Ep. 407: California's War on Woodsmen

your help. I'm going to be at the National Wild Turkey Federation's Annual Convention in Nashville, Tennessee this year, and I'm looking for the best Turkey storytellers alive. Now. I know we all have a good turkey story to tell, but I want you to think about who you know that tells an absolutely riveting turkey tale a person and that draws everyone in the room to their story. Bring them to me. I'm going to be at Ryman's Studios in the same building as a convention, set up with

recording equipment and fill. The engineer is going to be there to make sure it sounds great. I have a goal of creating a national archive of hunters stories, and my first stop is the Southeast because I know you all down there. It can spend a good story. This is our oral history. I believe there's immense historical value to these stories and they should be preserved for future generations.

Don't let your grandpa's stories die with him. Bring him to the convention and have him spin a yarn for me. The stories can be funny, sad, educational, exciting, but most importantly, they have to be engaging. This is where the good storyteller part comes in. All storytellers will get twenty minutes to tell their story, and I will be on hand

to ask questions to fill in the blanks. We'll be recording at Ryman's studio SEE from nine am to four pm Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the convention, which is February sevent and eighteen. There will be posters directing you to our location to sign up for a time slot. Ahead of time, go to the meat eater dot com and search Turkey Story sign Up. We will also have sign up available on location at the door of Ryman

Studio See. Met Eater will use these stories in a forthcoming audio project, most likely in podcast format, so they will be available to everyone as long as the Internet is alive. So please come to Nashville for the National Wild Turkey Federation Convention and bring me the best turkey storyteller you know, are hunting legacy depends on it, all right, everybody. We're joined by a mercer, Lolling, who Karin described at Krin who's not here, described him as the last trapper

in California. It maybe Bobcat expert, uh former not even former Bobcat like Bobcat for harvester turned uh continue to do that, but also uh got involved in the research world of applying his skills that being able to catch animals that no one else can catch. Yeah, for sure, it's uh been a fund several years. Have been doing it for three years on the project in Arizona now.

And uh, you know, with the cage business, I end up, uh you know, I end up selling cage traps for research work for you know, all over the country really almost pretty much every state that's doing a population study or or anything. With the bobcats. They're not too many of them that doesn't end up using, you know, my equipment, and so I get feedback from them. And I've been on a few different studies and and I was just telling you this morning, I was telling links researcher that

she's gonna need to can act with you. Yeah, that's great. They usually end up finding me. Um, the research community, you know, there a lot of them. You know, they're all pretty well connected, so a lot of them people end up usually finding me. Another thing we're gonna get into is the days in time you spent around California's Bobcat Band where you you uh told me some stories about that. Yeah. Boy, that's that's a few years of my life. I don't ever want to relive into that

whole story. Um. Oh, you know the thing we got to talk about, Phil, What uh you toured a new one in that play? You tore that play a new one? Appreciate Did you guys go see Phil? I did? I did not? Sorry, Phil, I got a couple of feedback points for you. Oh let me hear it. Um, I thought you did a phenomenal job. Is this one of your famous compliment sandwiches? No, it's an insult sandwich. Great well, I got a question where I have two compliments, two

compliments with insult in the middle. Before he gets into that, I got a question technical question. Are you guys amplified at all your voices or they're wearing. They're wearing Garth Brook's head pieces. You didn't notice, that's right. I was sitting in the cheap seats, Steve so No, I was too far away to see their uh little microphones. Yeah. Yeah, we've got a little bit of juice coming through the speakers. Had great seats. Middle Phil literally brought the roof down.

Are you were of this hunk of roof? Like? It got to halftime in uh, which my kids are very anxious. They're told they could get a candy cane at halftime. So it got to halftime, the curtain comes down. A dude that's been sitting there for how long stands up and a hunk of the roof comes down and lands on his seat. Yeah, some of the some of them molding on the ceiling fell during intermation. They'll brought the roof down. They had to tape off like five rows

and move These people crazy to have the halftime. Yeah, you get hurt. I don't think so. If you were listening careful, you'd have heard he got up, he got up and fell on the seat. He got up at halftime and it fell on his seat. Oh, I didn't catch a part that he got up. First, Oh, great job, Phil. And the second part, um, I felt that the the gentleman playing Scrooge wasn't sufficiently surprised at the arrival of the ghosts. Okay, yeah, it's a it's a I see

where that's coming. Very surprising. Sure, yeah, I think he was playing it a little, a little loose and more on the the humorous side than kind of seriously definitely scared. Yeah, you know it is it is a complement sandwich, because it's in fact, it's two criticisms. Okay, that's um, you did a phenomenal job. Thank you. I felt that he wasn't sufficiently surprised by the arrival of ghosts, which would listen,

I imagine quite a response. Um. The second thing is, and this is this is from a colleague of ours, Maggie. She likes a good spooky, She likes a spooky rendition of Oh yes, this this was not Yeah, it's a comedic. It was comedic. The only spooky part I'd say is the Christmas Christmas future gets a little spooky, but everything else is very it's it's it's a light touch for sure. Yeah, comedic. Yeah, and that's and that's kind of the first time I've done a version of it that's a little bit on

the lighter side. You enjoyed it. I thought it was good for the kids. Kist it. They kept they kept their attention a little more I think than the than the spookier version. You know how Scrooge is, uh like he's looking in he's looking in at that and with the Christmas present, he's kind of like looking in on that party and her dogging on him at the party. Well, towards the end, my daughter whispered to me, if he fixes everything, well they still say the mean things about

him at the party. It's insightful. Yeah, that's smart. Uh, well I had one more so that was kind of like a neither a compliment criticism, Yeah, observation. Yeah, it's about it. Great. Well, thanks so much for coming and I really did not Yeah, we really enjoyed it. Phil, Is your theater career just a Christmas thing? Are you

gonna do like shows throughout the year? I did Sound of Music during the summer, and then they asked me to do this And now I think I'm gonna take a long break because I am I'm tired, and the family is tired. It's a lot of rehearsals, but I'm I'll probably do it again. I like it a lot. It's fun. I have ever told you I think is the worst, Like the absolute worst rendition of Christmas Carol is the Muppet one. Yeah, yeah, where Michael Caine to this.

Yeah Yeah, he's looks like he's yeah, he's not acting, he's just kind of cur He's seems surprised that he's surrounded by puppet. The puppet started to sing and he he just zones out. It's like he's say it about shitty needs to do after work. So horrible. I think there's some some moving moments in that movie. But I see, yeah there, Yeah, I see where you're coming from. Here's something crazy, man, check this out. I got a lot of I got a lot of opinions about this, a

lot of things to say about this. So there's a paper just came out, um a DNA some DNA work being done on black bears. They've identified a mutation. So they've identified a genetic mutation in black bears. You're following this, JOHNI I hope you're doing a better job than the roof Fallen down story and following us something about black bears. Okay,

something about grizzlies. So they've identified a mutation known as our one five three C in a gene called tyro snis related protein one which causes an alteration in the coats pigmentation that makes it for the same color as a copper penny. Well, they're talking about when people talk about getting a cinnamon bear, a genetic mutation. They they've isolated what it is that creates the cinnamon variant of black bears, and interestingly, they've figured out when it came

into being. Uh, I'll put it this way. I'll put it two ways. One way I'll put it is that the Clovis hunters probably we're not seeing cinnamon bears because this mutation seems to have emerged around nine thousand, three hundred sixty years ago. Here's what I'm gonna take a pause in this this paper, and it's it's it's spreading. Okay, it's spreading. Um. They feel that that the range and distribution of cinnamon bears is growing, and it seems to have a risen in the Southwest. But I'll point this

out one time. Uh, if you look at the prevalence of color phase black bears on a map overlaid with precipitation. You follow the film, Yeah, take a color coded map that shows precipitation levels in North America, and then you take a map that shows prevalence of color face bears. There is an uh astonishing correlation. Now point out the people that correlation is not causation, but wet ass areas, the wetter, higher precipitation areas tend to have more black

facebook tend to not have colored face bears. And one way you can look at me, like, there's stick vegetation, lots of shadows. They blend in thermal regulation stuff, right, meaning how you're for in the sun, cooperate and behave, um, the same reason in the North you run black angus cattle. In the South, you know where you're trying to keep them warm. In the South and the you know, in

the extreme environments, they don't run black cattle. They run cream cattle and red cattle and stuff that don't get as much solar radiation on that that keeps them warm. So I always say, oh, there are different colors down in the Southwest because um, different camouflaging requirements and also perhaps it's just not hot hotter and balls running out with black hair. It makes sense. No, And I don't even know if this this undoes that they Here's a

