Ep. 314: Skip the Flip

I'll tell you listen. There are some names that the world's gonna run out of, Yes and Bill, the world will will there will be like the world will run out of bills before people get back in the name of their kids Bill, Like after Harry Potter came out, everybody named their kid Henry. They wanted to name him Harry, but they thought they knew that people know that it was because they liked those books, so they named him Henry. Huge proliferation to Henry's. I didn't know that well they were.

We almost ran out of Henry's and not. Now you can't throw a rock without hitting the Henry Under all ten years older Under, I feel like we're not even runn out of bills. What about Frank? Frank seems to be dying to Okay, Yeah, my dad was frank. We almost named our daughter Frankie, so I was gonna name her frank after her paternal grandfather, and then Rose, yeah,

and Rose after her paternal grandmother and great grandmother. So I was gonna name her Frankie Rose, and then found out that there's some musician named Frankie Rose and just change it to Rosemary because that's my mom's name. But yeah, we'll probably run out of Frank's, but they'll Frankie's. What about George. I think we'll get very low on George's. Yeah, but do you think there's gonna be revival. It's hard

to know what's going to be revival. No one saw it coming that everyone was going to name their kid Henry. They named their kids Henry because I think they thought that they'd be smart. I like the name Henry, but I had no clue. There's like a majority of kids now are named him. I know nobody. I don't know what it was a city. You go to a city, you can't throw a rock at a playground without hitting Henry, and you think it's for Harry Potter. Do you think

that's like my theory? I think it's a sound theory, but it's just I think they were, like, I really want to name him Harry, but then everybody's gonna know I like those kids books. So they named him Henry cause that seemed because it reminded them. I thought you were pulling legitimate research into that, But that's just your feelings. There's certain theories I'm into that are hard to substantiate.

Like my brother Danny believes that he can't untangle in his head that Bill Clinton became president and all kids started wearing bike helmets, Like he feels that there's like he feels that something he doesn't he hasn't untangled it yet, but he feels that there was a somehow a link mhm between the Clinton presidency and for how many hundreds of years kids didn't have bike helmets and then they all got a bike helmet when Bill Clinton became president.

That's his theory. So I don't know. I don't share the theory. I'm saying, like some theories are hard to like prove and disprove. They all started playing saxophone in their boxers too. Now, in terms of names, it would be interesting to know, like, just to tie this all together, did Monica drop off in prevalence following the Clinton presidency. I could see that happening very probable. I don't know, because that was during that Friend show where the peak

friends popularity. Like right now, I wouldn't be surprised. And if this podcast had a different if we had a different sort of focus, we could dig into this stuff a little bit more. I wouldn't be surprised if Jeffrey, if there were some people who were going to go with Jeffrey, had a change of heart. I'm not falling the fellow named Jeffrey Epstein I'm following was hung to death in his jail cell. No, I didn't say, no,

that's right. If I put it like hung to death, like someone did it, I feel like I think there's a chance that's true. Which, since we're off topic, do you want to know the leading do you want to know the leading conspiracy theory? Someone explained I didn't understand, like what they're leading. You want to the lead conspiracy theory about Epstein? This might be now, but like at a time, this was the one has explained to me by someone who traffics heavily and conspiracy theories. It was

that Epstein was a massad agent. That's good man, that's old news man. Listen, Tode, I didn't if I made it up, I would have said I made it up. I'm saying this is so you know this, Sean. You follow this kind of stuff. Oh you're talking about that rabbit hole for like two years. Um, Shawn's here, Sean. We were's here to talk about ducks. But somehow and he's not a big and he's not a big Jeffrey Epstein expert o. Can you tell us the theory? Sean? Yeah, I know the link or the thing that they say

is that I'll tell you this. No, you did not tell me this. Mm hmm. Is that Gallaine Maxwell, the lady that was just on trial. Yeah, as it goes, her dad was a massad. That's what they say. It starts to make some gravy m Yeah, but here you're not filling it in. Let me just fill it in. This is we're so far off. This is not what this show is about, ladies and gentlemen. It's just not

what it's about. In fact, Stue Miller from Coon Creek Outdoors is here and he's supposed to be flipping a bobcat hide right now, which he's gonna explain in one second, So bear with us. We're gonna get into appropriate subject matter.

Epstein was a massad agent. How he served the Massad was he would get prominent academics, politicians, financial individuals into compromising situations, film them, film them whatever he did, and then later, when Israel needed them to do or not do something, okay, they would say, oh, and by the way, we happen to have a very interesting video. You might

not like to be out. And as the conspiracy theory goes, that was why Jeffrey Epstein had to be silenced on that fateful night in his jail cell while the guards slept in the security camera malfunctioned. M plausible mm hmm. Anyway, Phil looks very titillated. You can tell Phil like really want us to get into it, but he's also uncomfortable. How off subject matter this is to introduce yourself, Oh, Brodie, real quick, Brodies here Chester the die Master, which Chester

is a very dying name. It's just been hanging on for like a hundred years. I feel like, yeah, I feel like that might be why I like you so much, because you're the only Chester I've ever known. The pets are keeping it alive though like dogs. Yeah, Rick Huttons here, Ses here, we're gonna talk about sets up coming wedding a little bit. I'm here, high folks. Yeah, we're also joined.

He's remote, but I still feel his presidents. Sean Weavers here and he's gonna hit us with the latest installment of Shawn's Duck Report, which is one of my favorite things we do. What's up, Sean, what's going on with you? Well? I just finally got off the road after two straight months of film and Duck lawre are you duck hut and show Um I'm actually the reason I'm doing this remote is I got a little sick, got a little

ran down from being on the road that long. The utility company actually called while I was gone and they wanted to check if my water meter was broke because I hadn't used any water in my place for two months, so he's been like dead or Yeah. It was kind of a nice wellness check. Knowing the utility companies got me coming, like, dude, at least someone knows what I've been gone. Also, Duck Lore, the first episode is coming out February, and that's a Texas teel hunt with me

and Jean Paul and I like it. It's it's pretty cool. Walk us through a couple more episodes that are gonna be coming up. Yeah, so first few episodes are going to be Texas Teal, then Callahan and Me in North Dakota, Janna in Nebraska, and yourself in Michigan. So jumping kind of all over the Midwest. Ads. Yep, learn a lot about ducks with a guy that knows a lot about duck Seawan Weaver. Uh but okay, now, stew introduce yourself alright. So I'm Stu Miller. I uh run a couple different

YouTube channels. Uh, con Creek Outdoors is the one that that I'm here for um and I'm kind of a trapper more or less. So that's how I came to meet Steve. And uh yeah, I dabble in uh trapping and for handling. So tell her everybody where you're from. I'm from Illinois, Southern Illinois. Oh we get into this for a minute. So this is on point, Phil, don't don't get nervous. I have a problem with I have a real problem with people in southern Illinois who think

they're southern. And I told you to if people ice fish in your state. You are not Southern, Like, I don't care where the Mason Dixon line is. That's the thing. There's a lot of people ice fishing right now because they call this is the perfect time for this. You can't be a Southerner in a state where ice fishing

is occurring. Stu says that he explained to me that there's so much dissatisfy that there's such a cultural divide between the greater Chicago area and then like the agricultural segment of Illinois, and I am I okay to say this. There's such a cultural finance, like just as a huge cultural divide that that it's pushed southern Illinois to the south in mentality rather than be associated with with the

the political corruption and ongoings in Chicago. I'm saying it. Yeah, you get somebody five miles south of Chicago and they're gonna say they're from southern Yeah, they're like by which I mean not Chicago, not Chicago. I fell in love with Steve's videos because I would go, um, I found you in a totally organic way. I would be curious about how to do something with her handling, Like for instance, last year, UM a little over well over uh fourteen months ago. Um, we got onto a couple of red

foxes one morning and got the red foxes. I had a little uh seventeen h mr with me. We got a breeding pair of red foxes, and I was like, I wanted to get him tanned and put up real nice And now they adorned my daughters. Actually they hanged for my daughter's bunk bead thing and she loves him, but and I wanted to like get him tanned for myself. And I used to put up red foxes and sell

them when I was young. But I was just kind of curious about how to do the feet, you know, and all that kind stuff different than how you do for fur handling for fur trade. And I would get typed in like how do you do x Y and Z? And I'd wind up on your thing, or how do you do x Y and Z with a skunk? And I'd wind up on your page. So then I sent you an email and it's been we've been interacting ever since. Oh yeah, every day I asked him a question. No,

it's been it's been fun. So, Um, that's how we met. We're gonna talk about that. Now. Here's what I wanted we had a lot of stuff we gotta cover off on. But I want you to to explain Grab the Bobcat and explain what's been done and what people can listen to you now do like why we did what we did and where we're at with it now. Alright, So yesterday, um, we took a bobcat that was skinned and then Steve you fleshed it and we tubeskin. Tell everybody with tub

skin skin. So basically, um, the way that furs are sold through the fur market is their tube skin. And that's basically where you're gonna make a cut kind of on its back end and you're gonna kind of peel the hide off, very similar to it like taking off a sock. Basically, Yeah, that's you know, and you're gonna peel that that critter down and you're gonna end up

with it. As you say, a tube of it's not gonna be cut open where you know, if you've seen like traditional pictures, you know you see where they split them, split them up the belly across the back and imagine that you're like the the incision being that like when you're gutting a deer, you make that incision all the way up to his chin, and then you've got like an open hide. So then you would lay the hide or the pelt flatways, Um this is it's not gonna

look like a bear rug when you're dumb. No, it's gonna be all all together. And as like you said, a tube skin you cut, just think about like this, cut around and like the only cut you make through the hider around the ankles. Right, Yeah, that's it. So imagine that you cut around the back, cut around the rear ankle, a circle around it on each leg, and then you run a slit up to the anus, and then the whole thing comes off just like that, peel it right off. So that's what I did to that bobcat.

That's a small female bobcat, small female bobcat. Yeah. And then so after it's my favorite my prize possession. My favorite thing I owned used to be my buffalo skull that I found that I wrote a book about. But now it's that we better not screwed up there. So now after you after you fleshed it, then we put on flesh and beam and we used the flesh and knife to flesh all the all the all the membrane and the fat and all the residual fats. So we

got it just down to the skin. And after we did that, we split the ears because you're gonna tan it for yourself, so we wanted to make sure. You know, that's something I never had done before, So we split the ears and then we put it on a board. So different critters are sold different ways and with like a canine. So your fox or coyotes and your bobcats, all those are sold for out so you can see

the the presentation the pelt. Uh. Some of your other critters like muskrats, minks, and coons, they're all sold for in. So do you know why Seth and I were speculating about that the other day? Who decided that has does it ever change? Have you ever heard of changing? Back in the day they sold coons actually flat, you would split them up. The reason that I always been told is, you know, with with a bobcat, say, and a coyote,

you're you're using basically all of that. So you want to be able to visually see that that whole hide. You want you want to see the fur all of it. So whereas like on a coon, you know, we we boredom for in, but you also cut a window and inspection window and the greater will actually grade that. And that's actually kind of the prized part of that hide is what's in that inspection windows. He can get a good general idea of the quality of that hide through

that inspection window. Take a muskrat, for instance. I remember selling muskrats at auction and they would still sort of open. They would bend it up to look inside it, to look at the back. For why is a muskrat not just stretched first side out? I think a lot of it is so they can see the prime nous of the pelt, you know, because you know how a muskrat so muskrats and we'll kind of talk pelt prime nous.

But you know the reason that we trapped critters in the winters, because that's whenever the furs prime, the pelt is prime. And if you ever, it's because it's because you do it between big game hunting and ice fish. You know, it's because there's a month when you might get bored. Now, this goes way way back. This goes why they set regulations in Europe like four hundred years ago to trapping regulations, so where you would actually target

prime critters. And uh so if you ever heard the term a blue pet pelt, Okay, so blue pelt is essentially kind of an unprimed pelt early season pelt or or late So that's point out. I mean literally blue. It's blue like if you ever kill a deer, like an early if you live in a state where you're allowed to, like get rolling in September something, you skin that deer and it's like the leather is blue. It's blue. Yep.

