Speaker 2: to dry, and if it's cold and winter time, you know,
Speaker 2: it'll take a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: What's the word you were saying that when you send
Speaker 1: a hook down, they're down there to compete. But there's
Speaker 1: a word you use to that you basically like to
Speaker 1: a last word of encouragement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you try to put good energy into what
Speaker 2: you're doing and and everything that you do. And so
Speaker 2: when we set these, we give them encouraging words and
Speaker 2: we you could say jindagot, which is like charge or
Speaker 2: like fight, you know, or there's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a longer saying too, where it's like do the best
Speaker 2: you can. Your friend is coming to fight you, and
Speaker 2: you lower them and say that, and then let's see
Speaker 2: it's ikan way day agenda. Good ea cow. That's like,
Speaker 2: do the best you can, your friend is coming to
Speaker 2: fight you. And you're kind of telling both man the
Speaker 2: hall of it, like we're coming to compete, So they
Speaker 2: compete against each other. It's kind of fun, especially for
Speaker 2: my niece and nephew to pick out which ones are
Speaker 2: going to be set together.
Speaker 3: And and you said, the eyes are.
Speaker 2: These sea monster hooks have abalony eyes. So and this
Speaker 2: is an eagle, you know, it doesn't have abalony eyes,
Speaker 2: but it does have eyes so they can see what
Speaker 2: they're catching. And you can see all the teethmarks in
Speaker 2: that hundreds of fish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1: Oh you mentioned that you mentioned that you dry like
Speaker 1: you get hal of it to dry. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you would you ever to take a piece of
Speaker 1: halbit and fry it up or bake it or grill it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, we do. It's Is that not a favorite fish?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It's so funny because we hear hall of it. Oh,
Speaker 2: but we we prefer to dry it and then eat
Speaker 2: other fish that you described your favorite fish, king salmon?
Speaker 1: Okay, where do you put cod? We've been catching a
Speaker 1: lot of cod. I love them. Cod is great, great,
Speaker 1: like gray cod or specific cod.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I don't think I've ever had that.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, but you like lin cod?
Speaker 2: My dad says it's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, specific cod,
Speaker 2: but it.
Speaker 1: Wasn't morning time. I'd fry alaham.
Speaker 2: Sandwich. So yeah, prefer king salmon.
Speaker 1: You like king salmon? Yeah?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Uh? I know the State of Alaska's are. You know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of duking this issue out. But what would
Speaker 1: it mean if king salmon were listed as under the
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act? Would you guys have an exemption? Would
Speaker 1: would Native Alaskans have some kind of exemption to the closures.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound like it, no, but it doesn't There
Speaker 2: be an exemption for native not the way that I've
Speaker 2: not from what I've learned, But yeah, it would be devastating.
Speaker 1: That would be a real life. So if that's your
Speaker 1: favorite fish and your father doesn't your father your father
Speaker 1: is a king sam a fisherman, is he doesn't he patrol? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And my brother they're commercial trollers. But you know trolling
Speaker 2: is one of the oldest fisheries. Yeah, sustainable hook and line.
Speaker 1: Very very selective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, we've been here for thousands of
Speaker 2: years and salmon has always been a part of our
Speaker 2: way of life, which is hakku stay. It means you're
Speaker 2: our way of life. And I can't even imagine a
Speaker 2: life without being able to put up our traditional foods.
Speaker 2: And you think about subsistence use, which I try not
Speaker 2: to use that word because we try to say traditional harvest. Yeah,
Speaker 2: to me, subsistence implies like that you're scraping by.
Speaker 1: Or you know, well, it's also like a it's also
Speaker 1: it's also a management term. Right in Alaska. It's like
Speaker 1: you don't realize, but in Alaska there's like a there's
Speaker 1: like subsistence regulations. Right. You don't see like a traditional use.
Speaker 2: Regulation, right, And if you look up the word subsistence,
Speaker 2: it really doesn't encompass who we are and what we do.
Speaker 2: But traditional harvest or subsistence, if you will, is the
Speaker 2: least takes the least amount from a resource. Resources also
Speaker 2: a management term, because we believe we're steward. You know,
Speaker 2: we're stewards of this land. So resource to me implies
Speaker 2: that you're taking from something. But when you live here,
Speaker 2: you try to live, you know, and be a good steward.
Speaker 2: So if you take your you give back, or you
Speaker 2: don't take more than what you need. And you need
Speaker 2: fish to get fish, so you're not gonna go to
Speaker 2: a river and just because you have a limit to
Speaker 2: take and you see it's depressed, you don't fish. So
Speaker 2: you might get five deer tags, but your household of one.
Speaker 2: You might take one deer and then get one for
Speaker 2: an elder. But you just don't take the maximum because
Speaker 2: the law says you can no. And it's just about
Speaker 2: taking what you need and then using what you take
Speaker 2: for you know, to sustain you for that year, and
Speaker 2: then you go harvest the next year, or if you
Speaker 2: have some leftover from the year before, you don't need
Speaker 2: to harvest that much the next season. So yeah, making
Speaker 2: sure you respect yourself. It's called kaya ane, which is
Speaker 2: like having respect for yourself and all things. So if
Speaker 2: you have that self respect to do those things, like,
Speaker 2: you'll have respect for other people and land, air, water
Speaker 2: and all all the things that live around you.
Speaker 1: Uh, your father and your brother are trollers, king salmon trollers.
Speaker 1: What is there? What is the time of year that
Speaker 1: they are actively fishing? And why didn't you go into
Speaker 1: that line of work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the king Salmon troll opening is on July
Speaker 2: first every year. And I'm sure you've heard, like because
Speaker 2: of the essays and just there's been a lot of
Speaker 2: pressure surrounding king salmon and commercial fishing. And but over
Speaker 2: the years I've heard my dad talk about how like
Speaker 2: you know, it's become less and less and like obviously
Speaker 2: more people moved to Alaska. There's a sport fishing industry.
Speaker 2: There's commercial fishing and more people here, and everyone's taking
Speaker 2: a piece of the pie. Well the pie isn't getting bigger,
Speaker 2: you know, it's getting smaller. So the reason why I
Speaker 2: didn't go into that line of work, I think is
Speaker 2: just because my brother and I are a year and
Speaker 2: a half apart. He's a year and a half older,
Speaker 2: so he was always going with my dad and crewing
Speaker 2: for him. Yeah, and my dad is always like, you
Speaker 2: need to go to school, you need to go get
Speaker 2: your education. Which I did go for two years when
Speaker 2: I came back, and he after I moved back, he said,
Speaker 2: you know you need to go. You need to go
Speaker 2: get finished and get your degree. And finally I looked
Speaker 2: at him and I said, I am, I am in school.
Speaker 2: You know, we're out in the boat and I'm learning
Speaker 2: how to do all these things. And I said, I am,
Speaker 2: I'm into school. I want to be in and he
Speaker 2: he got it.
Speaker 1: He quit beating you up.
Speaker 2: And ever since then and before then, I've just been
Speaker 2: trying to learn everything I can from him. And these
Speaker 2: are the things that I really want to learn and
Speaker 2: practice so I can pass them on, and that this
Speaker 2: is something I can't learn in school. I'm not against school.