quote from the paper geography definitely plays apart. Our demographic modeling identified that the most likely place where the mutation arose was somewhere in the western region, very likely the southwest. From there it expanded through gene flow through populations, but even in that slow process. But even that is a slow process. With the majority of black bears on the east coast still sporting jet black furt and they're looking at the Great Plains as being a barrier to this

gene mutation spreading eastward. M uh albion is um. One thing that happens albino animals is they go blind and die early like they do don't live that long. Um. But this mutation doesn't seem to show any signs of visual problems like all that. We're talking to a board, uh, drying and stretching board. No, like a like an old board of microbiologist wrote in this is this is good stuff to know, microbiologist wrote in and he had some

things to say about our conversation. We're talking about the etiquette of the etiquette and safety of pooping on the ice. I've just been saving up all my things to say

for this. I don't Okay, now I've pointed out I've never done this, but I was putting the question like if people are talking about just sinking one okay, going into the hole and then using your scoop or whatever to try to sinker down, sink the cake, like, try to sink her down and then get her out of the way so that it's just floating up at the surface of the lake eventually probably sink and then just you know, you've got it taken care of in that people wouldn't know you did it, or you can lay

her right on the ice, which is unsightly. And I was talking about what if you took your auger and drilled a half hole so you got let's say you have twelve inches of ice. You take your auger and you go down eight inches, so you got a four inch buffer. Scoop that ice, slush out, go defecate, put that slush and snow back in and and and put

it in a little vault. And I was talking about what, uh, maybe that maybe over there and that stream environment, the microbes and the nasty things that would get into the water, wouldn't would would die, probably not put anyways, A microbiologist wrote in. He says, I've decided to write in to correct you on your assumption that the microbes in your poo pile would be killed by making it into a ship slushy using a partially dug ice fishing hole and actuality.

Your fecal matters snow cone, which is packed with bacteria and other microbes, would simply refrigerate, freeze and probably preserve the micro organisms and still spring. Microbes tend to go into a dormant stage sporulation during extreme conditions and are quite hardy in the environment. Much of the bacteria in feces is E. Coli, most of which is harmless, but some strains can cause nasty spray able dia aurehea. Specifically,

he names one spray. Yeah, I'm just picturing it in a cane by There are other microbes and feces that can cause disease, but I think I have something more interesting for you. A condition known as c DIF caused by close Stridium diffcial can be fatal. Oh listen to this. He's knocking you down, and now he's gonna bring you back up. Listen to this. Well, no, because listen, this is fascinating. A condition is known as c DIF. That's a abbreviation, caused by close stridium diffcial. Can be fatal,

but my emphasis on. But but it can be readily cured by ingesting the feces of a healthy person as an inoculation. That's no. I like that trip to the doctor where they're like, hey, eat this. Maybe maybe you can get it in pill form. Then he goes on to make a joke, and he wrote back to clarify

he felt bad after making the joke. He said, you could you can almost justify pooping into ice fishing holes as a means of inoculating the swimming population for C. DIF, which is far more dangerous than ni cole i. But a day later an email comes in, Hey, that was a joke. Please don't that was a joke. I'm not sure if you'd understood it was a joke. That was a joke, and don't do that. So still, the best practice would be to bring a bucket. It's line with

the plastic bag and pooping there. Collar. Yeah, the blue collar scholar sent me an amazing design we were talking about buying. I don't know who that is. Oh, Tommy had the guy. He's got an Instagram page now called the blue Collar Scholar because he does so good at the trivia show. He plays the trivia show and does he claims he does well, he was on the show

and didn't. He sends, no, he bombed here. But but that's I think there's a lot of people who think they do great at home, but they bombed, they would bomb and really it's they're like they're kind of like I think they're like, oh, I kind of had that, Like well that was my first guess you know what I mean, not like no one's really putting the screws to him to like actually you know, I mean, it's in their head. It's in their head. So he's like, god,

you know, I guess be Illinois, maybe Indiana. Yeah, in Indiana. Then they're like, Illinois, I knew it. Like a lot of that goes definitely. Um so we buy, like you can buy these things. You you go to any like, you go to sports his warehouse wherever the hell, and you buy it's like a light gauge five gallon pail with a snap on the seats, compatible with any five

gallon bucket. It's a flip top toilet seat. And you can get those bags that have that I don't know what the hell it is older killer in it, and you drop one in there and then you it's like a big heavy duty zip block with a trash bag joined to it. So you go into the trash bag, close the trash bag up. It goes into the ziplock ziplock it shake it to get the crystal stuff if you if you so please, and then it's pretty much archival.

You know, it's like one of those diaper genies. You know. Yeah, but then you get you know, you get back to the you get back to the boat launch or whatever, and and you got one of those bags. Anyways, Tommy sends me a thing. He's like, you don't need and these things are not expensive. But time he's like, you don't need to buy one of them expensive ass buckets.

They he's got a bucket. It's fixture. You got a five gallon bucket laying there, put a garbage bag and hanging over the edge like a trash can, and then take a pool noodle and just cut an incision down the length of the pool noodle, so you now have a piece of pipe inslation, or take a piece of pipe inslation it's pre cut mm hmm, and you make a little rim, a little sitting room. I was wondering where this was gonna make a little sitting with that

pipe inslave. I've seen this before. Yeah, when I was in the in the landscaping industry, you'd have to get uh, you know, you'd have to put some thought into how you were going some days, and a lot of guys carried like a bucket with a pool noodle. You didn't want to vault it in their landscaping. Well, you're all, you're like working in someone's front yard. You can't just can't just jump in the bushes. But if you're gonna

land some side down, who's gonna know? Well, just late the just everybody walking by, the lady watching you out of the out of her front window is gonna know. That's a good point. You're caring. But yeah, I knew of guys that carried around a five beyond bucket head that pool noodle pool noodle. I feel like a sucker

for buying that thing. I bought now, man, how how so in that when you were in the landscaping business, how where were they deployed, said Bucket, Well, you'd either deploy in the enclosed trailer or in the back of the dump like we had all we all had dump trucks and you you just get in the back of the dump truck. Yeah, but yeah, would you put us? How would people know you're in there? You just tell your crew that don't throw any biggs in there. Yeah,

you're gonna take care of somewhere. Or you'd go right into the tool crib, in the in the yeah, in the in the trailer. Yeah, guy wrote in this is pretty good. This makes me jealous. This pass is the jealousy test. So was it? Uh? Why was it that Trump didn't Why did he not fight in Vietnam? Was a b spurs? This guy? That's what I thought. So he this guy had bone spurs. He got him cut out and then send us pictures. He had his wife earrings made out of his bones spurs. M He made

the ear rings with his daughter. His daughter had an earring, had a jewelry kit, and he made a little box. He says, a piece of me for you, and it's these crazy little bone spur earrings made out of the bones spurs cut out of his feet. Man, I wish I hadn't known about that. I had bones spur surgery a year ago, did you. Yeah, I could have had something to remember it by besides just paint with every step I take. Still a year later, really, oh god,

what'd you do with your spurs? Apparently they just ground him. I didn't realize they take him off in one piece. Yeah, he got his back. He had to clean him a little bit. Yeah, he asked for him. Everybody that writes in this is a common thing on this show. Everybody that writes in, we'll say like, I want my stuff back, and they kind of like they it's like your property. They can't not give it to you. I never even

thought of that. He's the thing. This fellow says that his wife says it's the greatest present she's ever received. M I like her, man, I'll let marry her. She'd probably like some turkey spur hearings. Mm hmmm. Uh. Here's the trick. Here's the tricky one for me. Oh, Yanni, did you have something to add about the ice stuff you're saying you're saving up for that? Oh? No, no, I found it fascinating. The guy wrote in about here This is a crazy story that came in recently, and