So that's what they call it blue pelt. And what happens is a lot of people are in the assumption that temperature is what makes that for a prime and that's actually false. It's actually based more on daylight hours, which has a correlation to temperature obviously. So you know, as as winter progresses further north you are, you're losing daylight quicker than south, so the pelts will generally prime up quicker. So like the winter, the hell they call

the shortest day of the year winter. So yeah, that's when yany goes out burning log around his house bunch times. People hits all kinds of lavian things. Um when he's doing that. Uh, the shortest day of the year like peak prime nous. Well, not necessarily, no, not well, because there's other factors too. So you know, for instance, um, whenever we're talking with coons, they have a running season, which is you know, kind of right now, a couple of weeks ago and we're talking, you know, kind of

the middle into January where I'm from. So they will actually go from Dan to Dan to DN to rut, no different than like a buck will. But what will happen is going from Dan to Den to DN, they'll start to get a patch and rub fur on their back and it will actually become bald from squeezing into the hole from running around so much from Dan to DN to DN. So you've seen I was here like that. They're rubbed. You've seen it where they actually wear their

hair out squeezing into holes and logs. It will become infected that they will rub it down raw raw meat from going. I mean, they get crazy. It's just no different than a deer and rut. You see, I haven't seen it. I've seen it worn down. I haven't seen it worn down like raw. It'll be scabbed over. And you know that's obviously I'm not prime pelt, you know, if you want to trap, so you know, even though there's a season for him, generally quit trapping. Then you know,

I gotta interrupt you real quick. So I don't want to. I don't want to establish a rivalry between you and Seth. But there's something you need to know about Seth. When Seth was a little boy, he uh would go down to a fur buyer in in Uh flesh and stretch raccoons. In high school. That was my job. Piece work, no hourly, no piece work, peace work, piece work. How would they give you for one not much? Is like three or four bucks? Sound like more than stuff's worth. Now anyway,

I was like, I forget what it was. No, it wasn't. Yeah, it didn't seem well at the time, it seemed like a lot. Oh, I U appeal log home logs for thirty five cents a foot, which at the time it was pretty good. I wouldn't be able to feed one kid. I would be able to feed one of my kids on that. Now it was a good night. Then it was a good good night flash And then oh man, it all depended because we would sometimes we'd like get

behind freeze a bunch of hides. You know, we we guys would guys would bring him in either like you know, like whole animal, or they would bring him in skinned all already. Just I just needed to flash and put them up. But would you go down and skin the whole ones too? Yeah? Oh you would, okay, Yeah, so you get paid more for like one that you had to skin, flash and put up. Yeah. It was like it was like two two or three bucks to skin it, two or three bucks to flesh it and put it

up something like that. Um, but I mean we used to do we should flash from dark to dark some some like start early in the morning, start before it got light out, and quit after the dark. And what might you do in today? You know you remember I don't remember at all more than ten oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I do, like ten or so in an evening after school, m sometimes more. Sometimes it all depends on what people were bringing in going to school all greasy, No I

was after school. Um yeah. So anyways, I don't want you to I don't want you, you and Seth to have like a little thing in an hour you like feel like you're at odds with one another, And I just want you to know you're you're across from across. I feel like I feel I feel like we're brothers. Yeah, you're a crossing. You're sitting across from a former professional. It's a dying trade. So like, yeah, that's very young.

So this isn't that long ago. If I say high school, it's like people look like that, Like, uh, like, you know a lot different back then. Alright, So go on and circle background of the damn Bobcats too. Yeah, you keep getting me dist They go into holes, they rub their hair off. Talking about I was trying to make the claim that like prim nous might be the winter solstice, but you're saying there's other factors that override that, a lot of other variables. Yeah, kyotes, you know, their prime

nous is usually earlier in the season. They'll start to degrade fairly quickly. Um, you know, a lot depends on like his hair, the hair wears out or what, depending on where they're at. If they're in like an open country, you know, where they're not having to like push through a lot of brush and stuff, they're gonna stay you know, prime longer. Where if you're out you know west, where they're pushing through a bunch of sage brush and different things.

Like that that'll slowly wear out that fur. Oh yeah, there's a bunch of different variables. Yeah, they tell about the one that happens the beavers in the spring. So what d what what sort of ends the season on beavers. So beavers will actually start fighting as they come out, depending on if you have ice or not, but they'll start fighting and they'll start biting each other. And so whenever the beavers start, they'll have bite marks on them,

very similar to muskrats to do the same thing. Whenever you start getting beaver with a bunch of bite more and two marks on them, it's time to quit. And that might happen before the season even ends. Yeah, yeah, no difference in like like the ar coon season right now, Um, you're you're gonna get coons that are rubbed during season. They are still in so you've got to make that decision to either release them or quit trapping or you know whatever. So you know, let him growing on a

better pelt. Yeah, and you'll see that, you know, because especially on your boar coons, they'll have a big scar patch, usually right on the back and it'll be from years and years and years. Really, Yeah, it's all you'll notice it will be a darker patch right down the center, and that's all scars. And whenever you're skinning and flesh them, you've got to be kind of careful of it too, because that's not like all scar tissue, and it's all scar tissue. Yeah. On a lot of your older big boards,

you'll see that. And as you as the pelt dries, you'll see that kind of brownish, darker brown hue right down the back. And that's that's from them rubbing year after year after year going into squeezing into dense just constantly. Yep, they just go from densite to denside, didn't. They will run themselves. I mean you'll see them out in the daytime. They'll get real skinny and just just just like a buck and rut, they'll just run themselves stupid covering ground. Okay,

back to the Bobcat. Back to the Bobcat. So we've got the Bobcat and uh so we put them on here. You know what we're talking about his wife for in, for out and all that. Okay, yeah, yeah, well that's what we got distracted on. So we put the Bobcat on a board yesterday. Um, because this Bobcat is going to be we want them fur out um and that's how they're sold, which you're gonna tan it. So it really doesn't matter because on a Bobcat, the buyers want to see they want to see the spots. You know,

that's your prime. You know, on a coyote, it's kind of that back or the belly. Um a coon, it's the back. But on the Bobcat, they really want to see those spots. That's that's where the money is at, the spotted belly, that spotted belly and generally, you know, the clear more predominant spots are you're hired dollar furs. So I've heard guys say that if the belly like, they'll go buy you. How many fingers the belly strip is? Like, if you have a belly strip that's like four fingers

wide and nice bright clear spots, that's a good one. Now, I gotta admit the one your hand on right there is a two f it's got a two finger belly on it. Yeah. I just got a pretty nice one believable Bobcat. Yeah, that was a nice one. That's like two hands wide belly. That was a big boy. And if you look at them compared to like the Western bobcats versus the Eastern bobcats. You know these bobcats out here a lot clearer our Our Eastern bobcats are just

almost brown. Yeah, totally different trash cats. Yeah, not not worth so uh okay, tell everybody it's on a split board. A splain all that. So we we boarded this cat on a split board. Um, you know you can board them on a solid board or split board. I have a preference of a split board simply because with the split boards we're going to flip this heide anyway, so we're gonna have to manipulate them, and the split board just allows us to remove the animal from the board

just a little bit easier. Now, if if, if it needs to be if it needs to be fur out, why did we start it for in because we want to get that critter to dry. There's a there's and depending on who you talked to, some guys will what they call skip the flip, which is they will that's a good T shirt, skip the slip flip. Yeah, but we need an illustration Hunters. We need to call Hunter Spencer and see if he can capture in an image a man who has simply not flipped it. Skip the flips.

There's a lot of because it's a picture of a dude with a bobcat. How do you know if he flipped it or not. It's a hard illustration. I'm gonna think about that. How would you capture that illustration? And then it would say skip the flip. But we're gonna flip this one because the reason why we're gonna flip it is we want to make sure that hide is good and dry and that we're not going to have

any issues with you know, molding or drying issues. So we bore did this thing for in on a split board and we've let it sit, you know, depending on temperature and humanity, everythings like that. Twelve sixteen hours. But that one, because of because of our schedule day, he's been sitting and sitting a little longer, a little longer, so it's gonna be a little bit more of a trick now. One day I called stew and I asked, I was doing a martin and I had to leave town.

I wasn't gonna be around to flip, so I didn't know the slogan skip the flip, And I said, can I skip the flip, and he said, people do and it's something that you can get away with. And that's some of a bit dried on that board. I was. I got to where I was thinking about how I was going to try to destroy the board because somehow get my I wanted the Martin more than the board, and I was like, maybe I can split this board and crack it into little pieces and somehow get it

out of there. And then after much trial and error, I eventually got that some bitch off but dried on the board. When I do him right for in overnight and then flip it, it just falls off just so much easier, no different than this. So I see you guys got it salted too, or a little bit of borax. Sorry about that now, Phil, Sorry not Phil. You know I don't want to Phil talking about that. But Bill, Phil his name Bill, he'd know, Uh yeah, explain the borax a little bit, A little bit borax. So a

lot of people assume use salt for whatever reason. I guess, just an old timey thing you salted hide. If you're selling to the fur trade, that's actually you don't want to use salt. And the reason being is the salt interacts with the hide negatively, whereas the whenever they actually go to tann it, you know, it has a negative impact on the hide. So we use borax, which is just twenty mule team borax. It's just detergent, is all

what it is. And it just helps us. Uh. In areas that would be like under the arms that are not able to have air circulate quite as good, use a little borax just to help help the drying process. A trick I learned on Coon Creek Outdoors that I need that you need. You need some feedback on is uh where you live it's more humid. So you were talking about you have a block of boax, like you let it sit out and it turns into a brick

and you just rub it on. Yeah, so you have a thing that looks like a bar of soap, but it's a block of boax and you rub it on. I was like, man, that's like a ship. It works great. Yeah, you can't get that here. I don't care how long you let that stuff sit in your garage, it will not turn into a block. It's too arid. Put it in the bathroom with you take a shower, let it collect a little bit moisture, then go stick it outside. That's a good idea. You need to make a video

addendum to your video and then you need it. It It needs a pause and like you hit a certain button if you're from the air. It was see me in my bathroom in the shower of block of box. So you think i'd be able to get a block of boar X. If I did that, you're putting humidity to I almost was gonna have you send me a block of boar. Actually, I thought he'd get to where I live and dry out the fall turn back into powder. So there's a lot of goods. There's not a situation

where you'd salted. No, no, not. The only situation if you're gonna salt it is if you are going to tan it yourself, So then you're actually gonna use and and you know, there's a lot of different ways to tan. But essentially what the salt does is really remove all the oils from the hide and pull all the oils out. But the tanning process that you're gonna do at home versus a tanning process that's done commercially is different. So the salt kind of has a negative impact on it

in that manner. So I've heard people describe I'm curious if you'd agree with this. I've heard people describe home tanning as more of a preservation method than like uh then than uh kind of like an archival. I'm not finding the right words, but that that you're talking to quality, Yeah, that that it's more like it's it's pretty temporary home tan job. Like maybe you get ten years out of it, but you're not gonna get out of it what you get out of it from a commercial tannery. Do you

agree with that or not agree? Not necessarily. I think it's all it's all how much love you put into tanning it. You know, that's where a lot of people will fail. A lot has to go into the breaking process and the way that further or tan commercially, they're able to be broken like like garment material, you know, very soft, you know, but home tanning, you know, you can brain tan something, which is what the Indians did. So there's I was at a museum yesterday and there's

still stuff around from this been brain tanning. That's that was that was brain That's kind of what I was hearing about brain tanning is that it didn't um that like moisture can really be hard on it. You know, it's all in how you like I said, how you tann it. A lot of the brain tanning involves like a smoking process to water proof it, keep the bugs out of it. You know what, You're basically just replacing the natural tannins in the hide with some sort of

synthetic material for the majority of your home tanning. So like if you've seen the orange bottle or the different acid I mean there's a million different ways acid tanning. There's some egg white tanning. I mean, you're what methods do you do? You use? I brain tan and I use the Orange bottle Hunters and Trappers high tanning formula. Those are my two favorite that I've had a lot of success with deer brains, any brains. It's the I believe it's the landeline. I believe is what it is

in the brains. And there's tell me what all kinds of brains you've used. I've used everything everything I can get my hands on deer. Deer brains are the easiest, you know, to acquire during the season. But there's this kind of a myth, and I've found it to be fairly accurate where whatever animal you have, basically their brain is sized accordingly to tan there and I've found that to be fairly act. Yeah, So which I I just save everything up at the end of the year and

mix it all together. And big old bucket of brain, big old bucket of brains. I'd like to see that big old bucket of brains. Don't drink that. Um. Okay, back to the Bobcat because then we gotta cover off on some stuff. I just want to get to the part where you're flipping it, okay, and tell people how not to tear it. All right, So this thing's dried on the board for set a number of ours and it's uh, I don't know if you can hear it through the microphone, but it sounds almost like dry paper.

And that's kind of what you're going for. You know, you don't want it to be to dry it's gonna be hard to flip, but you also don't want it to be too wet where you're gonna have mold issues. So we've got it to that point right now. You know what, Brod, I gotta tell you something. You really distract me on this, but I'm trying to but to your credits I'm trying to get everything that you know outright for a wall, because that's gonna be a wall hanger.

Stu turned the ears, which is not something that most like trappers for the commercial market would do, but he turned the ears out of concern for my wall hanger. Bobcat, you better explain that, all right. So we split the ears side, Yeah, split them. We split the ears. And traditionally anything from below the ears up in the commercial trade is not used. So generally, you know, flashing process,

different things like that, we don't normally use that. But since you're gonna tan it and use it for a wall hanger, we went ahead and split the ears. And basically, on on an ear of of most critters, you have an inner ear kind of in an outer ear. The inner ear is actually what has the cartilage and on like a coyote, say, that's what makes the ears pronounced stand up, and then the outer skin has the fur on it that you see. But on a bobcat there's fur on both sides, and you want to keep that

so in order to let the tan solution penetrate. And this is just over my ears of doing it. If you actually separate the cartilage from the skin in the ear, you're able to let that tan solution kind of penetrate up the ear and ideally save both sides of the ear, and then by doing so, you've actually saved the cartilage as well. So after you get your tan pelt back, your ears still look like ears. Basically, it don't look all all wrinkled up, you know and kind of shriveled up.