Speaker 1: But where did you Where did you try to go
Speaker 1: when you went?
Speaker 2: I went actually went to Santa Barbara City College. I
Speaker 2: played basketball there.
Speaker 1: Did you play basketball growing up?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was telling the floatplane pilot who dropped me off here,
Speaker 2: that's how nice. He's so nice. That's how we traveled
Speaker 2: for all of our games floatplanes in Southeast with charter planes,
Speaker 2: and and we would leave from Hollis often and oftentimes
Speaker 2: and go fly and we'd stay the weekend in other
Speaker 2: towns and we'd have to stay with the opponents families,
Speaker 2: so like we'd go home and like sleep on their
Speaker 2: bedroom floor after we played them. It'll be all mad
Speaker 2: whoever won or lost, you know. But we made a
Speaker 2: lot of great friends like that throughout Southeast.
Speaker 1: And so you went down, you went down to Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara and you go to school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was good, and it was it's good
Speaker 2: to to go and get that experience and you know
Speaker 2: that perspective a different place, so busy.
Speaker 1: You enjoyed it?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean it's the sun and
Speaker 2: sand and getting.
Speaker 1: All that oil on your feet at the beach. It's good.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I forgot about that I think it's important
Speaker 2: to do that, and then you come back you really appreciate,
Speaker 2: you know, mm hmm, what you have and and the
Speaker 2: people in your life.
Speaker 1: So so what do you, uh, what do you call
Speaker 1: your business and describe? I'm sure I know you do
Speaker 1: handful of things, but your your business of fur products,
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: So I started this little business and the main goal
Speaker 2: of that was to try to recoup the costs of hunting, processing,
Speaker 2: and sewing sea otter for you know, I work some
Speaker 2: I work with some seal skins because we do harvest
Speaker 2: seals to eat. We make oil and eat seal meat,
Speaker 2: but we only get about two a year, so I
Speaker 2: mainly work with seotter for But I started the business
Speaker 2: to try to sell items to recoup the costs of
Speaker 2: for hunting. So in this region, you know, Southeast Alaska
Speaker 2: spans a distance of thirteen states, so it's enormous. You know,
Speaker 2: if you look at it on a map, doesn't look
Speaker 2: that big, but it's it's a humongous region. And a
Speaker 2: recent aerial survey show that there's like twenty two to
Speaker 2: twenty five thousand sea otter in this region. And I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, well, I guess I should ask, do you
Speaker 2: want the lengthy answer to that question?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I want the big, lengthy answer, and I
Speaker 1: want you to explain who can hunt seatters and who can't.
Speaker 2: I'll cover it all. So now today there's like twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand seatter in the region. Historically, you know, there
Speaker 2: was the commercial fur trade. You know, for about one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years, Russians enslaved Alaska natives hunt and
Speaker 2: they would sell the first commercially, primarily to China. So
Speaker 2: for about one hundred and fifty years there was a
Speaker 2: commercial fur trade in Alaska and over a million sea
Speaker 2: otters were taken. And then in nineteen eleven there was
Speaker 2: a Seal Furst Seal Treaty signed, which put a stop
Speaker 2: to that commercial fur trade, which also put a halt
Speaker 2: to the harvest of sea otters. They're almost extinct, so
Speaker 2: there's zero seaatters left in southeast Alaska, or nearly zero.
Speaker 2: And then so that was in nineteen eleven, and then
Speaker 2: there was am Chica Island in the Lutians is the
Speaker 2: largest nuclear test site in the US, and so they
Speaker 2: were planning the government was planning to have some nuclear
Speaker 2: tests in the late sixties nineteen sixties at m Chicut,
Speaker 2: and they were concerned about how that would affect the
Speaker 2: sea otter population. So in the late sixties they actually
Speaker 2: captured four hundred around four hundred sea otters and put
Speaker 2: them in these metal canals with water in them, and
Speaker 2: flew them to southeast Alaska and relocated about four hundred
Speaker 2: of them to seven different areas.
Speaker 1: Oh so it was like a reintroduction. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I believe one of the areas is now
Speaker 2: it's called Seatter Sound, you know, Prince Wales. So so
Speaker 2: they were reintroduced here in the late sixties. And then
Speaker 2: there was that massive nuclear test in nineteen seventy one
Speaker 2: in m Chitcot. It was like hundreds of times larger
Speaker 2: than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, and it
Speaker 2: was like a mile down underground and it created such
Speaker 2: a huge explosion that it actually wiped out I think
Speaker 2: over nine hundred seatters, so a lot more than they
Speaker 2: thought would die. Now I'm going off on a tandy here,
Speaker 2: but that's why green Peace was formed. There was a
Speaker 2: group of people from Canada nineteen seventy one who are
Speaker 2: protesting that nuclear test in the name of the boat
Speaker 2: that they tried to travel to protest. That test was
Speaker 2: called green peace, and so they tried to make it
Speaker 2: all the way uptown Chitka to stop the bomb.
Speaker 1: Was the genesis of green Peace.
Speaker 2: So then the Marine Mammal Protection Act was put in place,
Speaker 2: I believe in nineteen seventy two, which part of that
Speaker 2: the Marine Mammal Protection Act states that you must be
Speaker 2: a certain blood quantum of coastal and Alaska native blood
Speaker 2: quantum it's twenty five percent in order to hunt the otter.
Speaker 2: And today you know, there aren't that many people who
Speaker 2: are qualified to hunt through the eligibility rules of the
Speaker 2: Marine Mammal Protection Yeah, do.
Speaker 1: You have any idea how many, like just to take
Speaker 1: on Prince Wales Island, Do you have any idea how
Speaker 1: many how many people are twenty five percent costal Native?
Speaker 2: I don't know how many meet the eligibility, but I
Speaker 2: do know like it's illegal for me to teach my
Speaker 2: niece and nephew how to work with furs. They can't
Speaker 2: make seal oil, they can't cook the meat, they cannot
Speaker 2: help skin one. So there's it's like criminalizing our cultural
Speaker 2: passed down Hakustai, our way of life because we want
Speaker 2: to be able to you know, our culture has survived
Speaker 2: this long despite all the attempts to make it not survive,
Speaker 2: and it really deserves to be passed down for that
Speaker 2: much longer. And I don't know how many people qualify,
Speaker 2: but I do know. I don't know, but I do
Speaker 2: know there's only about thirty five hunters in the region.
Speaker 2: So there's very little incentive to hunt because another part
Speaker 2: of the Marine Mammal Protection Acts states that you must
Speaker 2: convert the pelts into a sellable item to try to
Speaker 2: recoup the costs of the cell it. You have to
Speaker 2: significantly alter the pelts so you can't make them whole again,
Speaker 2: So you cannot sell whole pelts.
Speaker 1: I you can't just shoot a sea otter, flash it,
Speaker 1: stretch it, dry it, and send it to a.