I called. I was like skeptical, were you are you guys here for this? No? Okay, guy like he ran out of gas and he had a gas can, but his gas can nozzle wasn't compatible with the port on his truck. You know they are now, Like, dude, Now vehicles come with special funnel adapters to get through the

security stuff that people can't sipen your gas off. Anyways, he jams an arrow down in there, takes an arrow out of his quiver, jams it down there to hold the spring flap, and then he's like basically pouring gas out of a can in the dark, down the arrow into the gas can and winds up jabbing his face, jabbing his eye on the knock on the end of the arrow, impales his face on the end of the arrow, goes on to have all these future problems, never realizing

that the knock came off in his eye and eventually hocks up a lugi. It's like a year and a half later. Yeah, that was him spitting out hacks out the knock. So as he gets up in his sis, I said, I don't know if I'm buying that. I said, I didn't believe it, but then I was kind of change my mind about it. Dr Alan Lazarre wrote in he buys a only reason it's not a hunter. He doesn't know the guy personally. Wow, the aero knock entered his f Moyd Sinus goes on to say that I

rest in a bony box. I eat orbit with thin bones making up the walls the airfield spaces of the anterior face a k a. The sinus is lying close proximity to your orbit. These sinuses, as well as the NATO crimal duct. That's right, folks, you have one nasal, the crimal duct all have dropped. This makes me feel like I gotta hok up howk up a knock? I

got a pellet B B or something. Uh. These sinuses, as well as the nasal La crime will duct, all have drainage into the nasal cavity, which is anatomically complex. In particular, the f void sinus lies medial i E midline to the orbit and drains into the paranasal sinuses, which in turn empty into the nasal cavity through the three conca That's a word. It's pretty incredible. I mean the body does wild force things out of itself. YEA

surprised when I'm done. Who The nasal cavity and passage are connected to the oral fair and nagil space in the back of the throat. That's how Lucy's happened. Now onto the arrow. I'm not sure what kind of size knocked at him. It was used, and says the doctor, Or if just a piece of the knock entered his medial para orbital space and the rest fell on the ground. Either way, most common size knocks are sharp, narrow, and small enough to penetrate that space and the f moid sinus.

I believe the knock penetrated his f moyd sinus. The immune system reacted and covered the thing in white blood cells. Over time, it eroded under the guise of perceived repeat sinus infections and made its way into the nasal passage. And then he hocked a colorful lugi wow instead of Actually, they should have given him a maximo facial CT. But he doesn't want a dog on the facility because he's not sure what kind of equipment they had. Jeez, what a story. Now, what do you think about that? Phil?

I'd like to formally apologize to the gentleman. I wonder what his eynes would have looked like in if it would have been one of those like glow in the dark Knox or something, maybe look like a terminator or something. I can't I just can't imagine going on that long not knowing that something. So he he was having sinus infections for about a year and they still couldn't figure it out. Though. Let's say you let me walk you through this. Okay, you're drive down the road. You run

out of gas that night coming home from hunting. I can picture this. Okay, you can't get the gas down, you put the you put an arrow down there. You're pouring gas and Nelson, you impale your face on the arrow. You're running around. Oh my god, right, scruciating pain. Later, I don't know you have an arrow on the knox missing. Are you gonna think like I wonder if that knock is in my head or if you think like in

all the excitement, the knock fell off. Yeah, but I think with Seth is saying that he just can't believe that there'd be a knock stuck in there and you wouldn't say, my goodness, there's a chunk, a foreign chunk of plastic by my head. Yeah. You remember that dude that got shot by a nail gun and carried the nail around until they found it in there. Yeah, I

guess this probably happens more often. What we thought you also says is that the dude is tough as nails, and I think that that probably points to out some people just don't have a way different pain threshold, and something something like a nail or a knot could be inside their body and they're kind of like, I'll keep about my day. That's just it's a little tickle. If he's Yeah, if he was feeling any sort of pressure back there, he was probably like, Oh, it's just the

wound healing. It's some sort of scar I had. Yeah. I don't like any kind of injury. Man. I feel like I would have gotten all those kind of exams. I'm hard to worry about being out of commission. Um, check this out. This is good. You're hanging in there. Yeah. That story was just reminded me when I was a kid out of Mexican jumping being up my notes for

about a year. No, stuck it up there. I must have, man, I don't know I went to the hospital a bunch of times, bloody noses, and eventually big old sneeze had come out. It's a story my mom tells me. Anyway, I'll buy it. She otherwise your otherwise honest. Yeah, Yeah, she's a good guy. Yeah. Do you remember we got that fourteen year old Saint Hill crane? Sure? Do? Minimum of fourteen years. We got a Sandhill crane and Texas Panhandle that had been banded. So we're in the Texas Panhandle.

It had been banded as an adult fourteen years earlier in Fairbanks, Alaska, at least fourteen. Well, some mug in Tennessee. That was cool. That was banded in Fairbanks. And uh, I'll never forget either. How you and Ronny Bayim and Ed Arnett, three grown men sat there and argued who shot it, to the point that we had to get one band recognition form with three names on it. Yeah. I need to find my form. There's a quote I like, Uh, success has many fathers, but failure is a bastards child.

M that's a good one. Uh. This guy has got one banded in nine nine. He just killed in Tennessee. Yeah, that's only eleven years younger than me. He got it on public land. There's a refuge and then there's some crop fields and outfitters leased to crop fields, and they got it on a little public wedge between the refuge and the crop fields. I can't even do the math. What do you mean before you you're not you're older than thirty three, I'm saying. I was saying the birds

only eleven years younger than me. I'm sorry, thirty three year old sand hill crane. We got more than how many spreads? Is that thing? Seeing man spreads and coyotes? And what I was thinking about is there's not Is there anything else that we hunt that even gets close to living that long? Well? Bears get twenty years, you know, m Yeah, that's only I can't. There can't if it isn't some kind of water fowl or like like gators or something Florida like that. I bet there's some old

as gators snapping turtles. I've been wanting to get like a really really good alligator expert on the show, Like a really good alligator expert. Yeah, I think Parker could find that for since he's down there and that you're extremely good. Send it an email to us that says the subject line would be extremely good alligator expert and then we'll know in crinical call you. Uh, this is funny. This is from when there was a bobcat on the

Loose and Long Island. And of all, okay, let's say you heard they're they're very they're nervous about the bobcat being on on the Loose and Long Island and none other and Martha Stewart has a none other than Martha Stewart has a think about how to save yourself in the event you were encountered this bobcat, which they're frantically trying to find. Oh, it's just like an article on the Wild magazine. Or the more distance between you and

the cat, the better, reads the website. Bobcats in particular usually do not attack humans. However, if one does attack you, your best chance of survival is to defend yourself and call for emergency medical care, as the animal may have rabies. Thanks Martha, the more distance between you, the better. Great. The first person to saw it was convinced. They were looking at the links. It was huge and look very exotic. Wow,

what else that's about it? That's about it. There's a lot of questions about that one, like where it came from, how it got there. It's good stuff, all right, Mercy Ready to dig in, man, Yeah, sure, let's go. How First off, why did you stay? Why are you still in California? Right? If your whole life has been trapping in bobcat work and then California out right flat out you know, let me let me digress from it. Anyone who doesn't believe in the slippery slope, uh, needs to

believe in the slippery slope. Oh, no doubt. Um, if you look at like nine you know, in the early nineties, they took away steel jaw traps, made us use rubber paddy jaws, and then in that took away foothold traps altogether. And then uh, I think it was two thousand the dust up over the cage trapping incident that that got the band started in the legislative action, uh, you know, was the next nail in the coffin, And they end up banning bobcat trapping all together, you know, even with

cage traps. And then just a couple of years after that, then they went after trapping all together, you know, and then they said, you know, if you read the legislation. It was like, you know, well there's barely any trappers anyways, and uh, you know, their their numbers don't justify you know, what it costs the department, you know, maintain you know, a trapping season, and these animals have you know, more

value to the public as you know, viewable nature, you know. Um, And so then they got trapping completely and at the same time, uh, they went after bobcat hunting, which was all that was left. And we could still hunt bobcats right up until I think it was December thirty one. I wanted to be one of the last people to ever hunt a California bobcat legally because the legislation they passed required a five year population study to be done in the state and starting January one, two thousand nineteen,

I believe it was. Uh, they I'm just supposed to start that five year study to justify you know, the harvest of bobcats. Right and once once they take something away, they never give it back. So we're in the five year study right now, we're into five years. Yeah, what's gonna happen during the five year study? Oh and we're you the last guy to get one, you know, I might have been. I went out, I shot one about ten thirty at night. Um, you know who knows. I

don't know. You probably were, I might have been. Um. And then and then if not, send an email that says Mercer is wrong. And then and then uh yeah, So they're supposedly doing some sort of camera trap work statewide and they end up they bought some cage traps for me as well. I drove him up to Sacramento, dropped off and I know the dude, the dude that I dropped him off with it, he was like a fisheries guy, and he was going to be in charge of the population study. I didn't leave there with a

whole lot of faith. You're not going to get it back.