But I like a way to imagine it is imagine that you're going to cut off your own ear and tan it, because I think about like, like grab your ear flap, right, you have skin and skin, Yeah, you'd have to get like how are you gonna you know, you'd want to get in there and split it open so that you were getting each side of the skin

to keep your ear properly tanned up. Yeah, And I mean, you know, just from my experience over the years, it just seems like if you don't split the ears, generally that inner part where the cartilage sets, it won't take the tan solution very well, and then it'll end up slipping the ferral slip, which basically just means it it'll fall off. So, yeah, we tried to do a favor here and split the ears and hopefully whenever it gets

tand it'll they'll come out right. So we did that, and now it's time to finally flip this this critter. So I'm gonna take it off the board. There's a couple of different ways to flip it. And basically, like I said, we've got this thing tube skin, so we want to turn it out outward and we're gonna roll it kind of like you would turn a sock inside out. Um. So, generally you have a lot more tendency to rip the hide if you start from the bottom and go up.

But if you turn them from the nose in and kind of push the head in and roll it down, generally that's a safer bet uh to not not ripping the hide or tearing the hide. You know, a lot has to go on how far you let this thing dry. There's just that fine window uh in in flipping the hides that you know you kind of need to hit. But I think we'll I think we'll be okay. Is there some critters that their hide tears a lot easier,

so like fox have really thin skin. Um. There there's a big number trapper that I follow and he's skipped the flip on foxes for years. You know. Uh, he puts them up on wire too, so a lot of wire. So you know, there's just there's one way to do it, and then there's a hundred other different ways to do it. You know, there's not really one set way, which is which is kind of cool. So it depending on who you talk to and what part of the country it's.

But we're gonna do it this way because it's the way I've always done it, and we're gonna basically start at the nose and we're gonna just kind of need that head down through the body and and pull it through and then we'll have the have the bobcat fur out and you'll be able to see your cat. All right. So Stu Miller, Coon Creek Outdoors, he's gonna start turning do it as loud as you can because we're gonna cover off on our other stuff and I want people to be ablit to hear you doing it, and I'll

keep people posting on what's going on. Let's hope I don't rip it. Oh, if you rip it, dude, first thing it's gonna happen is this show is over. If you rip it. Stew All you have to do is say just do it yourself next time. Then I ripped a few of my day people get pissed. It's like, well, I can't imagine. Maybe I'll be living taking to someone else and here someone so mad that they become apoplectic. They'll be me. I've never heard of that. If Steve rips my bobcat All right, so we gotta touch off

on this. You weren't even here when I was talking about this. What are you are you going? I was going to run in the bathroom quick, but I'll stick around talking about your marriage. Oh yeah, I had better stick around. Um am I still officiating. Yakay, No we haven't. We haven't found someone else. Uh, because if you want to, Yeah that I was reading up on what I gotta

do very simple to become a minister. No, you didn't tell me, but I listened to the podcast, okay the listeners, and I had a guy was pointing out interesting thing that you can get married. Um, in Montana you get married by proxy. Mm hmm. You could have a wedding that you're not at. I didn't realize this. Montana recognizes what's called a double proxy marriage. So both of us don't to be here. There's a marriage. Yeah, you could get married here where no one shows up. Huh that yeah, well,

let me I'll run that by Kelsey. See what she says. The guy that wrote and this is interesting about the the US military. So the guy wrote in his active duty military we're to the front legs. Now, it's gonna be hard. Do you like it that there's a loud noise in the background. I mean, I think it's great. Normally I would hate it, but in this circumstances, what I'm worried about. Here's what I'm worried about, is how he's gonna get those legs inverted. It sounds like paper crinklin.

Like you know, guy, this guy's active duty military. And I didn't realize this, but it makes sense. The military does not recognize engagements in terms of like shuffling you around, so you could get sent somewhere else there. Yeah, you could be like, oh, we're engaged, like it doesn't matter to them. No, no paperwork or price speak of this a little bit um. So he and his woman were getting a PCs, a permanent change of station where they

be sent to different military basis. But they're both gone on they were both gone uh un deployment, so neither of them is there and they got married anyway double proxy. Then they were able to move back to the same location because in the military recognized their union. Isn't that happy ending, Phil, That's great because you get to skip all the bullshit and just have a party later. I don't want to call you outside. But you don't seem like you're too warm to that idea. Well listen, it's yeah,

Kelsey is not gonna be warm to that idea. Do you guys have one of those little registries going? No, you can do that. I think you should get one going. We should advertise it on the podcast. What else we're gonna be talking do single We gotta get to that to find stew more girlfriends. Um no, no, So we're not doing the registry thing. We're saying like, if you if you feel if you feel like you want to wanna give us something, just throw us a little cash

because there ain't no, there's no registry out there. It's gonna like knock a wall out in my house. I got it. So you're just like you just want money, Yeah, that's great. You don't need China. I don't. I don't need like kitchen aid mixer or something like that. You know, it's Kelsey going to listen to this podcast and here you throw her under the bus so savagely like that. No, she is, She's totally on board with this. No I I was going about the double proxy. Yeah she ain't

like that. Yeah, okay, yeah, uh in Florida right now? Update? Oh yeah, okay, we're gonna give up Bobcat update. Look at that. You know, I should have brought my fur brush, my fur home, because right now he's the way can I can I see it from ittt Oh? You know, while we're speaking of updates, I just want to up there our listeners that the kayak is sold. So tell tell about what the guy that bought it gave us. Oh yeah, so the the guy that bought the kayak,

I should I forget his name? Man, I'll look it up. Um, did you have a lot of people wanted the kayaka? Um? The guy that bought the kayak was. He's active duty military. He's up at stationed up in Great Falls, and he gave Steve and I a hundred and five millimeter shell casings, which my son is very interested in that. Uh, we're fired on a deployment. And I think he said like Afghanistandard or Iraq or Syria. I got. I don't know what I'm gonna do with my It's sweet. Here comes

the front legs? Oh? Is he doing the front legs? Now? Okay, the Bobcat is now revealed. We can see the hide the beautifully speed years and he's trying to do the final thing of get the legs inverted, which is tough because you left him so long whenever you skinned him. So we're trying to pull them through like I left him too long. Well that's differen a wall hanger and in a commercial trade Bobcat, it's very exciting. Uh. In Florida, see, I don't know what the weather is going. I want

to cover off on a news bit. But the problem is this, this isn't gonna release right away. It's gonna be a couple of days. So the cold snap might be over, but there was a national cold snap um still going on right now. And in Florida, they they they're releasing warnings about the iguana is falling from trees. So Florida is full of gotta got an invasive iguana problem. We actually had some of that iguana fat, and uh, Kevin Gillespie made us iguana fat cookies, which are wonderful,

like sugar cookies with a on a fat um. And the guy rode in how these frozen iguanas fall from trees and get stunned and they're just laying around on roads and sidewalks. We have a bunch of pictures of just iguana as it fell from outer space, laying around, and he's kind of wandering about if there's like an ethical dilemma to picking up in to dispatching iguanas that are in such a compromised position, kind of like shooting cariboo in a river or something like shooting cariboan a

river or whatever, shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah. Uh, we're also thinking about whether or not this falls under the umbrella of chetica. I feel that does not. What do you think, Chester, No, it's more of an ethics thing, just a moral dilemma, which Karin, what did she right up there? Cheffical? Is it cheftical? I mean, like I said, it's a moral dilemma. I think if you knew how good that fat was for making cookies and if you like eating them, why the heck not? They want them

out of there. Um, But this guy's moral dilemma is like some of these are too small to eat, so he doesn't want to damage the resources. Like he doesn't want to damage the resource. He doesn't like killing things that he doesn't eat, you know, So so he's weighing out do I serve the goal of eliminating the iguana from Florida or do I serve my personal ethic, which is, don't kill stuff you're not gonna eat, which Trump's which? Man? I mean, it sounds like these guys really have a problem. Um,

are you clear of what the problem is? What do we do A lot of burrowing and like sea walls and house foundations and things. That's the problem. It's not like a biological issue, I don't think so, Like I don't think they're eating native bird eggs and stuff off like that that I that I know of. And you think that you think think that I thought they were like doing something to native that's possible, But what I've heard a lot is like they're doing damage to structures

and like that. We have a headline in front of his cold weather could bring frozen too iguanas this weekend. It's just like a picture of some iguanas just taking a quick nap um. But yeah, I think like, if you take the ones you're gonna eat, you know, do a little a little both there. I don't know, no, I would think so man. But here's the thing I could weigh out. Let's say I really developed the taste for iguanas down there, okay, and I had like a little yard and now and that would get me a

big fat iguana. And I was watching some small ones lurking around, and I knew that I I don't know what their life expectancy is, but I knew that they'd get big. And then I'd have like, I'm never eating I've eating their fat. I never eat. Let's add loved it.

I could see a situation where one would fall from a tree, A little one would fall from a tree, and I would resuscitate it and warm it up in order to grow it big because I love the iguana met and not and not go out and do what I was supposed to do, which is go out and kill it. Here's the thing, I don't know if it's legal or not. Why don't you just make a little iguana cage, take those iguanas, start feeding, and start raising

them yourself. It's like, get out. Just thought of a real I just remembered the real world version of what I'm talking about, not that this isn't the real world, but a personal version. You know how lake trout um got into Yellowstone Lake and started there real hard on cuts, not bull trout, yellowstone cutthroat. So someone thought was a good idea to let some lake trout go in Yellowstone Lake, which is in Yelsta National Park, and it's the head

of the Yellowstone River. And it was it was very detrimental to the native cut wrote the east slope cuts cracked. I believe it was a yellow actually, which is like a more of a pumpkin colored orangeish yellowish cutthroat got it um. They at a point made it that you were not allowed to turn back a live lake trout. It was a mandatory kill situation. No like like catch and release became illegal. It might still be today. I don't know. I had a friend. I don't want to

tell what his name is. I'll tell you. I don't want to tell his last name because he was a lawbreaker. His name was Mike Uh And Mike would always go and fish there and he really liked he made like smoke lake trout. He made lake trout sushi rolls. He was big time into eating lake trout. He would turn back the small ones and would be and wouldn't want

to hit it too hard. And he was very nervous about what he called damaging the resource and just wasn't buying the whole thing about He was like, I love those fish. I hope they stay there forever. Yes, his take on it. I mean in an area like that, man though, like there's not many places in the world that have yellow stone cutthroat um and there are a lot of places in the world that have lake trout, Like you gotta get them out of there, and no,

I know it's almost impossible, but like they've made some progress. Yeah, so Chester, you know your idea about how you're gonna keep them and fatten them up. Yeah, I was saying, I don't know if it's legal or not. Well, Karan um Uh just pointed out here that you would be in violation of law. And and so if if you know everybody has the joy cooking in their house, the cook, the joy cook cooking. I have one that's so old.

There's information in it about how to fatten a possum. Really, yeah, you've caught a possum and how to fatten it and like m put it on a good diet for consumption. That's not in there anything. It's not by now, it's not in there. That's pretty awesome. They have that one. So Chester has this idea like, Okay, a little dinky, little dinker falls out of the tree. You're trying to do the right thing by law, and you say to yourself, well, I feel bad letting it back out because I'm supposed

to kill it. It's not big enough to eat. I'm gonna warm them up, resuscitate them, pen him, and fatten him, which is illegal. Turns out, so Florida has a list of like stuff you can't have. It's Florida's prohibited species list, and it has it had sixteen new and it had recently added sixteen new high risk non native reptiles you're not allowed to have in your possession. The Argentine black and white tigoose. What the hell is that? I think

they're like monitor lizards. I think you're not allowed to have a tigu. You look it up, Brodie. Yeah, you can't have one of those in Florida. You can't have a green iguana. You can't have a nile monitor lizard. You cannot have a Burmese python, which is a big issue. They got no shorte of them done. Yeah, they look like a monitor lizard. They're pretty they're pretty big. You cannot have a reticulated python. You cannot have a green anaconda. H uh. I mean it makes sense, you know. They

that's how they kind of got there. Right of them can survive in Florida. I was years ago in South America and m and I was with a Makushi, a guy who is Mkushi from the Mkuschi tribe, and we were standing there looking at a green anaconda. It's probably I don't know, fourteen a teen feet long. This your bullet anti Nope, no, different times he was telling me I wanted to It was just sitting there. I mean

you could walk right up to it. And I was asking about is it okay if we kind of like jab it with a stick to see what it does, right, And he was pointing out to me like their in their mythology. He was saying, if I touched that antaconda with the limb of my bow, it will die a very painful death that takes about forty five minutes. But you can touch it with another stick and that's fine. But you can't touch it with a bowl limb just to bow limb or is it? What was it like weapon?

He said, if I touch it with my bowl limb, that will kill it very painful. Really, Yeah, there's like a limit. I mean, it was just part of their mythology, and there was like a limit to how much we could communicate about it. But I gathered that much. Can't touch him with a bow limb, can't touch a green antaconda with a bow limb. You didn't try it, No, I didn't. I didn't say, like, I just I thought that was a great little you know, a great little thing. Oh did you get one leg? Ste got one leg?

He's close to getting there leg the bobcat is nearly inverted. Then it's gonna be exciting because it goes back onto the board. However, here's another ethics question. This is that this is This seems like an ethics question, but it

ends up being a practical question. This guy works for a small town police department in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, Regent and he he mentions that they are at the time of this writing in an ongoing c w D management hunt f w P. He's saying, the state Fish and Game Agency is allowing antler bucks to be harvested on this hunt. A lot of this guy's bodies believe the hunt should be since it's meant to lower the population to slow the spread of c w D. He's like,

why is it that you can kill bucks? It seems like you'd be killing does because if you want to lower a deer population, the way to lower it is killing does. Like Bucks doesn't like have a long Killing Bucks doesn't have a long term impact on deer numbers. Killing dose does because you kill her and you kill every baby that she'll ever have. I would point out, if this gentleman really wants to get into understanding this, there's quite a bit of data that suggests that c

w D is more readily transmitted by bucks. They move around a bunch, They traveled to daim much. I think there's a couple of reasons they're They're they want any deer eliminated right and to convince people that hunt white tails in February and Monte Hannah or January, you know, sweet sweeten the deal. Yeah, we're letting you get a buck.