Speaker 2: Firm market right, or send it off to get it
Speaker 2: tanned and then sell a whole tanned pelt. I brought
Speaker 2: some pelts to show you too. But so by the
Speaker 2: time you know how to hunt and then go harvest
Speaker 2: sea otter skin, flesh, salt, get it tanned, get it home,
Speaker 2: learn how to sew, or have had somebody teach you
Speaker 2: how convert the you know, cut it so it make
Speaker 2: your pattern, get it right, and then have it the
Speaker 2: quality that somebody wants to buy and then market those items.
Speaker 2: It really I don't think you're ever going to make
Speaker 2: your money back. But so a long answer to your
Speaker 2: question is, I started this business. It's called Coastal Fur
Speaker 2: and Leather, and it's just to sell the items that
Speaker 2: I make to try to recoup some of those costs.
Speaker 2: Because there's so many seaotter in this region now and
Speaker 2: so few hunters that are traditional food security is at risk.
Speaker 2: So you know, for ten thousand years we've harvested shellfish
Speaker 2: from our intertitle zones here, which are now there's so
Speaker 2: many sea otter in the area and they eat twenty
Speaker 2: five percent of their body weight in shell fish a day.
Speaker 2: So the average sea otter, let's say it weighs, you know,
Speaker 2: seventy eighty pounds, could be eating anywhere from fifteen to
Speaker 2: twenty pounds of seafood a day every day.
Speaker 1: And can you pull out with that big ass hide
Speaker 1: just to show for sure? I was when you pulled
Speaker 1: that out earlier, I was quite surprised.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, Yeah, so they do.
Speaker 1: That one of those could get that big, Yeah.
Speaker 2: They get up to one hundred pounds.
Speaker 3: I had a couple of years ago salt like thirty
Speaker 3: of them altogether, and like, I didn't know that they
Speaker 3: ate that much. Yeah, just thinking about like how much
Speaker 3: seafood that thirty of those things can eating in the day.
Speaker 3: It's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in where we used to harvest sea urchins and avaloni,
Speaker 2: last year we were able to get a few, well
Speaker 2: about ten seotter moved in there and there's none left.
Speaker 2: So just ten otter in a small area can really
Speaker 2: do some damage and then you know, it takes years,
Speaker 2: fifty years before it'll recover, you know. But here's here's
Speaker 2: the pelt man.
Speaker 1: Look at it.
Speaker 2: Think it's like a bear's I measure it's fifty eight
Speaker 2: inches long.
Speaker 1: Tell folks about some of the qualities of the hair.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so they do have guard hair, but it's
Speaker 2: not like you know, like a beaver, where it's like
Speaker 2: long hairs. They're really close. The guard hair is really
Speaker 2: close and linked to their undercoat, and they have about
Speaker 2: a million hairs per square inch. So there's more hair
Speaker 2: in one square inch of a sea otter than there
Speaker 2: is on an entire German shepherd. Just to kind of
Speaker 2: put in for the perspective, and seattter don't have a
Speaker 2: fat layer like seals, so they actually have a really
Speaker 2: high metabolism that they rely on, you know, for warmth.
Speaker 2: And then also this undercoat it stays dry, and they're
Speaker 2: always grooming themselves to make sure they're fur is staying
Speaker 2: the way it needs to be to be able to
Speaker 2: trap that air and and keep them warm. So their
Speaker 2: guard hair gets wet, but this underlayer stays dry, and
Speaker 2: you know, unless they're diving down and then the pressure
Speaker 2: will push you know, water back into there and so
Speaker 2: they'll they'll come up and you'll see them grooming a lot.
Speaker 2: So they do have really unique fur. I learned that
Speaker 2: in the fur trade era it was referred to as
Speaker 2: soft gold. And yeah, they have different so they have
Speaker 2: different like textures and colors, so each one is very unique.
Speaker 2: And you know, I brought a couple here and you
Speaker 2: can see, like this one's curly, you can actually see that.
Speaker 2: But they are incredibly soft and just.
Speaker 1: Wild.
Speaker 3: You were saying these things.
Speaker 2: Three feet Yeah, so they can dive up to three
Speaker 2: hundred feet, but I think they they don't prefer to
Speaker 2: do that. So you'll find them in a lot in
Speaker 2: the shallow intertidal areas where we're also trying to harvest
Speaker 2: shellfish from those areas. You know, they're hanging out there
Speaker 2: because it's easier to dive, food's more accessible, it's easier
Speaker 2: to get. And yeah, you may see a raft of
Speaker 2: thirty or three hundred a lot of times in males.
Speaker 2: Bigger males will be like loaners. You see singles kind
Speaker 2: of floating here and there. Typically those tend to be
Speaker 2: like a male, big male. But I learned that hunters
Speaker 2: have the ability to collect the most data on these
Speaker 2: because we're the ones, you know, skinning them. And yep,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of biologists they can't harvest, so
Speaker 2: they can observe to collect data. So I really I
Speaker 2: was worried about traditional food security and started to up
Speaker 2: my game as far as hunting goes. So my dad
Speaker 2: and I we hunted like over one hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: this winter, which is.
Speaker 3: A lot of and there's no yeah, there's no limit
Speaker 3: for you guys.
Speaker 2: Right right and at the rest that's the hell.
Speaker 1: But you got so when you send one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy in to start making all your hats and other products, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're about Well, we talked on the phone one time
Speaker 1: you mentioned what A what.
Speaker 2: A There are one hundred dollars each to tan.
Speaker 1: Yes, you got a big out of pocket expenditure. And
Speaker 1: normal normal like fur trap or whatever. It's like. You
Speaker 1: get it, you put it up, it's out the door.
Speaker 1: You don't need to invest more money, right, yeah, into
Speaker 1: like tanning it, you.
Speaker 2: Know, gratefully. Like I know how to sew, so my
Speaker 2: auntie taught me how to make moccasins when I was twelve,
Speaker 2: But I actually learned to sew with leather when my
Speaker 2: parents had regalia made for me when I was in
Speaker 2: second grade. They had a deer skin dress made for
Speaker 2: me and I took the scraps and I made matching
Speaker 2: regalia for my barbie. And that's what was my first
Speaker 2: experience working with leather, and I always liked it. And
Speaker 2: then I learned how to make moains when I was twelve.
Speaker 2: But you know, the items I sell, they they are
Speaker 2: like higher price, but they actually don't sell for as
Speaker 2: much as what they would be appraised for because of
Speaker 2: the value is a lot higher than what the items
Speaker 2: sell for, but they last forever. So my mockasins that
Speaker 2: I made when I was twelve. They stretched as my
Speaker 2: foot grew and they just wore through. So they lasted
Speaker 2: almost twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, I'm doing the math.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm thirty eight. They were out last year and
Speaker 2: I have avoided making myself a new pair until this year.
Speaker 2: I wore them with a big hole in them. So yeah,
Speaker 2: So it was about eighteen thousand to tan those pelts.
Speaker 2: Plus it's to send out thirty to thirty five salted
Speaker 2: dried pelts. It's about six hundred dollars in shipping one way,
Speaker 2: and that's about half that to ship them back.