You'll never get it back, even you know if they come back and say, oh, yeah, you know there, because they estimate to repulation of California between seventy and a hundred thousand bobcats, right, And so when you tell them that, you know, all through all through all those legislative actions, they you know, when you tell them that, you know, we're harvesting like anywhere from three hundred bobcats a year right in the entire state, right, you know, back back

during the fur boom, you know, the highest years were around eight thousand bobcats, but on average or so during the fur boom years and then what fur boom are you talking about? You know, the mid seventies to boom capital F and B Yeah, yeah, uh and then all through the nineties and that you know, the harvest was to three bobcats and so out of estimated population of

a hundred dollars. Yeah, if you look if you go all of US undred thousands of what game official saying now, but if you look back when all the states had to come up with an estimated population for their state for the SITIS, when when bobcats got listed on sites, all the states had to come up with some estimated number either just using habitat you know, modeling and stuff like that. I think the number at that time was

like seventy eight thousand or something like that for California. UM. And so, just so people are I'm gonna explain to you things. Side is like an international like it's an international wildlife regulatory thing which monitors moving moving wildlife species from one country to the next. There's a treaty the site he's treaty. So, for instance, if you go down and hunt which me and you always get screwed on.

If you were to go down and hunt oscillated turkeys in Mexico and you went to bring parts of that turkey back home with you, you would need to do the site. He's work, Phil What in Sam Hill? Is that behind you? What? Oh? I have no idea. It was in the podcast studio. It was on the table here and it's just getting in our way. So we said it over there on the desk. It's it's a oh, never mind, that's cool. Oh no, I do need to see that. Where was that right? And what is that?

Obsidian or or glass? Looks like obsidian? Give that to me, although it looks we're looking at an arrow for the people listening, Well, I'm waiting on my clothes thrusting spear. Where was I talking about? Sides? Oh it's glass? Uh, that's wrong. Then you had another Yeah. Modeling just so just real quick snapshot how modeling works. Like let's say, you know, let's say you wanted to count up deer in a county or a state or a country. Whatever, you might go like, okay, and good habitat. So in

like usable habitat. We tend to see ten deer per square mile, and you go like, well, how many square miles of good suitable habitat do we have? Okay, well times that by that And that's like in a very like an actual modeler would be annoyed by my my quick summation. But that's basically what that is, um when you talk about modeling. So they're probably looking at some like habitat density and space and you work it all out and that's what you got. Yeah, for sure, it's

it's pretty Uh, it's pretty detailed. From visiting with biologists toff like that. I mean they even got they've got people with the job title called like a biometrician. Have you ever heard one of those? Yeah, they they're like a combination between a biologist and a mathematician statistician and uh and they're the ones that that really get deep into the numbers and they can take a small amount of data and turn it into a lot of data.

So you were saying that California came in with a prediction of seventy eight thousand bobcats and harvest was at what So during the eighties, the average harvest, the fur boom. Uh was somewhere in the forty neighborhood if you have take about a dozen years there in a row high of in the eight thousand's. You know, California was a destination during those times. It was where a lot of

state hoppers ended their season. You know, they trapped the colder country and end up in the you know basin and range stuff of Never Nevada really, because I don't think they've ever allowed nonresident Boba trap and I could be wrong, but uh, you know, they'd work their way through Arizona and finish up in the Majabi Desert to

California where I live. Huh yeah. Um. When you're talking about it never coming back, the reason it will never come back is because people will ally You'll always be able to do the trick in litigation where people will sue and they'll say, but you haven't accounted for now. Now the magical thing is you haven't accounted for climate change. Well, they'll move the goalpost, goalposts. Yeah, you'll never see it again. The big argument, the thing they pushed all the times, Oh, well,

we know there's plenty of bobcats in California. We're not arguing that what we're arguing is that there's no way to control all the trappers from working in one area in depleting a resource. And yeah, yeah, and then of course when you say all trappers, you're talking about a total of anywhere from six bobcats during you know, the what i'd call the cage trap days, right, So we lost our foot traps and eight and by about two thousand, two thousand two guys were experimenting with using cage traps

to catch bobcats um in Washington State, Arizona, Colorado. I believe all three lost their footholds before us, so they were already further down the road using cage traps for bobcats than California was. That was kind of an amazing era for it was sort of like in those early nineties, that period, late eighties, early nineties, it was it's surprising looking back how many hits hunters and trappers took in those years. As I think it's like Peter was beginning

to take shape. It was kind of amazing that that you'd think that like stuff like that happens now, But people took a lot of hits, legislative hits back then. Yeah, between ballot initiatives, which are just they're just they're just the horrible thing, baland isshes and legislative actions to manage wildlife. It's just, it's just horrible. The truth is the first victim when you get into those situations, you know, the truth doesn't matter. I want to go back to the

beginning with you. But why how would you not just be like, Okay, never mind, I'm leaving so uh so along the course of losing everything, right, losing the cage traps, and the next thing we lost was the bobcat hunting and the uh trapping completely and and then now I believe it's January one, So in a week or two, the statewide ban on for the sale of any any fur garments unless it's used old for any new fur

garments statewide, I believe goes into effect this January. And so you were originally you were talking about you know, I think you're you're saying death by a thousand cuts type of thing. You know, Uh, slippery slope, slippery slope. I mean, it's encouraging people to believe in slippery slopes. Oh yeah, that's when when you have a state like California that's totally controlled by one party. Uh, you don't have a chance, you know. Um, I saw some ugly

stuff when I was fighting the the first first Bobcat trapping. Yeah, you became uh you were a public figure in that fight, you know. Uh, I kind of got it from both sides a little bit. I had. I had trappers that didn't like me, wanted to blame me for for losing it, you know, because I was promoting Kate trapping and selling Kate Trapping products and get people started. Um uh. And then of course I got it from the antis because I was the only you know, I was the public

figure they couldn't. A trapper got into some trouble trapping around. He was a marine that was stationed at a base down there, and I sold him equipment and I got him started, and he started trapping between home and work and and what was in between there was Joshua Tree, nashvill Monument, and which you know is surrounded by you know a lot of people that don't they wouldn't agree with the way we live our lives, you know. And uh, he got a he got a trap found that was

on a piece of private property. Um that that you know, California laws, you gotta post your land or be told to stay off, you know, so private property law. He wasn't do anything wrong. No, it's just a piece of it's just people open desert that happened to be private. Some guy found it, took it to the local newspaper office, and a year later there's billboards up in California to ban bobcat trapping. You know, it's something in the cage. No,

this is empty cage trap. But you know, at the same time, we're, uh, we're you know, on the internet, posted pictures and uh, Facebook and all that sort of stuff and trapping forums. Ah that you know, Uh, I guess the argument can be made, you know, don't do that stuff. I guess that's what the guys that you know, we're kind of blaming me for it all, you know, um, for you know, making it public, you know. Uh And because so, yeah, I was a public How much do you how much do you buy that, um that it

would have continued if someone hadn't. No, so I don't buy it at all that it would have continued, right, And they're they're gonna get it no matter what. It is just a matter of time. But ah, those actions at that time you know, was the catalyst to what ended up happening. But if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. And you wound up with death threats through this whole thing, and you weren't getting

that from the trappers. No. No, there was one particular trapper that I was just a little bit fearful of. But he had he had been in trouble many times with game and fish. He woun't he wasn't a very good dude. Uh. But yeah, yeah, I got a few letters in the mailbox saying somebody's gonna come kill me. I had. Uh, those those people down at Joshua Tree, they're there. They were whack jobs, man, I mean they're they're whack jobs. Uh, scary kind of like whack jobs,

like Manson type hippies. Just like some guy made a compilation video and put on YouTube of my vehicles and me and my kids, like pictures of us, you know, and saying, hey, if you see this guy they were I wasn't even the trapper that started all this. I was just the guy that sold this other dude some some traps. But somehow they you know, just picked me out. And yeah, uh, I think I called the FBI at one point saying, hey, I'm getting these letters saying somebody's

gonna come kill me. And uh uh. They told me, what does it say a specific time and place. I said, no, it just says they're gonna come kill me. He said, well, we can't do you know that about it. That's what he told me. That's horship man, because I had to say I had a I called the FBI about a guy one time. He didn't give a specific thing. He made him. He made a reference to my kids. They went through the guy's garbage for a while, surveilled him.