And then I remember some stuff with Doug looking at the and you know, all the things like c w DS, like COVID a little bit where the information changes so fast it's hard to keep hip to what, like what's actually the current sort of academic consensus. But at the time it was the young bucks dispersed more. They like young bucks left their population dispersed farther distances were more likely to be bringing c w D into introducing c w D chronic waste and disease into new herd groups.

I read something recently about that, though, where in a study where they studied a certain amount of you know, let's say they study fifteen bucks and and twenty dos, the does traveling you know, five miles and the bucks were traveling like six miles on average, So it wasn't a crazy difference between the two. But again, now I

was just saying that the like they've done studies. I was reading a recent study where they took a set number of deer and studied them how far they go and the distance between how far the dose traveled and the distance between how far the bucks traveled was not that um but that was just one article. So uh, you guys got you guys got the appetite for one more. Um, I guess two more etiquette, two more ethics etiquettes. People looking for feedback. Your dog kills a deer? What then?

What then? My friend's dog killed a deer not too long ago. Well, this guy, this guy was asking, like, you know, should he eat it? You to do whatever? I think he did the right thing, he said. He called the local authorities, the game warden, which is a good thing to do, and then from there, you know this, it said, the warden determined it did not have c

w D, which is you can't really necessarily. Um so I'm not quite sure they're but like, well, because he okay, in this case, the warden did a little knee cropsy and saw that it had two busted legs. And that's why the dog is able to get ahold of it. And that's why it looks like what are the Yeah, that's why it looks sickly, likes like what are the odds that had c w D and then broke two

legs from a car hitting it. But what this guy seems to be trying to do is is like say, what his dog did is not like there's not a problem with it, Like that's what it seems to be getting at. Well. I mean, you don't want your dogs obviously killing deer, but when in a blue moon, you just never know what's gonna happen. So I think calling the warden, and then if this deer had two broken legs, he's also asking what should I do with the meat?

I would say, if the warden lets you take it and eat it, eat it, But if it's got two broken legs, you might want to check for infection and stuff first as well. Um, you know, yeah, I would say. So it is an interesting conundrant because a lot of times in public land you're supposed to have your dog

under control. So if you're on public land somewhere and your dog kills a deer, you might, I mean, you might find whether you self report or someone else reports you you're asked, might be in trouble with the state. There are places where if you're out hunting deer and you see a dog chasing deer, you can shoot the dog. I think, Yeah, there's definitely places like that. Yeah, it's pretty easy to train your dog to not mess with deer.

You know, I've had a couple of bird dogs, and you can train and him just not pay attention to those deer. When our dog chases a deer, it comes back knowing it's in trouble, like it can't help itself. It's like it's like I know I did like I did it, I know I shouldn't have done it. And they come back like they know they're going to get in trouble, but they just couldn't help themselves. So I think a proper etiquette is just train your dog not

mess with deer. But if it does, I think that, yeah, you know the salvage dude, call your call your game warden. That's probably the first step if you're deal with any of that stuff. Here's another one. This guy is righting in. Uh. This guy lives in the state Virginia. Were you allowed to hunt turkeys with a rifle? And he says, I believe rifles should be outlawed like it is in Maryland in most states. You can't quite say most dates. There's a lot of states. Three you can kill turkey with

a rifle in the fall. He's got friends that killed turkey's at two yards with Varmitt rifle setups. What do you think about that? I just don't where's the fun. I just want to say this, I'm not talking about laws and not laws and all that. Spring turkeys is meant to be something you do with a shotgun. There's there's a purpose to it, the calling, the getting them to come in. And we used to bush whag turkeys in the spring. I don't think there's any reason to

shoot a turkey with a rifle in the spring. One thing, it's like it's dangerous, using camel out in the woods, making turkey noises, sitting against trees, trying to sit close, trying to be close to turkeys. When I was very young, you could hunt. I'm pretty sure you could hunt turkeys with a rifle in Pennsylvania in the spring. Really, I know you can changed it. Yeah, well, especially with decoys getting better and better every year, you know, dude. Yeah,

Like I look at my own decoy. It's about going and the fall. It finds out hunting deer and had turkey tag in my pocket. I probably, Yeah, I think it's different and what's interesting people people don't understand here is that in a lot of in states where you are allowed to kill turkeys in the fall with the rifle, you're often allowed to kill females. But they're also not I mean, they're spending time out in those open areas in the fall. But I feel like spring gets predictable.

You know, those birds are gonna be out on strut zones and be out and open. So that's like another thing that's just makes it easier picking and the spring you shoot him, And why I don't, I don't personally like that. Or I just think if you're like sitting there in your truck and there's a turkey hunter fifty yards way out in the field, and you decided to take a couple of rips at it with your fifty

it's like, I don't. It feels very dangerous to me because you don't know if there's some camel up dude and his kids sitting back there. Yep, yep, yep, yep. It just takes the fun right out of that spring turkey hunting too. Well. I hear the story one time, and I believe the story. I heard that, and so it was a time when Florida. You were allowed to hunt turkeys in the spring with a rifle, okay, And a lot of turkey hunters felt that it just was

not a good idea. You got flat country okay, get people out in camel with decoys, like it's like a safety issue. And they even went to they took the time to go to the gun community and be like, this is not like, this is a safety turkey issue. Let's not make this like a gun gun right issue.

This is a safety turkey issue. And it got turned into a like gun right, gun got turned into a gun rights issue when they were I remember someone telling me, who was on the side of not being able to rifle hunt turkeys, that they always felt a little bit disappointed that they couldn't get it framed. Outside of that the disc rushing about it, you know, it was more like I don't want to get shot. Yeah, there was

a centerfire rifle. There was that one video that viral a couple of years ago with that the two there was two young guys turkey hunting and they were filming it and I think they were working a bird on the edge of a big opening and in the footage you too see like the all the dirt get kicked up. Someone shot with like a two forty three there decoy and they were on the opposite end and it blew into the tree next to him and bark went flying

and everything, and they immediately jumped up. It was a couple of years ago, but it went viral, but I'm sure you can find it on YouTube. But it was guys shooting at a decoy a centerfire rifle, and they were If he would have been a foot or even six inches offset, he would have hit one of those

guys and killed them. So yeah, I've seen videos like that guy shooting a goose decoy, Sean, you might have seen something like that, but shooting a shooting goose decoys of centerfire rifles just like you know, totally illegally, Yeah, totally. There's nowhere you're allowed to do that. Well, New Zealand you can do that. I killed Uh, I killed a Canada goose in New Zealand with a seven millimeter m meg. Yeah, they're kind of like a that's a good shot, wonderful shot.

All right, brought you ready for your book report? Oh, how's a bobcat that's ready to be bordered? I wish we had our fur home with us. Man. Snap it, You've got more room over there. Snap it real hard, set all the fur. Snapp it hard. A couple of times. Are you ready for your book? Your part, Brody? Yeah, my article report. Um. So, there's been a push to dlist grizzlies from the Endangered Species List from both Montana

Governor Gene Forte and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon. So to give some background, Uh, grizzly bears were put on the e S A in I think something like that. There's like a hundred and fifty of them left threatened, not not in danger. Yeah, there's about a hundred fifty of them left in the seventies, hundred thirty six. And the g y E the thing that Steve hates saying, Oh, I don't know, I'm somewhat okay with that. You're okay

with a greater Yellowstone ecosystem? Okay, a little bit okay. Anyway, Uh, fast forward to current times, and the estimates vary, right, like minimum is seven hundred. A new population study model that Wyoming used places them over a thousand. But either way, the recovery goal was I believe five hundred bears in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which was met you know, twenty years ago or so. Um, so there's there's been these off and on pushes to get them off the list.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon is petitioning the US Fish and Wildlife Service to get him removed again. I said, the same things going on in here in Montana, and uh, you know, it's this back and forth fight that never seems to end. It doesn't. Yeah, it's just NonStop. And uh. I was interviewed for an article for Fox News Digital. Um and and uh, apparently they think I'm a grizzly bear expert. They also interviewed, uh, Wyoming governor's Wyoming Governor

Gordon was quoted pretty heavily in the article. Um and they quoted what is her name, Andreas A Cardi from a Center for Biological Diversity. They always have names like that, you know that that makes them sound like there's something other than what they are, which is like, you know, animal rights, anti hunting group. Um. The most interesting thing I think she said, She's said a couple of things

that are interesting. There's no science to back the claim that grizzlies no longer need protection, meaning they I don't understand what that means. I don't know, but I mean there's plenty of science because their way past the stated recovery goals. Um. And that's such a such a subjective statement too, because to her, grizzlies will always need protection

no matter what, everywhere. And uh. She also says, of course, Um, this outrageous request from my Wyoming's governor is the latest attack on animals like grizzly, embarrassed by states that see them as little more than targets for trophy hunters. Um, pushpins. Do you know? It was just like absolutely untrue. Um. Here's here We've covered to so many times. I ever wrote an op end the New York Times about this the last time they were trying to do it. The

last thing the states are gonna do. That's what they the state Why Montana are not going to lobby their asses off for decades to get state management of grizzlies back in order to then really quickly kill them all and get them back driven back onto the endangered speed. The whole point is trying to get them recovered and off the list, right and then like they're just like they're like rubbing their hands, like who the minute I can get them off the list, I'm gonna put them

back on the list again. Yeah, and let's say ridiculous Wyoming or mon Montana. Let's let's say they get taken off the list and and a hunting season gets approved. The number they're gonna be so careful with a number of tags that they issue for these bears. That's it's going to have absolutely zero impact on the Like, do you know how many tags the last go around? You know how many tags Idaho is going to issue one Wyoming I think was a total of low twenties. Maybe

in Montana, I thought at the time. And I don't know, there's a different administration now, so I think we'd have a different approach. I thought it was a little bit chicken ship. Yeah, And and you know, in a decision there was coming from people who I admire, just like an area where I disagreed with them is they were going to sit it out, obviously sitting it out because they didn't want to wade into the they didn't want

to wade into the social Yeah. I respected Wyoming fishing game for how they just I mean, they knew it was gonna they were gonna take a lot of flak and heat for everything, and I think they did a great job and how they handled it, and that bummed me out. That f WP kind of I don't know but that But basically the gist of the article here is, and we've said this before, the point of the endangered species list is not to keep them on the list forever it stood, recover them, get them off the list,

turnover management to the states. And these groups like this just used lawsuits to like postpone thing and delay things and keep them on the list, you know, potentially forever. So that's where we're at. Montana and Wyoming are trying to In Montana, it's the the Northern Continental Divide population that they're trying to get delisted. What winds up happening with this, I mean, like I said, we've we've covered

the dickens out of this. Winds up happening UM around grizzly delisting, around wolf delisting is you have two situations where we had species that were legitimately imperiled, like wolves are legitimately imperilled at a time, UM, grizzlies were legitimately imperiled and they needed at that they that needed protections and they put protections in place, and you in in the different you know, stakeholders and has come together and

they're like, okay, what does recovery look like? Right? And people agree on like, well, if we had this many of this, that many of that living in this many places, we would accept that that was like recovery at which will move on to the next problem. Um. What happens is people really kind of like get used to there being no hunting for these animals, and later when recovery objectives are met and hunting might be resumed, people just

they get where they just cannot accept that. And so the way these things get held up in court, no one comes and argues that there aren't like no one's gonna argue in courts that there aren't enough of them. They're gonna argue in court weird little you know, like technical issues be like oh you did uh, you did uh, you did a study, but did you consider the potential impacts of white bark pine blister rust and if anything,

always didn't fully consider the impacts blister rust. So then a judge and it's always that it's always a judge of Missoula because that always winds up in that district and a judgement rule and throw all the whole thing. Yeah, based on a technicality and why they're not they're never arguing the main point. Yeah. And another thing that kind of never comes up is that there's like, like take the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, Like you can't have bears every

grizzlies everywhere. There's only so many places that can support them. And so in the g y E there's like a finite number of grizzlies that that place can support. And then they start moving out into like the urban uh wild interface like around here in Bozeman, and they get in trouble and then they get shot for getting in a dumpster. Um. There's like a carrying capacity there, And you can't have bears running around in Golden Gate Park. You say, grizzlies. I wish they were everywhere, Sure, but

I have a high tolerance. It's just not possible, but I do. Yeah. The other part of this that gets really technical is is people instead of saying like, like, if you're gonna what is the entirety of grizzly bear range, the entirety of grizzly bear ranges um basically the Hunter Meridian and westward like everything. If you're if you're like west of the Big Bend in the Missouri Um, you're

in grizzly bear habitat. So people are like, it's not really plausible that we're going to cover bears across the entirety of the American West. So let's pick adequate areas where they could feasibly be, and then when one of those areas is full, you delist the area. And people are always using they're always attacking that logic, Well, we can't recover them everywhere. But you know, I always point out elk are only recovered across what of their native range?