Speaker 1: What I thought was funny is like we send stuff
Speaker 1: off every year just to do things, you know, product
Speaker 1: we just have stuff made, like yeah, it'sat that like
Speaker 1: big beaver blankets, you know, but we use that oil.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And when I asked you where you sent them to
Speaker 1: and you said oil, I thought that was fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was telling you. So you get a discount
Speaker 2: if you sell or if you send like a certain amount.
Speaker 2: So I think it's twenty one pelts too. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get this wrong, but there's like a range
Speaker 2: where it's.
Speaker 1: It's like zero to ten, ten to twenty twenty or whatever.
Speaker 2: There's also a break if you send like over a hundred,
Speaker 2: so I try to send a whole lot and you
Speaker 2: get a little bit of a price break, which if
Speaker 2: you're sending that many, it's definitely worth it.
Speaker 3: It makes a difference.
Speaker 2: And there's not not every tannery can tan Marine Mammal
Speaker 2: for so, there's only about five tanneries on the list
Speaker 2: right now that can tan sea otters. Oil Mink is
Speaker 2: one of them, and they do a tremendous job. You know,
Speaker 2: if you look at the back.
Speaker 1: It's a classy outfit man there, but just just like
Speaker 1: interacting with it online and stuff, it's a classy outfit.
Speaker 1: And the customer service is good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they actually don't do online for sea otters,
Speaker 2: but they are great. And you know, you put so
Speaker 2: much into these, Like when I send them off and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh gosh, you know, please make it down
Speaker 2: there and please let them come back to.
Speaker 1: You. Alos want to fly them down yourself.
Speaker 2: When they come back. They're beautiful, like this is nice
Speaker 2: cream colored, it's really soft. You know, see ours smell
Speaker 2: really bad, So you want to make sure sending them
Speaker 2: to a good tanner so they don't come back stinky.
Speaker 2: I've seen some got where they come back and they smell, So.
Speaker 1: I need to see that curly one again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this, this one's pretty unique. And I actually got
Speaker 2: like five out of the batch that we're curly, which
Speaker 2: you don't really find that often.
Speaker 1: Then, how much time are you spending? Like, how are
Speaker 1: you when are you doing your sewing? That is wild man?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's typically a winter activity, you know, where
Speaker 2: the day light hours are shorter and our heart our
Speaker 2: food harvest seasons over. So after I get my deer,
Speaker 2: you know, in the fall, I start sewing and hunting
Speaker 2: because you're trying to replenish your materials for next, you know,
Speaker 2: the next sewing season. But I hunt, you know, to
Speaker 2: preserve you know, our traditional foods security and also to
Speaker 2: be able to continue to practice my culture and pass
Speaker 2: that down.
Speaker 3: How do you go about hunting these?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's your strategy.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this, so I was thinking about
Speaker 2: showing you this, but it looks so funny because I
Speaker 2: went insided in my my gun a couple of days ago.
Speaker 2: I was practicing my boat stance for hunting sarter and
Speaker 2: shooting at the gong to make sure I would be
Speaker 2: able to get one. So it's a lot easier if
Speaker 2: you have a driver. The driver has to be eligible
Speaker 2: to hunt.
Speaker 1: They do so quantum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my dad and I usually go together, but
Speaker 2: I have gone alone. It's definitely a lot harder. So
Speaker 2: when you get one, you're like woo, you know, like
Speaker 2: I did good. But so you typically shoot from the boat.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you can get off on a rock, but it's
Speaker 2: really not common because they're smart and they adapt. So
Speaker 2: sea otters that have been hunted before they know what's
Speaker 2: going on and they get out of there real fast.
Speaker 2: So if you're cruising by, you know, if you're going
Speaker 2: sport fishing or just cruising on step on your boat,
Speaker 2: they'll just look. But if you slow down, they know,
Speaker 2: especially the one you know, the ones that have been
Speaker 2: hunted before. You can tell when one hasn't.
Speaker 1: We hunt an animal? Uh? You probably for prong horn
Speaker 1: or antelope? Right, And it's funny, man, you could like
Speaker 1: cars could drive by a sixty miles an hour all day.
Speaker 1: Someone just slowed down there. They know what's up.
Speaker 2: It's totally different. Yeah, my dad's like, we need to
Speaker 2: get a recording of a boat going you know on
Speaker 2: step and play it as you're idling up. But okay,
Speaker 2: so you I was shooting with up until Christmas. My
Speaker 2: dad got me an ar for Christmas, but until then
Speaker 2: I had a pre sixty four twenty two hornet is
Speaker 2: re chambered to a two twenty two. It's real heavy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: has like a one and a half pound trigger pull.
Speaker 2: So you know you think about shooting and it's going
Speaker 2: to shoot because.
Speaker 1: You got it. You're shutting off the rail of the boat,
Speaker 1: which is not stable.
Speaker 2: Well no, not the rail, yeah, just off hand.
Speaker 1: Oh so you're in the boat off hand, Yeah, because.
Speaker 2: You don't want to rest on the boat because the
Speaker 2: boat's moving. So the stance is that.
Speaker 1: See how that's that's good. No, I mean I'm not
Speaker 1: going to put put it to use, but I would
Speaker 1: have pictured like shooting off a boat. I would have
Speaker 1: pictured you would use the rail and somehow like touch
Speaker 1: the trigger at that's not what you're doing, well.
Speaker 2: Not off a rest, but you do time it so
Speaker 2: your driver or you if you're driving, you want to
Speaker 2: go around the seatters, so where you're lined up to
Speaker 2: go with the chop, not against it. So you want
Speaker 2: to kind of make sure you know where the CHOP's
Speaker 2: going and get on that side. And then you're going
Speaker 2: with the chops with less less bouncy, and then you
Speaker 2: stand up and you bend your knees. Stand okay, this
Speaker 2: bench just kind of so you stand up and you
Speaker 2: bend your knees and you kind of get on your
Speaker 2: tippy toes, and then you're going to aim, you know, offhand.
Speaker 2: So when yeah, you can't see me, but then when
Speaker 2: you're going with the chop and they're moving and your
Speaker 2: moverybody's moving, yeah, they're moving, well, they're trying to get away,
Speaker 2: and they're moving in the swell you're going with the
Speaker 2: chop and idling, and so you want to be able
Speaker 2: to like use your tippy toes and your knees to
Speaker 2: balance you so you're kind of like right on them.
Speaker 2: And then it's when you're cross here, cross their head that's.
Speaker 1: When you want to shoot. What distance are you normally
Speaker 1: getting to them?
Speaker 2: You want to get as close as possible, but give
Speaker 2: maybe fifty yards.
Speaker 3: So getting a deer to you is probably a cake walk.
Speaker 1: The shot.
Speaker 3: The shot, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean compared to this, if they're honestly hard to
Speaker 2: get they are. Some days you you might get nine
Speaker 2: and then some days you might get one. It just
Speaker 2: depends on especially if you're out of practice, you know,
Speaker 2: if you haven't shot while we'll see.