This is he. The guy lived in Ohio, went through his ash one day, called me to say he ordered a pepperoni pizza. It's not vegetarian um, and eventually visit him at work, stared the living ship out of him to get some of that. I said, I won't be here, and they said they came and said they won't. You won't be hearing from him again. Yeah, I'd love to get some of that kind of attention. Back then, they took a real serious. It wasn't like, Hey, on Monday at noon, I'm gonna kill you out in front of

your house. That's what they're saying you have to have Yeah, that's what he said. Yeah, is a specific time in place, Posting a bunch of videos about your cars and stuff isn't sufficient. Yeah right. I don't believe that, man, I mean not that I don't think you're lying. I think someone blew you off. They probably hate Bobcat trappers. Yeah, well it's it's pretty easy to find those type of people in California. So but as far as what did you want? But what did you wind up doing? Yeah,

we're gonna get the why you never moved. But when you had these threats on you, what were you doing? I didn't. I didn't take them too terribly serious. I did sit out in the bushes a few nights, you know, um watching your house. Yeah. Yeah, uh, but it wasn't it wasn't too awful bad. It was just it was just an ugly time. Man. Those those people are ugly. I mean they can they can hate Bobcat trapping all they want, but man, they're just nasty people, not not

very good quality people. You know, you have a right, all the right in the world to to not like what I do. But don't go there. You know, I tell my kids all the time. You know, you can be frustrated, you can be angry, but you're not allowed to be nasty. Yeah. Yeah. The moral high grounds sometimes though, especially in politics, doesn't get you anywhere, right, So why did you why why didn't you just be like, hey, I'm out of here. Ah, shoot, you know, your home's

your home. Uh. I got all my family there, My wife has all our family there. Now my daughter is going to college in California, so uh yeah, I think I'll be there at least three more years. I've been all over the West. You know, I've been a lot of cool places, like right here where you're at now. Um, I don't know, I just I never found a place that I just was dying to go live. And you know, I ended up in in the Majabi Desert back in

high school. And uh, you know, we didn't have rivers and fishing, turkeys, no real good deer hunt and you know, there's nothing. It was just cautin bobcat hunting. And so I've just pretty much spent the last almost forty years now. There's in a winner that goes by that I don't pursue bobcats with every ounce of passion that I have what was how did you get into it? Then? What year was it? Did you? Did you get into it? Because the fur market was so high, Uh, bobcats in

particularly trapping and trapping and hunting, you know. Yeah, I was a hunter for many years before. I didn't even set a trap until we were already into the rubber jaw in the early nineties. Oh you didn't, So you didn't grow up trapping? No, Uh, you know I was in high school and eighty four I graduated, I think that year, me and a buddy, So I found a Johnny Stewart cassette tape in the China hutch that was my dad's from when he used to cayot hunt, And

as my dad, what's this, you know? So that's forkyot hunting. So me and my buddy went in, uh temporarily borrowed one of those little tape players from the library at to high school, like a little carry strap on it. Uh. We went out of the desert dad afternoon and in thirty mile winds and turned on that Johnny Stewart cassette and hiked up the top of a hill and waited for a coyote. And uh, there hasn't been a winner

ever since that. I haven't you know, gone after coyotes and bobcats with everything I had, what was the main years when you were when you really got into like the production bobcat work though, So, um, you know I was killing a lot of bobcats at night because we had a we had a pretty good bobcat hunting season that we could hunt at night in California and in that Mojabi desert because you know, it could be pretty productive. You know, I could shoot I think my highest year,

I almost broke seventy bobcats just hunting at night. Uh. And they're good bobcats. You know you were talking earlier about the about the color face bears and and I think you were saying the darker ones or more where it's more human, more rain and everything, more thick cover. Well, yeah, and and so with bobcats, when you're looking for a good bobcat country, you tend to look for open country. You know, the color of the soil and ice and brown.

When you get up in the country like this where you got your your timber and stuff, darker stuff, then you end up with a bobcat that's got a lot darker fur. On the back and stuff. And so when you're in like the basin and ranged country of of Nevada and the Mojabi desert California, you have a lot of a lot of sunlight hits the ground, a lot of brown ground, you know, not a lot of ground cover, and so you end up with a much more pale bobcat,

which is where the money is. So I lived somewhere where there was you know, some pretty dark, nice bobcats. And they still have the big like Lynx grade bellies on them too, the big white spotted bellies. Are you talking about my bobcat? Yeah? Oh yeah, pure white, pure white with well defined, little tiny black spots. Yeah, they're they're they're not heavy enough for because it's not cold enough to to rate among the best in the country, you know, like a Wyoming bobcat or some of the

Idaho cats or the high desert of say Oregon. Let's say, um, they just don't have the hef to the fur. But as far as a white fur with well defined spots, uh, yeah, they're pretty good quality cat. It's a real shame losing losing calf eastern California. We were we We've taxed a fair bit about the market, like what that fur market

has looked like at times? Can you talk through some of the highs you've seen, like you mentioned when we were talking and yesterday you mentioned like some pretty sizeable yeah catches you had, you know, like like in terms of financial value, but what were these? It always surprises people to hear what what bobcats have been valued? That there's no other thing that even approaches the value of

a bobcat. And yeah, in the trade you were talking about sidetes being alicted species, and that's that's only because it's I believe what it is refer you to do as a lookalike species. So it's the only spotted cat that can be sold on the fur industry, and because there's other spotty cats that are protected, they end up putting the bobcat on the side. He's yeah, And so there's there's been desire and attempts over the years to get it taken off that list, but you'll never see that.

But so that's why I didn't know, That's why I was on there. That's interesting. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm accurate on that. That's how that works. But um, yeah, you know the high cats always get all the attention. You know. Um, you know you hear about a six bobcat, you know that got sold at a first sale or you know whatever the high cat of each sale is. You know, the guys do that for advertisement, the fur

buyers and stuff. But really what you have to look at is the is the average price of for sales? You know, like we're what's the average bobcat? And um, yes, some of those averages uh uh. You know, like if the Fallon, Nevada for sale is always a good one to look at. Uh, it's a real long running first sale where a lot of the best fur in the nation end up, you know, stuff that doesn't get bought in the country and or shipped to the Canadian auctions.

A lot of the best stuff ends up at that Fallon for sale and they keep a historical record there. You can look at it every year when you're at the sale. I think I sent you a picture, did all that? Um? Yeah? And you can look at years.

I don't know, all the years kind of blend together, but you know, oh, age and I think twelve thirteen, like two thousand, twelve thirteen was a real high year if I remember, Um, you know, like I don't know, four hundred fifty dollar averages, you know, like like they sell like two thousand cats at that sale and rich prices three eight something like that, you know, for fifty. But but what makes the news is the the one cat that sold his bucks or something you were saying.

They do that kind of they do that to generate hype. Yeah, the business. Yeah, you always if you have a high cab of stale, you always take a picture with the with the buyer that bought it and and he gets his name. But it gets people excited. Oh definitely. Yeah, you're like, did you hear the bobcats are going for

six bucks? Yeah? That's all you hear. You know, Um, I think I think last year, uh there was just a little bit of good news last year in the firm market, and this year is expected to be at least there's no bad news. You know. I was just talking to a guy this morning, a fur buyer, and he said, well, initially they were saying prices might take up just a little bit because they're opening up some markets and they're figuring out how to get around the

whole rush of thing. You know. Um, uh, they're expecting a little bit of a tick up this year, but it may or may not happen, you know, is you got to take everything a fur buyer tells you with a grain of salt, you know. Um, there's always a little bit of a more of a story to what they're telling you, uh, what they're wanting you to believe, you know, or and with me, they kind of want me to repeat something, you know, like they'll they'll make

sure they they tell me something they want repeated, you know. Yeah, because I I don't know, there's three or four the main fur buyers in the whole in the West, and I talked to him all pretty regular and influence a lot of times, well a lot of times I'll get a little bit of a plant with me, you know that they're one for buyers hoping I repeat to another fur buyer. You know, I think that goes on. Why don't I understand Why I don't understand, like what would

they be pushing to have out there? Give me the prince oh you know, like for instance, uh, um, you know, one one guy might report that he's at a certain number on a certain grade cat. That's what he's planning on buying at, you know, and hoping maybe that gets to another fur buyer to one end. They're always playing aimes Okay, but what would he be after I would I would assume he'd be after that, that buyer I don't understand, Like what would he be hoping the other

buyer would do? It could influence his buying maybe, you know, like meaning that he's gonna pay less and that makes more available. Maybe he's gonna maybe he's gonna pay less and then the other guy, you know, has a better shot at other cats in the business. Yeah, they're always they're always gossip in and talking about each other and stuff. It's a yeah, it's it can get kind of fun sometimes. Have you ever gotten into that business? Yeah, very briefly,