How come no one says that about elk elkrt recovered in Illinois, but you can hunt them in Utah? Yep? Why would someone not say, we haven't recovered elk across the entirety of their range. You shouldn't be allowed to hunt out. Yeah, they should be an endangered species in Illinois by their logic. Yeah, it should be that no one in Utah should be able to hunt an elk because Illinois doesn't have them yet they need to hire

us to do these arguments. I like that the Broidy gets some you're such a that from doing these book reports and stuff that you get to go on the news and talk about it. Yeah, man, it was fun. But you know what bugs me is that they never interviewed a damn biologist for these articles, like a from the US Fish and Wildlife Service or from a state game agency. Do you point that out to him? I did. He said he should talk to some of those people. Did you say, like, you shouldn't talk to me, you

should talk to them. I said, I am not a grizzly bear expert. I have an opinion you should talk to a grizzly bear expert. Yeah. You know what it might be is that they're not going to get a fiery They're not going to get a fiery opinion of either, like a like a grizzly bear expert isn't gonna give a fiery opinion because they only need to be careful what they say. They had to get a raging hot like Brodie Henderson. Yeah, Brody smoke coming out of his

years all the time. Alright, Sean, you ready you bet Shawn's duck report. Yeah, you have an assignment. You gotta. We gave you an assignment, right, Yeah, you did last last time we did a duck report, you had brought up that you wanted uh age demographics to be discussed. Yeah, like what's the old asked duck. Mm hmm. And you had referenced a sand hill crane you'd shot when you were in Texas that you said you believed was seventeen

years old. And to be fair, I called Dr Chris Nikolai from Delta Waterfowl about this because age demographics gets pretty complex, um, and there's a lot to it, but for starters, um. He told me to go look at the U. S g S website that they have a They have a cool called the Longevity Records of North American Birds and this tool allows you to look up all the all the band reporting and the age of those birds that are reported. And it's not just waterfowl,

it's kind of everything. It's got snow buntings and sparrows, you name it, pretty much anything they can report, um on how old some of these birds live. It's on there. For example, I did look up a snow bunting, which, by the way, the oldest one reported was eight years and nine months old. Um. Anyway, I also went ahead

and looked up sandhill crane. Since you had referenced shooting one seventeen years old, the oldest sandhill crane was thirty seven years and three months old, And which is so old? And it was banding older than Seth? Yeah, not way older, but I would have been in first grade. How Seth

was born? How old can parrots live? I'm just thinking about birds in general, Yeah, because they're like I remember how I had a girlfriend whose mom had a great parrot and she had to have a will about what was going to happen to the parrot after she died. But that's living in a cage. Yeah, that's true. Because what happened to this and tell everybody what happened to this crane? Man, what happened to this crane is sad.

So it's banded in Florida in nine two. And what finally got it was it got hit by a car in Wisconsin coming home from the bar. Coming home to the bar, hop up on cheese kurds, double bubble. No, everyone talks about hitting deer in Wisconsin, and nobody talks about hitting sandhill cranes. Thirties seven years old, super old. So then I went ahead and looked up. I went real down the rabbit hole looking up pretty much every speed sees I could looked up, like blue geese and

snow geese. Which oldest blue goose was thirty years old and eight months oldest mallard was twenty seven years and seven months. Is this is that off banding data too? M hmm yep. So these are all and Chris Nikolai did bring this up as well. All these are based on either found dead or hunter harvest shot and removed bands. These are not recapture data. So Nikolai has had birds where they catch them in rocket nets, you know, thirty thirty five years later and they're they're putting third or

fourth set of bands on birds that are still alive. Yeah, like all these birds that were looking at all these ages like this mallard it's twenty almost twenty eight years, it was lesser snow it's twenty seven and a half years. These are things that, um, they didn't die of old age mm hmm. Yeah, these these ones died of getting shot. So they're teal that got banded in Saskatchewan got shot

in Cuba. Yeah, twenty three years later. That's crazy. It's pretty cool by like Castro because that sounds like an a real life story. It's amazing because you look at it like you see a deer in a duck, and you have so much more empathy for a deer at lesa, you know what I mean, It's got eyelashes and everything. They're like, you could fit seven deer lives inside of a duck. Yeah, it's crazy. You don't look you when you see a duck on a pond. You don't think like, oh,

there's something that's twenty five years old. No, definitely not. It was wild turkeys a long time. Oh yeah, wild turkeys like dude, I'm lucky to get become too well. To be fair, though, where these numbers are these ages really become wild is when you start calculating what the average age of waterfowl is like, when you get down

to what's actually probably gonna happening actual. So the numbers that Dr Nikolai had given me to work with our survival rate year over year on Drake Mallard's and sixties six on hen Mallards, those are not exact numbers, but they're close and they flesh out the thought experiment here. Um. I'll also come back to the why there's a difference between drake and hen survival rate. But if so, if you start with a hundred of each, you know, year one,

you get down to seventy drakes and sixty hens. By year two, year at forty nine drakes and thirty six hens. So now you're below fifty how alf or dead. So there's your average age um. Your average age for a duck is two years for a drake mallard and not even two years for a hen mallard. So it makes a seven year old mallard that much more impressive. The hens live shorter because they just are they getting so beat up from you know. Yeah, that's what I was

wanderings why hens? I was thinking maybe because of they're sitting on nests and getting eaten while they're on nests. Yep, that's the average then, Yeah, the average age man is twenty seven years. Imagined the attrition rate of friends. You go through a lot of friends, and that if you're that mallard that made it to twenty seven years, how many friends have coming gone? Yeah? How is it that?

Like you remember in Sand County Almanac, Uh, in Sand County Almanac when he's doing the stuff with the chicken, eas like he's like catching a chicken ee Elder Leopold. This isn't the twenties. He's like catching chicken's. He made up a little chickenie trap and he's like putting a band on chicken eas and you know they all just die. But this one that just never makes a mistake and he gets a year after year after year after year

at the same bird feeder. I don't remember that part of that, but everyone else just gets dusted like he doesn't. He's like very special. I wonder what the O dometer would be on a seven year old Mallard the miles he's put on, Sean, that's a good one for your book report, dude, Okay, I'll start. You know, there's uh some real cool GPS work being done by a group called Osborne Labs. I'll see what the highest sodometer they've got on a GPS tracker is right now, Yeah, that'd

be really cool. So where that survival rate gets even more nuanced, right, is that that's based on pretty much a going from year one to year two and then year two to year three, so to speak. That's not counting when they're in the egg or even once they've hatched. And are going through, you know, the whole process of growing up to be old enough to fly. So Chris gave me some even more staggering numbers that make you wonder how we even have any ducks to hunt to

begin with, Like, how there's any around at all. Yeah, it's amazing that there's even ducks. So right now, a good nest success is point one five or fIF so fifteen eggs even ever hatch out of a hundred eggs laid then from then from not catching enough raccoons. Oh yeah, so that's that's the real end of the story here. Um, So if fifteen eggs hatch, half of those will die

before they ever get too old enough to fly. But she brings you down to you know, seven and a half ducks eggs that hit the ground m hmm, and then won't make it through that first fall roughly, so you get too about after that first fall, you got about three ducks out of a hundred eggs, and then some duck went on and lived in twenty five years. So I'll circle back to the hen and drakes survival rate thing, and we already kind of touched on it. But the reason that hens have a lower survival rate

than drake's. Especially right now is nest predation. If drake's, you know, drake's don't have to go sit in grassland, they don't have to risk um, risk getting jumped on on a nest. He can hang out out in the middle of some big lake. Mm hmm exactly. And what that's led to the last thirty or forty years, they've really noticed it since the late nineteen eighties is we've seen a population wide change in the sex ratio. We have more drakes than hens, and not by just a

little bit. Um. In the late nineteen eighties, pintails were about one point to drakes for every hen, and now they're at four and a half drakes to every hen. So we're at a hen shortage and a drake surplus by a lot. And that's been going over how long, Uh, well, it's it's going up every year. But it's been really noticeable Incline since the late nineteen eighties. They do they

relate that to low fur prices. Delta waterfowl definitely points to miso predators because there's a there's a Turkey biologist that we had on the show one time, um that you know, he felt that was a very interesting argument, is looking at for prices relative to predation of birds. That's kind of when you got out of the professional trapping game when in the late eighties, I set my last trap for seth No. I set my last trap for commercial purposes in nine but it was dismal by then.

Ten years earlier it had been really something, but I was only ten years old. Another thing Chris had brought up there like North Dakota hadn't even described raccoons living there until the nineteen fifties and now they're everywhere. So it's interesting. Uh, well, we'll talk more on that in another Duck report because there is so much interesting information about the sex ratio and predation on nests and all that.

But the age disparities are are wild. How you can have a thirty year old or thirty three year old Canada goose, but then you know a lot of them

never even make it out of the nest. And Barry Lopez's book Arctic Dreams, he's with a pilot and they're doing some polar bear work and they're talking about how old polar bear can get and didn't get pretty old, and he mentions how the biologist says to him, if it doesn't make any mistakes, you know, which is just not something you'd like that, you know what I mean, It's just not something you think about. If it doesn't

make any mistakes, it never messes up. It's never like, hey, that looks like a real duck even though it's not moving. It seems Sean, I have a question for you through

that research did that? Is there anything about that like snowball ing or turning in and eat, like that separation of how many hens to drake's because of the drake's, Like, since the drakes are so rough on hands usually when they're mating, like with that many drake's to low hand ratio, couldn't actually start killing more hens and lower that and that separation, that gap is gonna widen. Is there anything research you know? I don't know. I don't think there's

any talk about I don't think Drake's. I mean, I guess I can't speak for biologists, but I don't think they kill enough hens to have a Okay, you don't think it's like a right now, It's definitely a definitely a habitat and predation story. You know, when you buy a dozen or six pack of decoys. It's like mostly Drake's. It turns out that's actually accurate. I wonder if that by I thought you feel like you're getting more value or just a contrast thing easy for the duck to

see the Drake's. I don't know. I don't know either. Oh, they're probably just doing it because we like looking at the pretty decoys. Right, So you're good on at Sean, Yeah, no, that's what's the next report? What are you working on? Well, I think we'll dive more into the predator story. Oh some of the people start thinking ran I predator, which I'm not. But you're gonna get into that little bit predation mm hmm yep, definitely. I'm ready for you. Man.

What Stu I'm gonna slowly transition is into talking to you. You want to see how I'm gonna do it. Can't wait check this one out. Uh. We were talking on previous episodes about mistaken song lyrics. When you all your life you think they're saying one thing, you realize of saying something else. Um, there's a song and you heard this damn song Loggins and Messina, who's that? Kenny Loggins and oh they Andy Loggins. You said I looked like him one time. Well, you know when your hair was long.

Oh so the Loggins and Messina's Kenny Loggins. What a weird groove. He had gone for a while of doing movies movie the main songs, and movies foot loose, what's the one with the pilots Top Gun? So they got a song called Danny Song and in the song they say Pisces that they get into astronomy. Pisces virgo rising is a very good sign. This guy thought he was saying the price of fur is rising. It's a very good sign. I like when this dude wrote in he

signed off with negative tempts here in West Michigan making nice. Okay, we're gonna get a new, big old thing about where trappers and predator hunters are having a versus hound hunters in Virginia. We're gonna put that on hold. That's very interesting to me though, in fighting hunter, in fighting and unlikely enemies. We're gonna cover this very soon, how trappers and predator hunters are and and hound hunters are all at each other's throats. Mhmm, cannibalism. I don't see it.

I hound hunt and I trapped, Stu hates himself. It's a rich field of inquiry. We're gonna cover it, but I want to do a real quick one. Colorado, who seems like every other day as bannings trying to ban something. Uh, this time they were trying their eighteenth time to ban lying. It's so funny. They always throw in links. That's the thing, man.

They are like, didn't Arizona include jaguar When they tried that, they always got a sneak in an animal that you can't hunt anyway, because people because they're standing out in front of the whole foods getting signatures for these things, right, and so like here comes someone lady hasn't seen a wild animal three years. Uh, comes the long and they're like, were you sign our petition? Right? And they want to sweeten the pot. So they're like in band links, honey,

because he's like, Jesus, I can't. They're killing links, like you can't kill links in Colorado, but they're gonna ban it. Yep, lest I don't know. Yeah in Arizona, like and no killing jaguars by the way, Yeah, you can't kill jaguars, but they like the because yeah, I think it is adds like it sweetens the pot. You know. The great thing about this one is it didn't get dragged out over a long period of time, but like came up

and whamo got rejected right away. It's great. Crim was pointing out that a guy named Vinny from New Jersey road in, which makes that the second Vinny to ever have anything to do with this podcast. So at this point we had two Vinny's, both New Jersey mentioned on this show, and not a cat lady from New Jersey. So yeah, that builds over, it'll come up again. Yeah, I just like, here's the thing, man, here's the thing.

This is all I want in the world. I want there to be a I want the environment to be extremely clean, clean air, clean water, healthy wildlife. I don't want to I want to leave as much of it as pristine as humanly possible, even to the point where we have to make sacrifices. I want the earth to be the let's just keep in the country. I want this America to be full of pristine wild places, full of animals that we have access to as renewable resources.