Speaker 1: What you're saying is another thing I hadn't thought, just
Speaker 1: like I would have thought, you shoot off the rail. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I didn't know that. But the other thing you're
Speaker 1: saying that I hadn't thought about is you picture that
Speaker 1: that that thing's riding a wave and you're riding a
Speaker 1: different wave or different sequencing.
Speaker 2: And you're moving and there they might be moving this way,
Speaker 2: but they might be in a pod like you mentioned.
Speaker 2: Usually it's pods of over one hundred. You know, you
Speaker 2: might shoot a single, but you're you're also looking because
Speaker 2: we don't want to shoot any that have pups, so
Speaker 2: and we shoot them in the head make sure they
Speaker 2: don't suffer. So you're looking and you're going, okay, that's
Speaker 2: a double, there's a single. Then you're selecting them where
Speaker 2: I am. I don't shoot any with pups.
Speaker 1: And they're buoyant, like you hit them. You don't got
Speaker 1: a hustle over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they they do float. And my dad got
Speaker 2: me an ar for Christmas, so it's a it has
Speaker 2: a bull barrel. It's heavy and what kind of r
Speaker 2: it's a rock river, it's got a heavy barrel. It's
Speaker 2: got a bull barrel, Sarah.
Speaker 1: Because the salt water. No, it's just a rusty mask.
Speaker 2: No, I mean it's new. But yeah, so because sometimes
Speaker 2: you can get a second shot before they dive. Once
Speaker 2: they start diving, they're getting out of there and they're
Speaker 2: harder to get. So when you're going up to them
Speaker 2: and they kind of go, is where you shoot and
Speaker 2: you could get another shot off if you miss.
Speaker 1: So you wait that little moment when they check out
Speaker 1: what's up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like whoo. And then when they go down,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, now we've got to go try to
Speaker 2: get them, go after them. So then you're you're playing
Speaker 2: the game of where's it swimming? Which way is it going?
Speaker 2: How far is it going? How long can it hold
Speaker 2: its breadth?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh, So you're trying to keep up with it. So
Speaker 3: when it pops up, you're.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shooting. So you kind of want to get them
Speaker 2: right when you get there. Yeah, So you gotta be
Speaker 2: ready with the chop, ready, ready to aim, in your stance.
Speaker 1: Ready to go and do you So when you get one,
Speaker 1: you go over and hauled up in the boat and
Speaker 1: you skin on the boat or do you take them
Speaker 1: all home.
Speaker 2: It depends when it's best to skin them on the
Speaker 2: boat just easier. But you want to skin them right
Speaker 2: away because of their fur density. Even when it's cold out,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty degrees out, they will hold their body
Speaker 2: heat so well that they'll get a green belly within
Speaker 2: the night. Like if you were to leave them the
Speaker 2: next day, they'll get spoiled. Yeah, so you want to
Speaker 2: skin them right away. And then I actually put them
Speaker 2: in the freezer and then wait till I get the
Speaker 2: lot where I can get the tanning break, you know
Speaker 2: cost break, and I'll flash like thirty at a time,
Speaker 2: or I'm sorry, thirty in a day. So I might
Speaker 2: flesh sixty in a weekend. But I use a pressure
Speaker 2: washer to flesh them. It has a I know you
Speaker 2: say to her against that, but.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, let me explain myself. I see you
Speaker 1: have the perfect setup because like I've never done it
Speaker 1: by you know, it's like a debate in the fur
Speaker 1: handling thing, the pressure washer thing. And so a buddy
Speaker 1: mine that puts up hundreds of beavers every year. I
Speaker 1: called him and he brought up two details I hadn't
Speaker 1: considered before, I said, I text him whatever the hell was?
Speaker 1: I was like, what's up with the do you do
Speaker 1: the pressure washer deal? And he raised two very good points.
Speaker 1: He lives in northern Minnesota, so it's like oftentimes sub
Speaker 1: zero okay, so you know you have a frozen mass.
Speaker 1: And he also says, I don't like some quote like
Speaker 1: I don't like blasting half of a beaver all over
Speaker 1: my yard where you can go down to the.
Speaker 2: Tideline, right like right down here, you.
Speaker 1: Can go down to the tideline and just like we
Speaker 1: have to just blast into the tideline and everything just
Speaker 1: comes up and eats it and it washes out, and
Speaker 1: it's like you don't have a like you're cleanup is
Speaker 1: just you know, you don't have all that clean up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, and I've seen you do it. It's a
Speaker 1: clean job. Yeah, it's I mean like I mean the
Speaker 1: finished product is, oh for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I don't I'm not too aggressive because you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to blast holes in in this.
Speaker 1: But have you ever done one with a draw knife?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Did your dad grew up doing them with a draw knife?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Or he no, we skin him real close, so
Speaker 2: you wouldn't have to. Yeah, if you're doing if you're
Speaker 2: trying to do this and recoup costs, you want to
Speaker 2: be as efficient as possible, and that is the most
Speaker 2: efficient way, because you're already putting so much time into
Speaker 2: like converting these discellable items that it just doesn't make
Speaker 2: sense to flesh, you know, over a hundred of them
Speaker 2: by hand. My dad says that the pressure washer seems
Speaker 2: like it works best for like heavier hides like seat
Speaker 2: or seal, maybe bear, but he hasn't used it on
Speaker 2: beaver pelts. He said, it's just as fast to do
Speaker 2: a beaver by hand, then it would be got to
Speaker 2: do it with a pressure washer, but we use an
Speaker 2: oscillating nozzle and then have a I had a piece
Speaker 2: of aluminum which worked great, but it blew into the
Speaker 2: water when I was doing it or so I lost it.
Speaker 2: So now I use plywood. Until like as big as
Speaker 2: a sheet of plywood, but it blew away, crushed me.
Speaker 1: I gotta take you out to my drunk yard. I
Speaker 1: gotta take you out to my drunk yard, which is
Speaker 1: about ten feet that way. It's not that big, but
Speaker 1: I got a hun here.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm like still like real hurt about my aluminum.
Speaker 1: Being I don't have a sheet, but I got a
Speaker 1: hunk of aluminum. It's probably do any good.
Speaker 2: So I rest the plywood now on a like a
Speaker 2: saw horse, you know, a construction saw horse, and I
Speaker 2: use the woodworking clamps then you know a clamp it's
Speaker 2: like halfway down, you know, and this will hangover and
Speaker 2: then you could just start and make a line and
Speaker 2: blast all that off, turn it around and you can
Speaker 2: blast the pelt like this size flesh it in about
Speaker 2: four minutes and then the bigger ones like this will
Speaker 2: take maybe twice that long. Becau they're a little thicker,
Speaker 2: they're actually harder to flesh.