very briefly. The one guy here in Montana, he had me he was gonna have me buy for him at a at a first cello that in Arizona that I was helping put on um and at the last minute his daughter ended up showing up. Who's is she? Pretty? She pretty badass woman. You need to meet her someday. Her name is Liberty Cordhum. She's she's pretty cool, but she's a fur buyer. She flew out to to help me buy. Yeah, I was a nervous wreck. Yeah, oh god. Yeah. He gives me a bunch of checks and tells me

to buy the best cats. They're they're there, you know. Do you know a good cat when you see one. I know a good cat when I see one. I don't know like they see. But at the same time, I've I've carried the clipboard for a lot of them fur buyers, you know, like stand next to him at the first sale and write down the numbers that they're telling me for. You know, the cats are all laying on tables and lots, you know, little groups for each

trapper and stuff, and they're going through grading. I'm measuring them, looking them over, and they'll come up with the price, and they'll whisper to me. I'll write on the clipboards, you know, And more than once, with more than one fur buyer, I've I've gone down two or three you know, lots on the table and and say, hey, you know, I missed, I missed that number on a lot, you know, And so we back up five ft and go over there, and I'll be darn if you didn't come over the

completely different price. Yeah, it's very it's very much. You to think that it's that there's this you know, like rules and and there is a technique that they look at, you know, measuring the width of it, the length of it, you know, the color of the fur, the definition of the spots, all that stuff. But there's also very much a human component to it. You know. They either just they can fall in love with a cat, just emotionally

like it and or not like it. Um. You know, some fur buyers, you'll see them painstakingly measuring every single cat, you know, and just really being precise with their grading. Um and other guys have handled, you know, hundreds of thousands of furs. Just grab it, flip it over once, flip it over again, look it up and down. They might brush the fur with their hand one time to see how it's gonna lay when it's on a garment

and they tell you a number to write down. You might not know, but you're sitting in the presence of a top lot. Uh yeah, I think I remember that from Yeah, yeah, top plots for people over the years.

Right on what makes a sixteen dollar gap? So all the money in a bobcat is in the belly, right the width of the of the belly, the whiteness of the belly, and there's money in that that color line from the side fur to the white so where the side fur comes down and blends into the white fur, the more pale it is there, the the It doesn't really make the belly any wider, but it's more usable for right because you can use a little bit of that side for you know, if you're talking about a

belly coat, you know, eighty thou dollar all belly Bobcat coat. You know that's gonna be all white fur. And so the wider the width of that white belly, the further it's going to go on a coat square inches. You know, if you're just happy to be out and about downtown Bowsman and you see a coat that is pretty much stark white with small black spots, that's not where you

go to see that coat. You could I saw something similar to that in I think it's one you're seeing someone from Houston who's at a ski resort in Colorado. That could be or big, but either way, that's what you're seeing. Is if it's a white coat with black spots, that's a belly bobcat coat. Depending on if it's a full length coat or a jacket. You know, jacket is going to be cheaper, right, you know. But I'm saying

that's like, that's the fur that you're looking at. There's not another animal that would produce a similar not available to the fur market. You know what was that souped up coat the Russians were really interested in you're telling me about. Yeah, um, I think it was around two thousand and eight. There was pretty good cat prices and one of the fur buyers told me that there was a a sable coat um that was trimmed in Bobcat. Uh. That was the older dark special all the all the

Russians had to have. What I remember the story. It was only about in US money. Um, but that's been a long time since I had to repeat that story. But so it's Martin for sable wind with Bobcat, sable with Bobcat trim you know, around the cuffs and the collar and I don't know, maybe the lapel. I don't know, I didn't actually see one, but that that was what was driving the fur industry that year, the Bobcat market. Uh. You know what, tell these boys about this, tell them

what you were telling me about. What the rough on a kyote when you have your hood, Yeah, a coyote trim hood. I had no idea. Yeah, So what they what they sell in the in kyote for what they call a rough is not lengthways on the kyot, for it's around the kyote for so like going from the head towards the like it reminds me of looking at a like the diagram of butcher and at cal from it's always from the side and it shows, you know,

the different cuts going. So picture of a kyote like that, and what they're selling is roughs and a good you know, big Montana highlighting kyote. I've heard you can't have as many as five roughs, you know. And so if you were to picture that rough on the hood of your coat, like those Canadian goose coats they were making for a while.

So at the top of you, if you had your hood on the top of your hood would be the back for and as you go around left to right, left and right down to your throat, it would go side for towards belly. For that's dude. I'm so my daughter got a um, she got a she got a little winter coat that has a fake kyoe thing on it. I'm gonna do it in a real kyoe and I'm thinking about taking my first light Chamberlain. Oh yeah, you can't do it on Chamberlain, I already tried. I just

told you that, remember, and I wasn't listening. I sent it to Samai. Or you were telling me about you didn't tell me about this, I sent it. I sent a chamberlain to Samai with a with a nice kayot and or you did tell me that she tried to put it together and she said that just the hood opening is too small, and if you were to attach that caught that rough to it, you get so tight that you you know, you'd be like just looking out

of a teeny tiny hole. So the opening of the hood has to be bigger to make the rough work. It sounds like you need a kyo from lower country with less fur short fur. Yeah, soon as they caught it that way? Do you know that? I did not know that. I hope I don't get you a bunch of emails on that. But I'm sure that's how that works, probably, like everything is. Probably sometimes it's that way and sometimes it's different. But when I do it, that's how I'm

doing it. Makes how much is that five rough Montana Kio Worth. I think the five rough I think that's probably an anomaly. I think you're looking at more at three or four roughs. But um, you know when Canada Goose was building all those coats before they switched over the plastic for um them Montana coyotes, the highlight clouds for you know, a hundred hundred thirty dollars, that drove

It's crazy, that drove the market. Well, right now that Darren Yellowstone movie is is our TV show is driving the beaver market like crazy orders for forty beaver pelts right now to make all that wool felt for all those steps, to make all those felt hats. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if they be Hollywood, Hollywood realize what they're doing better hit it in the spring. Yeah, but the hat or market still it's like not much money. It's probably still ten bucks oh for the pelt for

the beaver. Yeah. So walk me through how in California? What happened that got you into designing and like creating cam trip cages. Well, so ever since high school I worked at sheet metal shop, which I ended up owning at some point. Um, which sheet metal is what you would call dry side heating and air, so not the

plumbing side, but you know, heating an air contractor. And so I was I've been a fabricator forever, and so uh, I was trapping coyotes and a few bobcats in the late nineties and early two thousand's, and I was going to that um Nevada first sale all the time. Um and I met I met a dude named read Aton, who is you know, I guess i'd call him my

k trap and mentor. You know, he's a California guy, and him and his his buddy at the time had you know, following the trap band, they started experimenting with cage traps and and cage traps that they could somehow put a lot of them in the back of their truck, you know, and come down because they were in northern California,

they come down to my desert trap. And so if you think about a single cage trap that's all completely built, you can't fit very man them in a pickup truck, right, So they started experimenting with getting bobcats to go into narrower cages because up until then it was your guys were mostly using like raccoon traps, you know, like eighteen by eighteen k traps, right, there wasn't there was a there was an outfit in Nebraska who was starting to

design and build specific Bobcat cage traps, you know, um, but mostly guys were just using whatever was available. And these two guys were trying to figure out how to build, how to come up with something that they could fit a bunch of them in a truck. Um, And they come up with a collapsible design and initially and then from that they went to a design where they nest one inside the other and one is you know, slightly

smaller than the other one you can slide him inside. Um. And so when I met him, they were starting to become successful in about two thousand two with successfully cage trap and Bobcats in those narrow cages, right, so like ten inch wide cage, nine inch wide cage, eight inch wide cages, um, which I don't think anybody else was

doing at the time. I could be wrong, but uh so after meeting him, you know, I bought one of his cages, and I and I bought some of the cages from the guy in Nebraska, and you know, immediately the fabricator and me was like why I can build stuff better than this, and so of course I did. Uh started building them myself, just for my own personal use. Because Reid had what was called the California cag Trap

Company and he was selling cage stress. But eventually I told him I'll never sell a cage until, you know, until you're done with it or whatever. And it wasn't very long that he couldn't keep up. He was a older guy, uh, and he didn't like build him and shipping him. He couldn't keep up, so he start started

telling people to call me. And at the same time, a trapper made a video on cage trapping Bobcats and Foxes, a buddy of mine in Nevada, and uh, he put me in his video, not me personally, but he was doing it where he didn't even need to be doing it right, Yeah, he's uh, he was using him mostly for Foxes. And then uh, there was a guy in California and we and him weren't too close with friends at that point. There was a guy in California that

did the actual Bobcat cage trapping part for that DVD. UM, but he at the end of his DVD, he put my name in number on here, and so I just fell into it. I never did I had I had well paying I had good paying jobs all those years.