It's not that complicated. If you want to help cats, help habitat yeah, if you want to help the How many links are in Colorado right now? Not very many? Secure Linx habitat, Yeah, sure, Lynx habitats. What what there is in Colorado is doing. It's great, you know, like will betterly protected wilderness areas. You know, keep it secure, keep it secure. That will be the thing if you want links in Colorado. The thing that will make it

that there's links in Colorado is that there's habitat. Quit skiing. Quit skiing too. There's I can hear people typing already. There's a battle over those skiers and big horns down in Jackson right now. If you want the links to be fine, make it that there's a shipload of links habitat, and then all your problems will be solved. It won't be because someone who can't anyways were too. It's just you're missing the point. Yeah, let's move on, all right,

ste how on the Sam Hill. Because here's the thing, here's my biggest question for you, here's my excuse for becoming a trapper. I was born in nineteen seventy four, the great fur boom of the of like seventy eight

to eighty two. I was born in seventy four, and so I was aware of that, and I didn't set a trap till the last year of the fur boom, but I was informed by the fur boom like all this, you know, this is in four dollars, seventy five dollar red fox, fifty dollar mink, forty dollar raccoons, eighty dollar beavers, seven dollar muskrats. Somebody, Phil, what was all? What's all that mean in today's dollars? And that was in the round.

Can you can you real quick explain why the prices were so high at that time, like just based on demand for I think there was at that time there was still strong domestic demand. And I'm guessing I don't know, maybe still remembers are better. But the big consumers China, South Korea, Russia, right so at times Italy. So I'm guessing that those economies were very strong. I'm guessing the oil prices, well, we know oil prices got incredibly high.

Their economies are strong. Oil prices are high, and you had tons of consumer demand, and you had domestic you had us demand for luxury stuff. One hundred dollars in nineteen seventy four would be about five hundred and sixty nine dollars according to okay, so tell me what a seven dollar telling me would have No, tell me what at I did. A forty dollars in nineteen eighty four would have been a hundred nine dollars today. Okay, So

a hundred nine dollar mink today pretty good money. And I was seduced by those figures because we mow a lawn for five bucks and a muskrat was worth more than well, it depends on who's law. Like the Musselmans paid fifteen bucks to molder lawn. Yes, you have to take a lunch break. You couldn't get it done at one shot. You had like mo a bunch and then like you'd go home and eat and go swimming and ship and go back and mow again. So two muskrats was like musculiman's lawn. That's why I got into it.

There were guys, but there were guys taking two weeks of vacation and then like teaming it up with like their holiday vacation and buying trucks with muskrat money. Pretty cool considering you could go, I built up, I built a barn. You could really live off the land back then. So what's your excuse? How old you you missed all that.

I missed all that occasionally though, right occasionally, every now and then, something like last year or two years ago, like Western coyotes, it was like, yeah, boom, they were worth a lot of months a good point now and then to be a freak. But it's because of some type of weird niche market typically, right that like typically so like the fur boom, like you're talking the fur room that I remember with the upper case F. Yeah, would have been like two thousand eleven, two thousand fourteen.

Well that's what you called your that's my that's my generation for boom, that's your generation muskrats. Yeah, I was selling fourteen dollar muskrats. I averaged almost twenty five dollars on coons that year. I sold several coyotes, you know, which we were talking Midwestern coyotes, so yeah, pretty bad ones, you know, and having an average of seventy seventy on them. You know, that was a good little fur room. I Yeah, I did really good then. So yeah, you were making money.

I was making money. Yeah, I was actually making money trapping. Now you're just doing it pretty much for the hobby of it. But fur prices definitely have gone down. But that's the fur boom that I remember. So is that what got you into it? No? So you know, traffing is traffic is hard, like it really is hard. And you know, growing up, I I was outdoorsman. You know. I deer hunted, I bow hunted, I duck hunted. I

did everything. You know, ski though, did you I did not ski, being a Southerner, we just didn't have the ability there, so I didn't ski. But you know I was I was hunting everything. There was a season four I was fishing for everything that there was a season, you know, we could catch and trapping. Just it was hard. And I remember this was kind of never hard, like technically hard or physically hard. I know the answer both both.

And I remember this is kind of whenever. Like inline muzzleloaders were really becoming a thing, you know, like really and in Illinois we can't use rifles centerfire rifles, and so it's shotgun or muzzleloader or pistol. And I remember, you know, muzzleloaders were coming out, and I bought a real good in line muzzleloader. And remember I shot a deer like two hundred fifty yards. You know, I'm like, well,

it's I'm done like what you peeked, you know. I mean it's just deer walk out across forty acre field and you just drop him. You know, It's there's not much to that. You know, it's sitting a deer stand. And I'd always trapped as a kid, and you know, after that, I remember I kind of I bought some sets and you know the time, there wasn't a lot

of education about it or information. You know, you pretty much had to kind of learn on the fly or was self taught, and uh, they just slowly progressed from there. You know, Trapping is one of those things that if you get past the whole Disney thing where you know, you go out and set three sets and you come back next day and you have three critters, what Disney youre talking about? That's what everybody always tells me, you know that that's the assumption I would say, is that

there's Disney movies where people have super high catch rates. Well, I mean, you know, you get the Big Bear traps, and you know, just the the illusion of that people have of that trapping is almost like a there's just like it's just mayhem blood. I call it Disney, But I mean, you know, actually the general assumption, you know, which it's not. Um. You know, you're going out there and you're trying You're going out in an area that this critter, you know, he knows the same as you

know your backyard. You're going out in their area, and you are trying to trick that animal. For the most part, to step on an area that is the size of a top of a soda can, that's pretty hard to do. You know, consider that that critter could go anywhere he wants, and that's what you're trying to do. And I think that's what drew me to it more than anything like a thousand acre home range, is the challenge to step on a beer can, the top of a beer can.

You're trying to get that critter to put his foot on and that's that, to me was kind of the allure of it. That's what drew me to it. Was was the challenge, because I mean, you've trapped, you know, you've trapped. Trappers are a different breed, you know. And I don't mean that being like the you know, Jeremiah Johnson or old Dingy construction worker, you know, one of those,

which I him. But I mean, you've got to be driven, and you know, there's a different mentality to it to trap, and you there's a lot of work involved with it, um physically, mentally, you know, I'll say so deer hunting, a lot of people can relate to deer hunting. So you're gonna deer hunt, and you're gonna you're gonna deer hunt every day in December or every chance you get. Right. So, for the majority of us that work a forty hour week, you're not gonna be able to hunt during the week.

You're gonna be able to hunt on the weekends, right because sunrises it seven o'clock and sets at four thirty. So you hunt every single chance you can. During December, you're gonna get to hunt eight times eight days basically. Right. If I want to go trap and I want to trap every day in December, I'm in the woods thirty one days in December. That takes a lot of drive and a lot of you know, a lot of you know, you just gotta be involved with it so much more.

And I think that's that's what drives me to do it, is just the challenge of it. That's a pretty good point where one of the four years that I really trapped hard. Would be like my last two years of high school where I got where I could get out of school early. I'd go early, but get out earlier, and i'd get out pretty like remarkably early, be done like one forty or something like that. UM. And then in my two first years of college, I did community college.

I took all night classes so I could trap, so I didn't have to show up until five. No, I either had to be there at six or seven, and I only went four days a week and i'd be there until ten at night. UM. I would start October fifteen when Fox opened, and I would be in the woods every single day. Every day between October and the end of January. I would have some business in the

woods every day. And don't you feel that you have a kind of a little better relationship with kind of I guess the outdoors or your area, and you're seeing stuff every single day. You're in the woods way more than like the average deer hunter. I mean, you're interacting with stuff that most people can't, and that to me is just that's cool. You know, looking for tone ail marks in the mud, Yeah, that's all you're prints in the mud. But no, to me, That's that's what draws

me to it is just the challenge. And then you know, for my instance, I go ahead and I take it a step further if you will, with with my fur handling side of it. So, I mean, you know a lot of people selling the round or they sell green, which is just a skinned critter um and it round is hole on the carcass. You caught the thing, you dispatched it there lays that's in the round, and like, who explain who the hell you'd sell a raccoon in

the round. Two. So whenever we have times of high fur prices, um, there are you know the auction companies of fur buyers that will buy that, you know back like your fur boom, remember people talking about that's they wouldn't even bother taking the time to skin their coons because the price difference between finish fur and in the round it wasn't enough to justify going through all the

trouble of it. They could just go out and catch more coons and there every night dropping by the fur buyer, or you could freeze them, you know, depending on depending on your climate too. But yeah, selling in the round or selling in the green, um, nafa there at the end of their kind of run. They were offering um skinning. You could you could, you could send them green furs

and they would flesh them and stretch them. So a lot of buyers, to a lot of your county buyers sometimes prefer having green fur or or in the round, mainly just green, simply because they know you're not gonna screw it up. Got so, I mean, they know that they've got a skill set. They're gonna flesh and stretch it just how they want it. Because your local buyers are selling to the auction houses anyway, so they want to get a premium and they want to have it right.

So you want to know something that's gonna increase tension between you and Seth, and it's going to create tension between you and Rick, making all sorts of enemies. Seth had a top lot mink, Yeah, which he's gonna tell what that means. And you had a top lot something. I had a top lot gray fox. Okay, tell tell Stu all about that. What that means? Oh, the top lot, uh, Stu priority knows. Yes, Stu knows about the top lit guarantee.

I've had a few. Yes, we talked about it. What hurts me more is I got that top lot and seth He's like, hey, Rick, you're gonna back up, back up, back up. Okay, who wants to explain what the hell the top lot is? I've never had one, but I can do it. Yeah, whoever go for to explain the top lot? Yes, his for knowledge is because this is for handling one on one okay. So a top lot and generally when we we're talking top lot, we're talking about selling through the auction houses. So you've got a

few different ways to sell. Obviously, you can sell to your county or local buyer, and then normally they will actually sell to the auction houses. So a few years ago there were two main auction houses. There was NAPFA, which was North American for auction and then FH for harvesters. Right, NAPFA went under a few years ago, so now there's

just for harvesters. So these auction houses they will gather up giant lots of fur and they will grade them down by size, by color, whole, different whole, different lists of stuff. So to get a top lot basically means that you have your your pelt in the very top of what's selling. So you've got the best color, the best size, the best quality. You've got the best of say, all the coyotes that are being sold at that auction, that top lot. You've got your your pelt in that

lot that's being sold. And I mean it's a pretty big honor really, you know, to be able to get that um and they give you a hat, they give you a hat, they give you a pen, they give you a little certificate with your name on it. It tells you so you gotta hear rix very sad story though, So it was. It was actually because or maybe actually yeah it was. And uh, I gotta this certificate in

the mail the top lot for that gray fox. And I told Seth about it, and he was like all pumpt He's like, hey, when you go sell for next time, you could take your certificate and show the driver and you'll you'll get a hat. And I'm like, oh, sweet, well explain what the driver's Oh yeah, okay, so well Stu can talk so much better this, but you gotta it's a very it's a weird. It's a weird. So I'll back up even more. You're doing something illegal to the point, and the gentleman Seth used to work for.

We're kind of my trapping mentors, and they're telling me. He's like, all right, you gotta sell your fur now, you gotta. I'm like, how do I do that? So they're explaining they you gotta go with the th a truck seven thirty and drive around back just a truck stop. And I thought, Seth and this, gentlemen, we're messing with me, and side to show up and then I'll just know

what to do. And I have my little my little bag they gave me and my my sat my Napha sack, and I'm sitting there and then when you get there, pull your pants, don't and it's always a sketchy And I'm sitting there and I started noticing all these other trucks pull up and I'm like, okay, I think, and it's yeah, like six in the morning. Then this budget rental truck comes ripping into the parking lot, just parks in the middle back. Guy gets out, opens the back door,

and I think, I told you. I felt like it's like when you're young kid going into gym class for the first time in the showers and I'm like, have this. I have this little bag I'm like, yeah, I got twenty furs in here, and then these dudes are just on loaded white bags. I'm like, oh shit, wow, that's a lot um. But that was the first couple of times. So you you you go there and you get in the line, hand in all your bags. They give you. It was like the old certificate styles, like they'd write

on it. They'll be like a pink sheet, a yellow sheet, and you'd have to throw one in the bag and they'd hand you your you know, and I'm butchering this stup and no money changes hands. But that's the pickup I'm referring to. So a couple like in the next year, I'm at this pickup and I'm like, I have last year's top Lot certificate in my hand and I can't wait to get that naff a top Lot trapper hat.

I know it sounds so stupid because I was so into it great because the Golden broadered anyway feel and I walked up. I was one of the last guys in line. We did my for exchange. He uh did my sheet and I was like, sir, I also have a top Lot certificate here. I was like, I'm wondering do you have the hats. And it was this old guy. He looks right, just so serious. He's like, oh, I'm sorry, son, I'm all out of those hats. I just gave them all, like my last one out. And I was like, oh,

that's all right, you know. But I was so crushed. I walked off like I was tough, but I was like, oh my god. All I wanted was a damn hat. To this day, I don't have one in it. Like you're tearing up right now. Man, it's emotional. Yeah, see, man, I want to see. I've never had a top lot but kind of what I mean, I never would and you should be shot if you do. But I'd be very tempted to wear that hat. Yeah you got you got? What did you wore? And got exposed? People like, let

me see your certificate? Do you know I'm gonna I was gonna frame my certificate. After we talked about it a few months, I was like, you have it, I still have it. Can hang in the studio here of course. Yeah, we're talking about You're like you should frame that, and I was like sitting in your truck, like you know what I should? Yeah, I've got mine frames? How many top lots you got, I've got three through NAFA for

which ones. I've got a coon, I've got a beaver, and I've got a kyote because see the problem is now I say a kyote because I'm from Illinois, Midwest, right, So there's kind of this thing amongst trappers. You have your top lot and then you have your top lot sections. So like my beaver, I my beaver was the top lot, My coon was the top lot. My coyote was the top lot of the section. So like the top the

best of the ship. It's like you're standing on the podium, but the guy your top of the podium, but there's still somebody just above you because it's not the top top, but it's still the top of that section. The Western Pales would be top. They are top. Like I'm never gonna get a top lot kyo or I trap ever, It's just not gonna happen. But I got the top lot of the section. Do you got three hats? No?