Speaker 3: So but still fleshing that thing in eight minutes is yeah, dude, yeah,
Speaker 3: drawn knife. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know it's been really nice and like makes
Speaker 2: me feel good is people really want to help. And
Speaker 2: so there's a guy in Craig who own he like
Speaker 2: runs his seafood like they buy all the fish from
Speaker 2: the trollers and they have I guess like a seafood
Speaker 2: processing business. Yeah, so he donates salt to me, So
Speaker 2: like five hundred pounds of salt a winter he'll give
Speaker 2: me like a big pallet of salt. He's like, I'm
Speaker 2: supporting the cause. And people want to buy me ammo
Speaker 2: or because they want to get shellfish and they know
Speaker 2: that seattle are wiping them out and they want to
Speaker 2: help in any way they can. So I've had people
Speaker 2: bring me coffee when I'm out there fleshing in the
Speaker 2: freezing play and people will come up with like a
Speaker 2: hot coffee because they know I'm out there. They can
Speaker 2: see this spray on my beach, and I'm like, thank
Speaker 2: you so much. You know, it's like hailing and horrible,
Speaker 2: but it's all really worth it.
Speaker 1: And now, what are some of the things you make?
Speaker 3: Liked?
Speaker 1: Do you wholesale? Do you sell it all yourself? Do you?
Speaker 1: How do you work?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So you can't. I think another part of the
Speaker 2: marine mammal protection next is you can't like commercially sell items.
Speaker 2: So it's just like handicraft and small scale. But I
Speaker 2: make I actually hand sewed everything until this year. I
Speaker 2: got a first sewing machine and.
Speaker 1: I you got a backup something you said, I on
Speaker 1: our stand. You can't commercially sell like.
Speaker 2: So you mean like mass produced.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you couldn't go to like you couldn't go
Speaker 1: to like what's what's the store that's open nowadays? It's
Speaker 1: not closed. I was gonna say, like Sears, But.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I have said that something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm thinking like fancy Maze, fancy. You can't go
Speaker 1: to may SE's and they can't be like we want
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand seatter scarves.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to do that, and we.
Speaker 1: Want a thousand seat scarves. That's that's too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't, it, says mass produce.
Speaker 1: So you could hand but you could make it though,
Speaker 1: like I could buy could I buy ten? Okay, but
Speaker 1: you couldn't.
Speaker 3: You probably couldn't have like a bunch of employees just
Speaker 3: sitting there all day long sewing for you.
Speaker 1: You probably can't send it to like a sow shop overseas.
Speaker 2: Maybe no, you definitely can't send it overseas. You cannot
Speaker 2: send out of the country.
Speaker 1: Are you personally sewing everything?
Speaker 2: Yes? And I make my own patterns. So I brought
Speaker 2: this hat. Oh, this is like one of the things
Speaker 2: I make. This is a aviator hat or they call
Speaker 2: it a bomber hat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's called what that's called the perfect hat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one modification I need to tell you about, but oh.
Speaker 2: I need to know. This is moose leather, moose suede,
Speaker 2: and sea otter. And I actually lined the cat portion
Speaker 2: with fleece because.
Speaker 1: Is so warm.
Speaker 2: Huh. Yeah, you will overheat unless you're unless you're in
Speaker 2: like sixty below. So I put a cord lock on
Speaker 2: here because it's kind of pain to tie this when
Speaker 2: you have gloves on or or just in general, and
Speaker 2: then you can wear it with the flaps up and
Speaker 2: just use that cord lock. But so this is one
Speaker 2: one of the items that I make, and I made
Speaker 2: this pattern so it takes like five or six tries
Speaker 2: to make it fit ice.
Speaker 1: But you want to do you have people send their
Speaker 1: head sides with when they want to.
Speaker 2: Do custom Yeah, I can do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now that people ask why I don't wear a helmet
Speaker 1: on my snow meal because I'm too busy wearing one
Speaker 1: of these you know what that's I mean not the style.
Speaker 2: And it covers your ears. It actually makes good your protection.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I can't hear.
Speaker 1: A thing about ice fishing. My kids are yelling me
Speaker 1: out here.
Speaker 2: Anything well that looks good. You have to trade in
Speaker 2: trade in whatever hat you're wearing for sea otter.
Speaker 1: But that's gonna be.
Speaker 2: H.
Speaker 1: What's sad is put my thing back on. What to
Speaker 1: be sad is giving up on the you know, my
Speaker 1: own my own beaver cat. But here's the deal. See
Speaker 1: you guys, you live in the cloud. You live in
Speaker 1: the Cloudy's place on the planet right down. I had
Speaker 1: one made with muskrat instead of having this. It's got
Speaker 1: a little leather bill, which is a lifesaver out ice
Speaker 1: fishing and the bright ass sun for sure. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: need like a little something and that.
Speaker 2: Really, I've seen people wear that over their hat.
Speaker 1: Yep. That's my buddy Travis. He had one and I
Speaker 1: was telling him about that and he says he pulls
Speaker 1: it on over his baseball.
Speaker 3: You.
Speaker 2: Yep, it'd be nice to have.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful hat.
Speaker 2: Well I'm going to try that then and call it
Speaker 2: the Steve Ranella.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I don't know, I don't know Steve Reno. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little leather bill, it's beautiful. Can we see the scarf?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of course you don't mind saying it. So
Speaker 1: what do you got it? What do you get for that?
Speaker 1: What do what do you sell that hat for someone
Speaker 1: wants someone on my website.
Speaker 2: Those are seven hundred dollars. This is a double sided
Speaker 2: seatter scarf. It has a magnet to hold it in
Speaker 2: place because one of my friends bought one for his
Speaker 2: wife and she was hiking and lost it and so
Speaker 2: she was like in tears. So I made a magnetic
Speaker 2: closure so wouldn't fall off.
Speaker 1: Some other person got hike down that trail. Can I
Speaker 1: tell you a funny story about So I had a
Speaker 1: muskrat hat, and uh, there's used to be the spot
Speaker 1: I would trap every year this marsh. And there's like
Speaker 1: the spot where I would pull over and trap muskrats
Speaker 1: in his marsh. And I lost my muskrat hat in
Speaker 1: the winter trapping and didn't know where I lost it.
Speaker 1: And then me and this in the spring, meet this
Speaker 1: dude named barefoot or driving up to this place called
Speaker 1: Cisco buy you, and I see what I think is
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding you. I see a road kill at
Speaker 1: the marsh. I see a road killed muskrat in the bank.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god. So I go to grab
Speaker 1: the road to kill moskrat. It's my hat, melt, it's
Speaker 1: my hat melting out of the snow bank like a
Speaker 1: snowplowd truck, a snowplowd truck and pushed it up into
Speaker 1: the bank on the side of the road. Was likes
Speaker 1: my hat. Then that lost again, that's gone.
Speaker 2: I feel like it will find its way back to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a while a while, but that was
Speaker 1: funny when you said someone was out hiking. But man,
Speaker 1: this is like my wife.
Speaker 2: Actually brought that. Always give stuff to give to your.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she'll actually like this, like I'll get stuff. Me
Speaker 1: and Seth found a weird rock and I had an
Speaker 1: ear ring bade out of that weird rock and she said,
Speaker 1: she feels it. It looks like something from Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings. This no, she's gonna like that's no, No,
Speaker 1: that's her style. And I had her a big red
Speaker 1: fox scarf made. But it really says hello before you do,
Speaker 1: because it's like huge, but that's like subtle. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: actually beautiful.