I wasn't doing it for the money. I just was getting so much enjoyment out of uh well, I mean what really what really tickles me, floats my boat is is trying to build something better, trying to make it better and better and better, and and trying to develop ways to get the bobcat into the cage, you know, because that's that's always such a challenge, you know those the podcasts don't want to go in there. Can we get into that a little bit? Is that a good time?

Because yeah, I'm wondering how you get I mean, could you fit auder into an eight inch by eight inch cage? Or is that too big? Well, you're if you're saying eight by eight you mean eight inches tall? And I would say no, um is it with yeah? Right? And then it's long eight inches wide? Yeah. So like if I if I say my tenes trap, so like my traps I build is the big one is eleven inches wide and twenty inches tall, and what goes inside that one?

Would was the big challenge for me. An accomplishment was to make a cage that would fit inside there that only had a one inch size break. So from eleven it goes to ten by nineteen, So eleven by twenty eleven inches wide, twenties is tall, and then ten inches wide nineteen itches tall fits inside there. And inside that one is a nine by eighteen and inside that one is eight by seventeen. So you have four cages that only have four inch difference in the in the size.

So did you sell those as a kid then? Yeah, the most common thing is a set of three. Yeah, I don't The smallest cages not always the most popular. It's popular in the desert, and their goal is, like you're saying, it's just so that a trapper can carry more. Yeah, I mean I run a little tiny Toyota with a crossbed toolbox and I can still fit fifteen cages in there. You know. Yeah, that's the only way that you can be productive. So how do you get that bobcat to

go in there? No? I may know less now than I did twenty years ago when I started this. That's that's the valunge with those bobcats. You know, they're always you just can't figure them out. You never will, And I used to say, you know, bobcats a bobcat no matter, you know, like wherever you go. But I have enough customers in different states, and I've trapped enough different states now that that's not true. You know, they're influenced by um,

their environment, availability to pray, you know, the temperatures. UM. I was trapping in the in the Majabi desert, and there's just something about cage trapping bobcats down there is just easy. You're you're you're exposed to a lot of bobcats first of all, right, so there's higher densities depending on you know, how your droughts going and whatnot. You know,

there's always the droughts really hard on them. But um, so you're exposed, you have more opportunities to catch bobcats, so you catch more, but they're just more likely to go in. And then you know that I had dinner with that local trapper last night. He uses my cage traps right here in Montana, UM, and he said that, man, he's really having a rash of walk bys, you know, where they just walk by in front of the cage. I mean, don't even pause, just literally walk past it.

Why is he using a cage. Uh you know, Um, I don't know exactly there. They're very Uh they're they're easier to keep operating in in the snow than digging out your foot traps or you know, you got two ft of snow, you can say a cage. And so long as like the country you guys live in, it's just freaking cold all the time. Um, so the doors

don't freeze up. But where where the cage trap doesn't work is when you get you know, freezing snow, you know, or it warms up during the day forty degrees and then it's you've got that water on the on the door that freezes at night, and then your your cage froze. So it's not it's not a perfect system, but uh, you can keep them working in the in the snow, explain, explain baiting and luring one so he goes into a cage. Yeah.

I think what the biggest mistake that the trappers young and old make is they think too much like a human being, uh with the cage trap. And not to disrespect the animal. I I love and respect you know, all sorts of wildlife, especially the bobcat. They're fascinating creature. But They're just an animal, you know, they're they're they're only capable. They've never had an original thought in their life, right, They're only capable of reacting like a like a wild

animal would. Right. So you see guys on the internet talk about, you know, you sprinkling feathers out in front of their cage, and putting missing urine on the front of their cage to hide their human sand and uh,

you know, hanging a flag up in the tree. You know, those are all things that the bobcat is going to react to, and none of those reactions are going to cause the bobcat to become interested what's inside the cage trap, Right, they think, oh, I, I, you know, put a bunch of feathers from a feather pillow in front of the cage to get him excited. You know what was that caused him to do? That? Causes him to smell a bunch of you know, sanitized sterile feathers that came out

of a pillow in front of your cage. He smells a couple of them, maybe one of them flitters in the wind, and he goes over there and puts his paw on it, smells it, and it didn't trigger anything naturally, right, So compare that to let's say, in within your cage trap, you have feathers from whatsever legal where you're, where you're living,

you know, um say pheasant feathers, you know. Uh. So, like one of the things I do, after I bed the cage and put soil in the trap, I'll take whatever bait I'm using, Let's say it's beaver or a pheasant carcass, and I'll scrub the soil just inside the door opening of the cage, like, scrub that bait into there. Now I've imparting those natural odors into the floor of

the trap before I hang the bait in the back. Okay, So now the bobcat comes and visit this cage, because most of them will walk over to and visit this thing that wasn't there last time they come through. It's this weird rectangular square thing, you know. So they're curiosity, they're curious. Nature is just going to cause them to come start smelling it. Um. And then they smell the

ground and now they're like, oh, a pheasant. You know, I haven't had a pheasant in a while, you know, And they maybe take one step in because there's a few feathers in there that caused them to trigger now truly to it. You know, I think of as like, um, you know, like a storefront window. Right, you have the mannequin there on the with a dress on it, and you're walking down the street with your with your wife.

She's not even think about dress, but then she sees the dress in the window, and now she's all she can think about his address. Right. It's like I'm trying to trigger them to want to investigate inside the cage. So I'm trying to use natural odors within the trap that cause that. You know, stuff that I do out of the cage, some of it has values like a flag.

Some guys think, oh, all I gotta do you know, I'm making a Bobcat set, so therefore I need a flag, right, A feather hanging in the tree or whatever a c D Let's say, Well, no, a flag has a job. The job of the flag is to is to try to pull a cat over to your set that you don't expect to already be there. Right, So like where were Yeah they're blowing the wind from way off and yeah, yesterday in those stick trees. You know, a flag wouldn't

have a whole lot of value. Right, You're gonna want to put your your set right where that bobcat is gonna walk anyways. But if you have, you know, some fairly open country out in front of your cage, you have a big hill next to where you're setting, and you you expect maybe a bobcat would be up there on that hill and the rocks or what have you. Uh, And you can't necessarily get the cage where you want

where you expect the bobcat to be. Well, then you'd use a flag, you know, um, and then cause him to come over to see the flag and then becomes interested in the cage. Um. So everything you do outside the cage has a potential to distract the cat, you know. Um. I remember when I was filming for one of my DVDs, I had a trail camera on a set and I

caught a big tom bobcat in this cage trap. And the next day I set up my tripod in my movie camera, you know, and I was I took the bobcat out of the cage and I was laying it down in front of me, and you know, I was filming myself, you know, talking to the camera. Yeah, I'm the great strapper in the world. You know, I just caught this big bobcat and just how you do it?

And uh, I left the trail camera on there, and a few days go by, I never caught anything else, And so I picked it all up and took the trail camera home and and I end up with a video of this. What what I was guessing was a female bobcat come to that set location and she spent like three and a half minute smelling every square inch of soil where that tom had been laying in front of that. Yeah, never even looked at the kate trap. So you end up with enough stuff like that happening.