I got one hat because I've got two similar stories to what they really dropped the ball on the hats. I've got three pins though, yeah, I see how don't know the pins with so I cheated out of a pin and and yeah, man, but the hats were cool, like ninety I've wore mine until it was so ratty and nasty. Stu, you kind of talked hat and I'm not a hacky. I don't. I very rarely actually wear hats.

But that was like a badge of honor because I do think in the tear of like outdoorsman, trapper is a pinnacle and like not a lot of people in our generation, we're in the trap and that's what it's like. I want that hat so I can wear it, and I don't know, I just yeah, I felt like it was like a metal And when that old man told me I couldn't have one or didn't have it, I was like, where's your hat, Seth. I think it's back at my mom's place in Pennsylvania. Do you have your certificate?

I think it's there too, somewhere. Can you ever hunt it down? Yeah? You probably have her. Look look around for it. Do you want to plug your mass Boot company? While we're talking about the Center Boot Company in Belfont, Pennsylvania, check it out. If you need to buy boots, don't buy him anywhere else. Don't buy him at Zappos. Don't buy him at Amazon. Drive to Seth's Mom's store Center

Boot Company, um Work Hunting Western. They also sell all sorts of stuff like belt buckles and leather good If you're over there in Pensylvan If you're ever here, go to Schnads. If you are there, go to Sasma check them out. I have a booth at the the the Big Sportsman Show in Harrisburg. Here you can actually go meet the real Sess mom. Go go look up their booth if you're gonna be there and ask her if she can please find Sess hat and top lots certificate.

Yes that I'm sure that hats because you had it in college. You had it on like your wall. Yeah, that kind of lost track of it. I don't know where it is. But you see, they only give top lots for certain species. So for some reason where I'm at, we grow like awesome possums. I don't know why, right, but back in the day you could pay for all your gas by by putting up possums. What is the day eleven through fourteen? That's that's my fur boom. Okay,

so explain the possum market. Well, I mean, you know you've got kind of a lower end market with the possums. But normally you catch them as I catch and I would put them up and I mean, we we grow some big possums there, and I would remember, I can't say the exact I want to say, like seventeen dollars I sold a possum for back in the day. I mean I averaged like twelve dollars on them. Yeah, And is that is that market collapse now? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, it's hard to even get rid of them right now.

But you were saying. One thing you're telling me that's interesting is the skunk for market doesn't fluctuate, not really, No, depending on who you go through in the different avenues you go through. Skunks are at least what I trapped in my area. They're the most consistent cell every year, mainly just because their novelty item. So who do you sell the skunks to. I've got a couple of private

buyers who I'm not gonna say, but got you. I mean, it's it's kind of a it's it's a niche market, right, So I mean, you know you flood the market with these niche buyers, then you know you're not gonna have your market but yeah, it's it's a very consistent market. And how many skunks did you put up this year? Probably I don't know number. I'm saying between sixty and seventy so far you flushed and stretched between sixty and seventy skunks this year. You don't even smell, Like, how

do you dispatch them? Because that's that's always real controversial. Uh, A lot of guys will inject them with acidtone. I I shoot everything. I'm not going to take the time. I'm running in gunning the whole time, So I do

a center body shot, try to hit the vitals. I think the trick is a very slow bullet, something that's not going to create a lot of impact, and you probably get maybe one out of eight, one out of nine that spray because I want the essence, right, So that adds to the value of the skunk, is that you sell the fur. But then you there's also a market for the essence, and so essence right now is you know right about ounds average? Yeah, So how much

do you get out of one skunk about? I mean, like, oh, since wise, So it just depends on if they spray or not, if they're full, you know, all over half an ounce. So you take a skunk that's you know, if he's got good white stripes, and if he's full essence, you know, throw another ten to twelve dollars on it. That's not a bad deal for something you're not necessarily

targeting either. I mean there are guys that target them, but for me, there by catch, ye, So well why not just set specifically for him because I'm out there targeting other species And I say by catch and the fact that I'm in the same general area so I catch them in a lot of my coon sets is where I catch them. Because you're gonna catch them whether you're targeting him or not. Yeah. So, and like I said,

you want that, you want the good ones. Um, you know you're gonna get a little bit more money for the good white stripes. That's what they want. I mean, that's that's what the novelty market is wanting. But no, the skunk is an underrated for for sure. And if you have never seen a skunk for in general, they've got all some for it's real long, kind of silky for I mean, it really is a student you say, they're trappers even starting to target them now just because

of that market for sure. Yeah, there there's several guys that I know that they go out and pretty much target them. You know, do you think me and Rick would be all pull top Lot off those giants I was showing you earlier today, we'll see. That's one funny. I never did get a top Lot skunk. I don't think they give out the certificates. That's a funny, you know, it's kind of I haven't gotten that hat. Yeah, and I never sold a skunks. I don't know because those

are some big skunks though. You have to Yeah, you have to go to Fern harvests now. And I don't know if they give out for forgiven my ignorance here, what is the market for the essence? Like what are people using it for? What do they want it for? So the main market is for bait makers. Um, it's also you can google essence and come up with I mean it it is there's a large market for The main market is essence for for lure, for trapping. That

takes a lot of it. Um. You know when it's so like we were running Martin sets, right, There's not a lot of skunks in the mountains, so those guys can't access you know they don't have access to skunks. So but there are different different markets for it too as well. Um, I think I could be wrong. I think there's some food additives that stu you might have hurt. I feel like years ago was used in perfumes a

lot perfect. They would pull apart the scent, but like what sticks and there's some way to break it down? Casts huge? Yeah, casts a hundred bucks of pound right now casts a hunter bucks. So like castor is always funny because like around the holidays, we're talking about it. We're talking about a thing that like when you skin a beaver on each side of the vent, it would be like if you're like if you reach down and grab on yourself male or female whatever, above your how

would I put it? What would be that little area? I know, a vulgar term for that little area exactly between the in between zones, not your taint. It's like just like a vulgar term for what that is? What is it like if you were gonna I don't know, like above your genitals and on either side it's like a little soft area where your legs join up to your body. What is that called that spot? If you had a hernia. Oh yeah, picture you had a hernia on a beaver, there sits. If you had a double hernia,

growing area, Yeah, you're growing area. There sits. These two sacks full of castor, it looks like a brain, looks like two brains hiding out down in there um. And they use it for imitate like artificial vanilla. Vanilla extracts a big one, a lot of the goals. I think there's a big market in Turkey for something. They fume. It's huge and perfume because it really does have a sweet smell. Hundred bucks of pound right now, the castor. If you get a beaver loaded with castor, his caster

is worth more than all of his other parts. Is that has I've been with Steve sitting on a bunch of pounds of it trapping? Is it the weight the dried out weight? Yeah? Generally there's a few different ways, but generally the accepted way is to have it dried. Can I give you a huge bag of beaver casters and then you'll like on me like a stretcher or something like that. Were already gave me two stretchers. If I give you a big bag of beaver casters, we call it into even get that hat from him? Would

you fly home with the beaver casters? We can fly home with. I don't know. I'm gonna let you home with a bunch of beaver casters. Now you need him for bait, because that's one universal bait. I know, it's a universal attracting No beaver caster is is where it's at if you're trapping right now. So I'm gonna give you a bunch of beaver cast and the oil sacks too. You can also take the oil sacs. I kind of quit saying because me and Seth here we're old lure makers.

I don't let you know that, and we would we made We made like a lot. Oh yeah, is that that stuff we used the other day? Is that's still from the main stuff? We made like a couple of quart jars of that stuff, and we took a valerian root appalescence and a lot of beaver caster and a lot of glycering. I should work that stuff now, the castor definitely where it's at. Are you selling castor I'm

selling caster? I take what because I make a lout of my own bait, So I take every year what I need to get me through Basically the next year and then I'll sell the rest. Let me give you a couple of bags of it. Okay, that's why you'd have it. I want it. What's your beaver pressure like in southern Illinois is is there a lot of people trying to catch beavers there? There's not a lot of beavers where I'm at. Okay, So that's that's the problem, more than anything, is that you've got to be very

conscious about. You know, I've always said where I'm at right now, if I wanted to, I could take two weeks and I could basically trap out my my area. And so I've got to be very conscious about how I trapped the beaver. I trapped far away from the house, trying to get the big, the big you know, parent beat far away from the beaver house. Yeah, because generally the further way you get from the house, you'll kind of keep yourself from catching the small kit beavers. They

just don't travel as far. Uh. And then I just you know, once I go in, I'll take you know, two or three out of the house and then I'm done. I'll leave it just to kind of have seed for next year. And that's just like how big is your

trapping area. Like, so my trapping area is dictated a lot by my work, being that I work construction, so I have a giant range that I've worked over the years, and over the years I've set up sort of trap lines to correlate with where I'm working, you know, because I mean I'm working every day, so I want to be able to run the line on the way back home from work. You know, tell tell priority this, This

will help them conceptualize it. Like if you tell them how many permissions permissions, how many permissions you maintain at any given time, between a hundred fifty landowner permission getting that many white tail permissions, it would never happen. Well, because that's the only way I can trap. So we have very We have no public land where I'm at. But yeah, he mad, but you don't give him your spiel. Yes, So I mean he walks up with traps and starts

jamming his hands into him. Don't give him an education, you know, because I mean the first So in general, people are worried about their dogs. So in general, I'm gonna get nine knows to one yes, even for trapping permission. Yeah, that's people, don't they don't understand. They don't want you on it, which you know, it's their lands whatever, But I mean that's kind of my ratio is is nine knows to one yes. So you'll go up, you'll have

a conversation with them. That's better than Spencer's white Tail ratio wasn't like a hundred and fifty and he got one or something. He got one a hundred and fifty letters. He got like an A plus. He was like grading. He got like an A plus, a couple of season a D minus. Anyway, go on, So no, I'll go up and try to, you know, more than anything, try to educate the people about trapping, because I mean a lot of people just don't know about it, you know.

And then, like I said, then they have the illusion that I'm gonna go trap where you're gonna bring out a giant bear trap with teeth, you know, and and you know it's just not the case. So you know, if that fails, I'll normally get out traps and I'll hear, this is what I'm gonna use, and you know, nine times out of ten, I'll stick my hand in him and show, you know, I'm not losing fingers or breaking bones or anything. And you know for me where I'm at, because I do live in what I would consider a

fairly populated area. Kind of last resort, I'll go to the dog proof traps, which if you not understand what a dog proof is, it's basically a cylinder and so like a coon of skunk apossum, they all have a lot of dexterity in their paws. They kind of have

a hand, if you will. So with a dog proof trap, if you can picture about a three inch tube that's about an inch and a quarter in diameter and very bottom of it as a lever on it that you actually have to pull, as opposed to a foothold trap, where you know, the critter just puts his paw in it and then the jaws closed around. With these dog proof traps, the opening is small enough that that ideally a dog can't get his paw down in there, and you have to actually have dextery to pull up on

that track. You can only catch things that could pick a lot pretty much. So I will use that as you know, kind of a last resort so to speak, to get permission, you know, and say hey, I can you know, with the right bait, I can trap around all your cats and you know, your farm dogs and everything like that, and sometimes that kind of seals the deal. If you have a hunter, let's say you had a

how many you got like a hundred permissions? If you let's say that hundred permissions, how many those are dog proof only? I would say close to half. Huh, close to half. I mean that's the only way I can do it. And that's the reason I use so many dog proofs in my trapping is because you know, I've gotta do what I gotta do what I like. You can't do kyote work on those places. Can't do kyote work,

can't set one and A have no two twenties. Have you had any luck like getting permission where like a hunting leases where they're like after white tails or turkeys or waterfowl because those guys want you coming into there's a few. Yeah, they want the predators gone. Um, you know which they always have stipulations though, I don't want you in here a week before season or you know, a week after season, and they want to really make you work for it, you know, which is at least

in Illinois. You know, we've got a shotgun firearm season starting November. Every other weekend for a month and a half. So it makes it really difficult to work around, you know, so you've got to do a lot of planning and and different things like that to be able to work around and actually trap an area like that. Explain your we talked about otters today, Explain how it works for you, like in a regulatory sense when you talk about like you talk about like getting my honors, so to get

my orders in Illinois, we got a season. I guess it was eight nine years ago or so by now, Uh, so I can go out in Illinois. I'm allowed five orders for my license, so I can go out and and target the order. Once I catch it, I make a phone call to the d n R and they send me a a site tag and then I tag that order wants it as a site tag on it, Then I'm good to sell it. And you every year can get five. I can get every yeah, every year. And what do you do with those five? I sell

them to taxidermy trade or fur trade. I sell a couple every year to taxidermy, but the majority of them goes to fur trade. Normally I can find somebody local that wants I'm as a wall hanger that I could sell them to, you know, because we're only dealing with five. So it comes and goes back in the day. You know, I was selling them back in the day again, you know, there's more money and so on them at the fur

trade than it was selling them local. But what was the highest and otter Pelt went for it that you can remember in terms of your furbroom. I remember selling a couple for fifty bucks, So I mean nothing crazy, you know, which whenever you're looking at a fifty dollar or you're looking at a huge critter, you know, you feel like you should be getting more for him anyway, you know. But so how is it that you wand

up deciding to do like all the instructional videos. Did you do it as a way to like did you think it would be a way to make money? No? No, because there's there's no money in it. But there's no money just making YouTube videos not for me, because YouTube so restricted and you don't have and you don't have

you don't sell equipment or anything. No. No, so YouTube so restricted on their stuff that you know, everybody hears about monetization of videos, and my content is not monetization, you know, the YouTube won't let you monetize your videos, or YouTube won't monetize because of my content because they feel that it's it's like an animal cruelty issue, and there's a fine line you to play. You know, YouTube

is huge with blood. You know you can't show blood, and you know there's a strike rule too, so you're always kind of walking that fine line of you know, even if this is demonetized per se, I've still gotta not get a strike on my channel because then they could just you could wake up one morning and it could just be done. You know. But you've never lost your channel, never lost my channel. I've had two strikes before.