Speaker 2: I have other scarves. They're shorter and you can actually
Speaker 2: put a scarf in it, so they're interchangeable, so you
Speaker 2: can wear it as a headband and then when you
Speaker 2: go inside wear it as a scarf and you can
Speaker 2: swap out the insert to match any outfit. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I can make like hats, blankets, moccasins, scarves, purses, I
Speaker 2: make sealskin purses and wallets, and what's.
Speaker 1: A seal skin? What do you gotta get for a
Speaker 1: seal skin purse?
Speaker 2: I sell them for six hundred. I haven't sold a
Speaker 2: wallet yet. I actually make Yeah.
Speaker 1: I make Dude, this stuff is so cool, man.
Speaker 2: I make these and then I test them to make
Speaker 2: sure that they're the best quality before posting it for sale.
Speaker 1: So so you put a little money there, go buy
Speaker 1: something this is make sure it works good. So that's
Speaker 1: a Harbor seal wallet.
Speaker 2: So I want to make sure they're quality because they're
Speaker 2: an investment, so so I'm testing it out.
Speaker 1: Gorgeous. Do you have good lack? I mean, are you
Speaker 1: able to sell as much as you can make?
Speaker 2: So far I have been able to recoup my costs.
Speaker 2: I don't think you'll know.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, do you have are you able to
Speaker 1: like are you able to find a market? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Or do you have are you backlog?
Speaker 1: Do you have a lot of fur that you haven't
Speaker 1: been able to get sales on?
Speaker 2: I think what limits me is my time because I
Speaker 2: work full time, you know, at a regular job. And
Speaker 2: then this is my what my dad calls it, my hobby,
Speaker 2: which is becoming you know a little side.
Speaker 1: So you can sell. You can sell it as fast
Speaker 1: as you can make it. The bottleneck is making it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's not a lot of fur sewers. That's incredible,
Speaker 2: you know who work with sea Otter who are selling items,
Speaker 2: So I think they're harder to find.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: Dude, you know what this here, you know what for
Speaker 1: single people out there, get single guys out there. You
Speaker 1: get one of these and you give it to the lady.
Speaker 1: She likes it, then you know, you gotta keep her.
Speaker 1: She don't, you know, want nothing to do with her. Man.
Speaker 1: That's how That's how I would use this. I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: do you think about something like that? And she's like
Speaker 1: I'd be like, that is get out of my house.
Speaker 1: Get out of my house.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: There's a word the cling. The Lingott word for that
Speaker 2: is joke. It means go away. I remember going out
Speaker 2: with my friends, you know in college, guys would hit
Speaker 2: off and we'd be like, oh, joke because they wouldn't
Speaker 2: know what that meant.
Speaker 1: But we did. Let me see the other thing.
Speaker 2: Oh this is my test purse seal skin.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. So you're really like you're good though,
Speaker 1: Like you're really talent. I mean, is you really like something?
Speaker 3: You just go like it like something you like? You
Speaker 3: buy that purse out of store.
Speaker 1: Thank you, very well done. Got a great sense of style.
Speaker 1: Now I got I'm gonna complim that sandwich you. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're gonna give you an insult. Okay, I don't think
Speaker 1: the strap is like I'm underwhelmed by the strap. How
Speaker 1: could you put that strap on this bag?
Speaker 2: Let me show you that.
Speaker 1: Bag something different.
Speaker 2: Okay, it does.
Speaker 1: That bag deserves a better strap.
Speaker 2: Does deserve a better strap. But this is a prototype.
Speaker 2: So it's like you can do an over the shoulder,
Speaker 2: you can do a cross body or all those like
Speaker 2: what my daughter call it a fanny pack. It is
Speaker 2: a sling bag. I called it a fanny packs. I'm
Speaker 2: a nineties kid. You can wear it as a fanny
Speaker 2: pack or like you know how the sling bags everyone's
Speaker 2: wearing them like this.
Speaker 1: That's my daughter, I called her Bandolier's.
Speaker 2: I want it to be versatile and.
Speaker 1: Like that's a great. Yeah, that's her style. It's a
Speaker 1: little little Rother style.
Speaker 2: Maybe needs I don't know, something different.
Speaker 1: I'm just underwhelmed by it. But the because the bag
Speaker 1: is so cool.
Speaker 2: Okay, well my hat to need a bill.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, that's a specialty item. That's a one
Speaker 1: off specialty item. That's the win. You have the winning design.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you, I'm okay, here's I want to
Speaker 1: I want my my feedback to be I want to
Speaker 1: make you understand my feedback. The bill is a one
Speaker 1: off especially, no one want to say I want that.
Speaker 1: I understanding understand. Your bag is so cool. I feel
Speaker 1: like the when that that just its like he needs
Speaker 1: a strap. This is cool as the bag, that's all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because you have a really you have a
Speaker 1: cool like uh yeah, it's just got like a style.
Speaker 1: I'll put it this way because I'm having a hard time.
Speaker 1: I'm not being very articulate. I have found like when
Speaker 1: you look at fur sewing today, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: fur sewing today that's it's just real gaudy, like it's
Speaker 1: it's not sleek, you know what I mean. It's not
Speaker 1: like it's like it's it's it's overstated. There's a las
Speaker 1: stuff that's really overstated bougie. Yeah, like just huge, you know,
Speaker 1: like huge, big whatever. But your stuff is it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's more subtle. It's kind of more elegant,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? Than than things that
Speaker 1: are than things that are just you know, you picture
Speaker 1: like a red fox vest, right, a big red red
Speaker 1: fox vest. It's just from across the parking lot. You'd
Speaker 1: be like, there's a lady with a red fox vest,
Speaker 1: for sure. But with this stuff, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you could be sitting there ten minutes and saying, be like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, is that seal? Yeah? Right, yeah, it has
Speaker 1: that feeling to it like it's it's subtle.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I try and make them functional. I want
Speaker 2: people to wear these. I don't want these to be
Speaker 2: on display. I want this is moose. It's a little heavier,
Speaker 2: you know than deer leather, but it's not so stiff
Speaker 2: that it's gonna be uncomfortable to wear. And I want
Speaker 2: you to be able to like put this in your
Speaker 2: punting bag, you know, and pull it out and like
Speaker 2: shake and put it on and it not be bulky,
Speaker 2: and you can fold this up and this can get
Speaker 2: soaking wet and still keep your head warm, and then
Speaker 2: you just dry it and shake it and it fluffs
Speaker 2: right back up. So I try to think about stuff
Speaker 2: like that when making items, because people are gonna invest
Speaker 2: in you and your work and you know, believe in
Speaker 2: me and buy something online without having felt it, Like
Speaker 2: you guys know what it feels like now and you
Speaker 2: can see the fur is tremendous. But a lot of
Speaker 2: people buy things without knowing what seat ter furs like
Speaker 2: and then they get it and they're like, whoa, because
Speaker 2: it is incredible and incredibly warm.
Speaker 1: For the for the listeners, I'll share with you that
Speaker 1: prior to when we when we started recording how there
Speaker 1: was showing my two younger kids her seatter stuff, and
Speaker 1: my daughter observed, all of our friends right now are
Speaker 1: out in our boat's fishing, and my daughter observed that
Speaker 1: they shouldn't have gone out on the boats so that
Speaker 1: they could have heard about this.