And you're telling me that too, that YouTube's policy makes it that you're afraid to like redo and make new versions of your high performing videos. Correct. Yeah, yeah, so a lot of my videos, which I guess to kind of get back to your initial questions. So we're talking back back in the day. Um, this was ten years ago. I've been doing YouTube now for this is my tenth here doing it, and uh, which kind of correlates right

with the middle of the last fur boom. And I've been trapping for a few years, you know, and I've been putting on my fur and you know, not to pat myself on the back, but I mean I kind of felt like I knew what I was doing. And I remember, like what was Rick was saying. You go up to the NAFA truck, you know, and you're sitting there and it standing there, and you know, of course during a fur boom, you've got a lot of new guys coming in. You know that that aren't there because

they're just there for the money. And red fox are pretty rare around my area, you know, not very common. And at this time, you know, ten years ago, there wasn't a lot of literature out there about trapping. You know, you were fur fishing game, you were trappers, but there was just a few magazines, you know, but for the most part, there wasn't a lot of information out there.

It was kind of secretive. Really. I remember walking up to the NAFFA truck and there was this guy and he must have found a pocket or red fox, which you know, like I said, around my are is pretty rare, and he had him hanging there and he didn't have an alfa back because it was the first year and those things were just butchered. I mean, they you could just tell the guy did not know what he was doing. And I remember that I told myself. I was like, well,

I could do this. I could. I could put out content you know that people could could view and put up there their fur right, you know, because I feel like you're gonna take the animally, might as well do it justice and put it up right. And it was actually that night I went home, made a YouTube channel. And then that following season, Yeah, that following I was the first thing you launched on it. I was hunting with my coonhound because the season was still in the

season was still in for that. So that was the first video I ever uploaded. Was was hunting with my coonhound. And then that following year, uh, that following trapping season, I started with the for handling videos, and I did for handling videos on them just about all the all the critters in my area from you know, the processes catching them, skinning them, fleshing. I'm stretching them, the whole deal. So and and talk about why you can't why you

don't want to redo them. So I've tried to redo them a couple of times, and every time I upload them, they very quickly get demonetized, which sucks because you know, they find it because it's new, Yeah, because YouTube finds it. Because so all my old videos are demonetized anyway, but they're still up there, so it's not like they can strike me on them. You know, they've already demonetized them, but new videos, so they don't go strike you about

ten year old stuff. No. I woke up one morning a few years ago and I had like seventy five videos that were all demonetized, and I had a strike overnight. Yeah, it's just all yellow on my on my page. They hit me hard. I couldn't I couldn't upload for fifteen, fifteen or twenty days. I can't remember what it was. They like banned me from it. So yeah, no, I've tried in the past because I said, obviously I didn't

know what the hell I was doing back then. You know, I had a borrowed camera that I set up in my shop, you know. And do you ever think about doing what's that called? Were you like a lot of podcasts are doing it Patreon? Right, have you ever thought about trying to do a fur handling thing? Um, a fur handling series like Patreon where people just donate like people just come in and view and donate a little money. So I actually do have a Patreon I and I've

tried it. The problem is, especially nowadays, YouTube is where the traffic is I understand. So you the video streaming service on the plan. So you've got to have that audience in that draw to be able to So if you do on yourself, you're just never gonna people are gonna find it. You're gonna go find something find and very few people I mean especially now. You know, back then I was one of the first people. I was putting out trapping content, you know, and and that kind

of content. Now everybody and the Brothers got a channel. You know, they're putting out the content. So people aren't gonna go pay to watch something that you know, they can just go right down the search bar and go search too. So it's tough. You know, you're in a real pickle. Pickle, Yeah, but it's been fun. Can they just still support though? Anyway? Yeah, I've got to pay be set up for it. But I mean it doesn't

have a lot of traffic that goes towards it. Like I said, huh, some people it just searched con Creek Outdoors on on Patreon, but you won't find it through YouTube. No, No, it's and a link underneath all my videos. So if people are out there to listen to this that like Stue Miller's Coon Creek Outdoors for handling and trapping videos, they would need to go to Patreon and then find you there and give you a little jingle. Yeah, that's

one way to support, you know. I feel like that's why I'm gonna give you all that beaver cast, because I haven't been in that page to pay you. There's not there's not a lot there, and I don't honestly, I don't post a lot of videos there simply just because the traffic there is not justifiable to all the work that goes into it. But no, it's like I said, I, you don't do it for the money, you know, just like Rick probably knows. You know, you don't trap for

the money either, not right now. I mean you can trap for the heritage and the sport of it, you know. Yeah that romantic Yeah, it just drips the roman you know, you're all about traditional practices and trapping is one of the oldest. You know, it drips the romance. Yeah, that's all I wanted to read about when I was a kid man, because kids want to go live out in the woods and make the living off the woods. And I didn't know about writing. I thought you had to

do it through trapping. What was I am for a surprise? Do you ever do uh any uh like road trip trapping vacations for stuff you don't get to trap for this year near home? This was my first year. Yeah, this year. Yeah, the one to me, Stu came out and me and Rick and Stu uh got abused out in the that was that was a hard, hard trip. But no, that's a tough road to home. Podcast is not from that trip, is no, No, definitely not. No.

That is one thing that YouTube has given me. It's it's let me meet people, go places and do things that I would never been able to do. You know, So plug your plug your hunting fishing channel. So if you want to check me out, you can search Coon Creek Outdoors. That's where the good stuff is. That's where the gold is. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's where I put

up all my content. When I say the gold, that's where like the stuff that like, Um, I shouldn't say that cause I want to hack on yourself saying that's where like like you excel um at like a skill set that's not widely known, and like the fur handling trapping information like to me is like there's I don't think there's anyone When I want to know something, I'm gonna go look at that. I appreciate that, you know

that means a lot. But yeah, I pride myself on on the put up and the fur handling side of it. So I mean, you know, there's nothing special about what I do, you know. I mean I'm not the best trapper and I'm not the best of putting up stuff. But you made a boat from scratch. I made a boat from Yeah. I came across the video at one time looking up just like looking up boat stuff on YouTube. Yeah, well welded a boat because he likes to fish, catfish. He likes fish crappy, so he weld it up a

catfish crappy combo boat, Sweet che On. That's on my main chapel, Conker Outdoors. Okay, tell peopleout the other channel though, So I've got another channel branched off of my main channel simply because the audience just wasn't there. But I've got a fish and channel that I do a lot of content on in summer. It's a couple of years

old now called Total Angling Experience. And that's that's where I'm slowly trying to put all my fishing content and you know, educational side electronics and different things like that. Because you like, you like cats, like cats, and like crop That's that's what I fished for home. So cats and croppies speaking, if you're interested in that kind of stuff, yeah, that's I don't bass fish, so catfish and croppies where

I'm at. I think that everyone out there needs to send stum Miller a few pounds of beaver castor or go to the Patreon deal and throw a little jingle this guy's way. Well, you're you're your fishing stuff is

probably not demonetized, right, Fishing stuff is not demonetized. That's that's another reason, you know, I wanted to have kind of a backup, if you will, you know, just because all the problems with YouTube, you know, I mean, there's there's a huge deal right now with just kind of all the outdoor community with YouTube, you know, kind of

demonetizing and picking what they want to see. Man a conversation we have all the time is how can you come in and, ah, how could you come in and create an alternative for outdoor How could you come in and create an an alternative for outdoor pursuits that would get that you would build up so big that it would actually have traffic, would be a reliable place to go look. But it's like YouTube is so that the

most it's where all the traffic is, you know. I mean, you want to know something, you search it on you think I don't know what it is. Every minute, four hundred hours of stuff gets up volded to YouTube or something like that. YouTube is a Google company, aren't they? Man like if somehow? But it's it's almost like it's like the Q tip thing. It's just YouTube's not even

it's just where do you find information? It's not it's a It's bigger than just seeing I feel like socially now, No, we launched, we put every day every day our company. We put material on YouTube every day, like I'm not hacking on it. But what I don't like is I don't like the hostility to the hostility to the disciplines. It's like uncertainty in that environment, right, you never know what's going to happen like putting out that kind of content. Yeah, yeah,

they can take it. They can take it away from you tomorrow if they really want, without any questions. Because their platforms, so you know, as much as you want to be on their love it or right it, you still got played by their rules. I do want to say just is a very humble person. But I started

trapping right around the time student and Just. I love old trapping books, but there's a lot of times I read that where I'm like, yeah, someone's gonna have to show me how to actually do that, like ses or the black and white photos that are so horrible on my I was gonna ask to like how, Like where'd you learn it all? How did you get good at it? I was self taught for the most part everything, you know, because like I said, I did learn a lot um

for fishing game. I've had a subscription to them forever, and there was a lot of educational stuff then a lot was just trial and error. I thought Trapper and Predator Collar blew fur fishing game away on instructional that you think. So when I was a kid, fur fishing game was more fun to read, but instructional I mean a lot of it. And like like Rick said, you know, you can read and you can watch somebody do it, but a lot of us just getting out there and

doing it trial and error. You know, there's a lot of real rough DVDs out there that will get you by. I appreciate your channel, though. You kind of one thing and we talked about what we were trapping, was you you cut through the bullshit pretty well because I went down rabbit holes on like Trapperman Forum and stuff where I'm like, oh my god, I gotta I gotta wear it has matt suit. So when you're making a set, you need to squint your left and your left hand and I you know, I guess the work. I got

so wound up on that. And your channel is really good. It cuts through it and it's so yeah, everyone, don't you go subscribe to Con't Creek Outdoors. And I appreciate that. No, that means a lot. And like I said, you know, a lot of guys are just out there to make content. But like so, I mean, it doesn't take a lot of people overthink trapping. They really do. Like you said, they go down a rabbit hole and they got to be this and nine inches sit back and four inches

over and this, that and the other. You know, there's whenever you really break it down, there's there's a few simple things that you gotta do to be able to be successful at it. And once you have those few fundamentals down, you're golden. I want to just touch on one of the things you taught me that I walked away from our little trip with that I ignored very much, and I think it's that romantic little side of it.

You were like set on sign and every time we came to a picture perfect area, you were like, well, is there a sign here? Because if there's not, we're not putting trap. And it hit me such a reality checks, like, man, I put traps in areas like this is what the manual tone to do. This is what that little book told me, and this is perfect. I don't see any sign here, but I'm gonna put a set here. And these animals are so dumb they don't know they're supposed

to be. Uh So, just something like that, Yeah, I took away from that stew and yeah, so no, you gotta you gotta be setting where the critters are, you know, and a lot of people I'm trying to catch kyotes and I can't catch because everybody gets a heart on for kyotes, right, Like that's like kind of the pinnacle predator. You know, well, if you're gonna catch a kyle, you gotta be where a kyo it is. You know, you

gotta be where he's gonna travel. And you know, it's the same thing with a lot of things we're doing in the outdoors, like fishing. You gotta be fishing where the fish are. And yeah, I mean it's easy set you know, you can say that and people like, of course, but you gotta put your time in scouting, and sure there's a lot of you're not setting where you want them to be. It's do you do social media too? Yeah, a little bit. I got Facebook, Instagram, So tell people

where that's at. Conkerg out Wars. It's all you need to remember. Coon Creek Outdoors as simple as it gets. Let's say you fella has a Kyle, they're out deer hunting. Here comes a beautiful cow run along. They're like, man, I'm gonna hang that sucker on my wall. What do you do? Go to Coon Creek Outdoors you can find videos of how to set the traps, skin and flesh, and I've got videos on tanning for home use and

garment use everything else. So remember send him a pound of castor or go to what's it called not Pantheon patrion, don't go there? Who stude? Thanks for coming out, man, No appreciate. It's been a blast. Man, it's been awesome. Speaking of wall hanger coyotes. You know what you're doing next. Now we're doing stuff going over to my garage, all right, man, Thank you very much,