Speaker 2: I know, And I got an order for a sea
Speaker 2: otter or Teddy bear and a hat, and I'm super
Speaker 2: excited to make your kids some things. They deserve it.
Speaker 5: Kids are sacred and yells tell everyone, tell everyone what
Speaker 5: you were telling my kids about the importance of kids.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean kids are sacred, you know. They
Speaker 2: I just feel like they they deserve so much and
Speaker 2: so much more recognition than they get oftentimes. And we
Speaker 2: believe that they're sacred. They're they're the ones who are
Speaker 2: gonna learn all of this knowledge that we have that
Speaker 2: we carry and pass it down to the next generation.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just that that they are really special and they
Speaker 2: have a special place, and just having them present when
Speaker 2: you're doing things, like when I said, like, it really
Speaker 2: hurts when I know that it's illegal for me to
Speaker 2: teach them how to work with some of our traditional
Speaker 2: foods and materials, because it shouldn't be that way. And
Speaker 2: they're just little sacred beings and they deserve to learn
Speaker 2: and be there and not have those limitations on them
Speaker 2: when it comes to you know, them learning and practicing
Speaker 2: their culture. And they're really the the vehicles, you know,
Speaker 2: they're going to be the ones who pass that on.
Speaker 2: So as much as I can invest in youth, you know,
Speaker 2: my niece and nephew, but not just them, any in
Speaker 2: all youth, so they know that they are valued, they
Speaker 2: have a purpose. It's really important to know that you
Speaker 2: have a purpose in life, and like my culture is
Speaker 2: a big part of you know, my purpose. And then
Speaker 2: you know that you're important and and you have a
Speaker 2: responsibility to you know, carry that on. It kind of
Speaker 2: helps give you some direction too in your life.
Speaker 3: And and and like.
Speaker 2: You learn what you know that your cultural values are
Speaker 2: through practicing your culture and like being around elders or
Speaker 2: you know, your aunties and uncles. And it's not something
Speaker 2: where someone would blatantly say, like we value respect or
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. You just learn it by
Speaker 2: being a part of the process, not wasting fish, only
Speaker 2: taking what you're going to use, using all parts of it,
Speaker 2: you know, smoking the heads of a fish, the collars,
Speaker 2: the backbones, really minimizing waste. That's just all like learning
Speaker 2: your values by practicing, and that's really important. And kids
Speaker 2: do that without knowing you know what's happening, and it's
Speaker 2: really special to watch and and see and watch them
Speaker 2: like live their purpose. Be proud of that.
Speaker 1: That's great advice. I practice it half the time, and
Speaker 1: half the time I'm freaking out on them because like
Speaker 1: last night I come in and there's granola bar crumbs
Speaker 1: my beds somehow wet, like the hell's going to do.
Speaker 1: I forget, I forget all the stuff you just said.
Speaker 1: Then I wake up in the morning, I recommit myself
Speaker 1: to being a good dad, I think, and.
Speaker 2: There there you have the balance, right, It's all about balance.
Speaker 2: So you're not going to be one hundred percent every
Speaker 2: time every day. But you know, if you live by
Speaker 2: your values and you do what you can to align
Speaker 2: yourself and practice those you know, that's all you can
Speaker 2: really do. And you're not going to be one hundred
Speaker 2: percent every day.
Speaker 1: So that's okay.
Speaker 2: Your kids are great. You know. I got to spend
Speaker 2: a little time with them and I wanted them to
Speaker 2: sit next to me during this podcast. I think they're
Speaker 2: so great.
Speaker 1: So oh, thank you, Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, goodness,
Speaker 1: Heather Duville. And I know on Instagram you're ak moosey
Speaker 1: so ak m o O s I E. And your
Speaker 1: fur and your product.
Speaker 2: Page is what Coastal Fur and leather.
Speaker 1: Man. I think you're gonna I have a feeling you're
Speaker 1: going to get a few people checking out the stuff
Speaker 1: because it's just thank you so and thanks for bringing
Speaker 1: some of your your traditional hooks and things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate your Yeah, you being able to share
Speaker 2: my culture with you, and you're sharing your stories with me,
Speaker 2: and I would love to be able to have you
Speaker 2: guys join us in Fish with the Nah one day,
Speaker 2: so you have an invite and welcome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for sharing all your all your knowledge. Even
Speaker 1: just before we recorded, you told me a lot of
Speaker 1: things about the fish and stuff that I hadn't known.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate all your everything you've picked up over
Speaker 1: your life and your family and and uh, that's great.
Speaker 1: Been great to visit with you. Thank you, And you're
Speaker 1: going to take that You're going to do the gig
Speaker 1: as the correspondent.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I can't wait. I better be doing something though.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Better in the winter, I'll be sewing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll warn you ahead of time. We'll find out
Speaker 1: what a good time is.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Does that work? So do we talk about talk.
Speaker 1: About that later?
Speaker 3: All? Right?
Speaker 1: About later that you met Krin? Mm hmm, Cren will
Speaker 1: deal with that, sweet man. What's this one called sea monster?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, you had old faithful? What is his name?
Speaker 1: The veterans? All right, thanks Cronin Heather. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: That got me thirty out six kicks like a Muller's
Speaker 4: like a son of a bitch.
Speaker 1: Budd it's butt a cup of deer on the wall
Speaker 1: that had a booty brown up.
Speaker 4: It ain't nothing fancy, just a savage wanting Walmart specially
Speaker 4: had a guy from a friend who was getting divorced
Speaker 4: and neat cash about his gune.
Speaker 1: And there's no red force.
Speaker 4: Sitting in my drive.
Speaker 3: You just keep on racking up the miuse. It used
Speaker 3: to be my day.
Speaker 4: Now he's gone. It's got spocking knife and the ashtreek
Speaker 4: s been there ever since the day I got the
Speaker 4: keys attruck from my mom.
Speaker 1: I'm a stuff.
Speaker 6: Thank god's got some kind of story tail nerfe be
Speaker 6: a bunch of men. Most of it wouldn't mean much anybody.
Speaker 5: It on mean word means.
Speaker 4: There's a glass man of traps sitting on my desk
Speaker 4: yard next just sumpliers. My uncle Jo getting to my
Speaker 4: kids one day that made him think of his own
Speaker 4: pats and the stuff hard of one one not from
Speaker 4: mile while the next day we made our first born child.
Speaker 4: We still laugh about it every now and then.
Speaker 6: Host every Thank God, it's got something kind of story.
Speaker 4: Tale and they're felled with a bunch man.
Speaker 1: Most of it.
Speaker 6: It wouldn't mean us Anybody.
Speaker 3: Get all mean word to me.
Speaker 1: I could say, I could sell lead out getting lest cash.
Speaker 6: It wouldn't be long now. We want it all back,
Speaker 6: most of everything God's got some guy's.
Speaker 4: Story till it's billed with bunch men.
Speaker 6: Most of it wouldn't mean much anybody.
Speaker 4: It all means word means, it all means word me