You know, one thing I always tell trappers like, never pull the cave trap out of the trap bed to dispatch your animal, right, figure out a way not to do that. I stand my cage traps up in and we don't when to talk about dispatch. But what you do when you drag that cage out, you know, everybody wants to drag it out, turn it sideways to take a picture. You know, you're just dragging all that wonderful odors out of the cage bed onto the ground in

front of in front of the trap. You know, if you let's say you dispatch your bobcat in the cage and you pull it out late in front of your trap and take a take a picture, you know, you're just causing uh, you know, confusion for that next cat or a distraction. So so when you ask about how you get a cat into a cage, there's a big list of don't and then a few dudes. You know that you you always want to make sure that you

do hit me with the dudes. I am a big proponent of skunk paste, uh, you know, And so you can either put you're gonna push your cage up against a tree trunk. Let's say you can smear some skunk paste on that trunk before you put your cage up against it. Uh. I live in deserts, so I always just dig a little hole with my hand where the where the very back of the cage would be, like just beyond the pan, and I put my skunk paste in there, because I think skunk for for almost all

the stuff that we trapped on the land. Um and even people it's it's like, you know, hey, something happened over there, I better go check it out. That's what skunk smell is to to all that. You know, Kyo's Bobcats and everything. You know. I mean, you guys spent so much time in the field, I'm sure you smell smell the skunk. You you might have walked towards it just to see, you know, what happened there, you know, something got killed or whatever. And it does the same

thing for for predators. So you know, I'm a big proponent of that. Um. You know, having natural odors inside the cage to cause them to want to, you know, enter the trap. Uh, you're investigating those odors. You're trying to change their mind, right, they come up to the cage. Maybe they you know, hopefully they smelt it. So another one that I do. And I uh, you know, some of this stuff I learned from different people. I don't

need to mention all their names give them credit. But you know, a guy in Colorado taught me about thermal's, you know, because you guys know about thermals your ilk hunters and all that. Um, I'm from the desert. I don't really know a whole lot about thermals um. But the time of day when the bobcats most active is going to be you know, the twilight hours, late afternoon, all night, and early in the morning when thermals are

going downhill. And so I can't tell you how many cage traps I've seen that we're pointed up a wash, and I'll go up past them and set my cage pointed down the wash. So then when the bobcat gets there during the time of day when he's most active, it's the low light conditions, the thermal is going to be going down that wash. So when he approaches the front of the cage, the odors hit him right in the face. So now he triggers on those odors and

he knows to follow them. Right. So a lot of these guys that send me pictures of bobcat tracks in the snow and stuff on the side of their trap, you know, the bobcats trying to get to the to the source of the odors or the bait from the side. What chances are that's where he's smelling it coming from. You follow me, Yeah, So he's standing, he stand at the front of the cage and nothing triggers him naturally. Um,

are you brushing in your your cages? Um? Yeah? What's what's the set look like like when you when you set one. So you know, in the desert, you could spend ten minutes breaking brush and it looks like you threw toothpicks on your cage. You know, there's no leaves. So that's a very different set than the majority of people.

Majority of travelers are trapping. You know, heavier country, um so, and a lot of guys have to deal with snow right so up here, you guys would have to be putting plastic bags over the top of your trap, or even put your cage in a trap plastic bag. Uh, maybe finding ledges that are south facing that have dirt so that you can be under the ledge keep the snow off. Um So, you really have no choice. There's a The guys in the Northwest kind of use a

dark whole mentality to their cage trapping. So like you know, throw a paper bag on the floor and your house cat just goes in it for whatever, why the hell it does, I don't know, it goes in the dark hole. So those guys kind of think of you know, trapping like that. Um that is not at all how I I mean, that's just where I lived. We couldn't do that. We didn't need to. Um. The bobcats just go right in.

So there was a period of time when I thought, you know, maybe the difference of as I go to Colorado and I have terrible luck, I have a lot of visits with no no cats going in, you know. And uh, I started using more bait because I think they're more calorie driven in in the colder country. Um. In the desert, you can't really use bait because it's just too warm. It's just just you know, it's just nasty. Yeah, and so you use all lure and your cages are barely covered up. Um. So there was a period of

time I thought, you know, maybe that's the difference. You know, maybe it's not the cat. Maybe it's maybe it's the country, you know. And uh, but I really can't say how. I I don't know why it's something more difficult to catch these bobcats and cages in the mountain country. I

just don't know. I don't know. You were telling me something yesterday, uh about their power of smell that I was thinking about after we talked, And you're mentioning that when you when you're working on research projects, how quickly a bobcat will come in and occupy the vacated area left by the death of another bobcat, And like, how do they know what it was? And how do they know that the person the cat has gone? How do

they know what it was? Like you were talking about spots where you can look at tracking data, Yeah, and you'll know that a cat were going and just take over the territory of another cat. Oh yeah, it's amazing how fast sometimes And I think the cat that died, the better his country is, the faster than neighboring cats will take it over, right, like as soon as a

few weeks. It's pretty impressive. Like if you picture like a just picture like a checkerboard, Uh, you know the squares, and picture three squares, a black one on the left, a red one in the middle, and a black one on the right. We we had a situation with three cats that had radio callers on them, and they all three had their own was a it was a female on the right, a male in the middle, and a

male on the left. And uh, the one in the middle was a big dominant tom so you would suspect that he was occupying the best little piece of country there, right, And they all three had fairly small home range. UM my estimate from you know, and I don't I don't have access to the GPS data. I just I just kind of get to get whatever I can from the

boologists I'm working for down there in Arizona. Um. But just looking at the screenshots and stuff, Let's say each one of those bobcats had roughly a three mile by three miles square piece of country that they occupied. Fairly small home range compared to what I would expect up here in Montana. Let's say, um, meaning they had everything they needed right there, right, food three yeah, food, food, shelter, um, escape, you know, everything they wanted right resources. The one in

the middle died the other two. I showed you that. Um it was wearing a collar. Yeah, I was wearing a collar. Yeah. You don't want to tell me how it died. Uh. It got caught in a foothold trap and a lion came and ate it. Oh yeah, line ate it before noon that morning. Yeah, just hollow the whole bailly out. You can. You can tell the difference, um, between lion kills and coyote kills and stuff. It's pretty easy. So trapper got it, but a lion got it. Yeah, yeah,

it got killed in a trap. Well, just within a few weeks that the two cats on the other two checkerboard squares just immediately started venturing into his country, and then within just a few months they absorbed it and just took it over. And now they have each one of those two cats has a bigger home range, and they spend more time in his country than they do in their owns from what I've seen so far. And you always to hear that stuff, like an animal having

its territory. But it's just amazing. We have another cat right now that the Bolois was sending me some screenshots on. He was a young male that we call her last December, and he lived in one spot, had a nice little home range, looked like he was making a good life

for himself. Um, and then one day in June he just took off, and he took off and went I would have to estimate some forty miles or so north, just almost on a straight line, spend a day or two up there, turned around and came all the way back down along that same line, and then turned west and went across a bunch of juniper country, come down into a valley, went up and behind a town, then took off headed west again and was hanging out of there,

hanging out over there for a month or two. And then now the latest, um, the latest little screenshot that the biologist shared with me, he is now occupying a piece of country that we had a mail that was callered that got shot that we knew his home range pretty well. And it looks to me like he's setting up to take over that Tom's entire piece of country. And now that he's gone, so he went on a big wander and found like a sweet spot that you know had been vacated and that I know for sure

is vacated. Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty cool stuff. It's pretty neat stuff. How did that transition go for you? Where you're doing? You're doing bobcats as a as a fur harvester, so you really learned how to catch them. What was the first time a researcher called you up? I think it was probably just a slow thing. You know. I started selling the products to all sorts of researchers

all over the place. Um, I guess the first project I worked on was when I was with U. S. D A. I did some seasonal work for a few years doing kyote work, and uh they sent me down to help a grad student catch some gray squirrels and put collars on them. Um. And then uh, then I I I went out on a couple of private researchers projects just to help him out, you know. Um oh, California, California.

At one point there was a local biologists on the eastern part of the state that was trying to he was actually trying to get ahead of what he saw coming down the road. Like this would have been in about two thousand nine or tennis before we lost everything. He was trying to get ahead of it, and he was trying to be proactive and actually do a population study in the eastern part of the state. And U uh he was you know, getting callers put out and stuff like that. He I think he probably got pr

money for it and and was doing a study. Um. He since moved on, But I got to go up there and I kind of like did a school for their trapper And then they were struggling, of course, and I went out and helped him a little bit. It was just kind of slowly and then you know, I mean I had a pretty good reputation in Arizona. Everybody knew who I was. I pretty much the only one

selling all the stuff. And um, so when the biologists, I think it was like two thousand eighteen, uh, some of the animal welfare group started talking about pushing for a ban on lying in bobcat hunting and trapping in Arizona. And uh, like I was a director one of the higher ups that game at fish said to the furbear biologists, large carnivore lady that I worked for, uh say, hey, what are we gonna do about this? You know, we got enough data to to fight these people off? And

she said, well, you know, there's never enough data. She said, I got this idea for this population study and laid on me, you know, and and here, uh, two and a half years later, it's I think it's the number one thing that game official is doing right now in Arizona. Their radio caller and bobcats and lions all over the state. Um. But when she you know, started getting you know, it's all pr money right um. And when she started putting

that all together, she knew right away. She said, there's only two guys that I want to work with as the trappers. That's That's why I really respect the most with her because so many these other agencies they try to do with volunteer help, volunteer trappers, or they try to do it in the house, you know, because he's bologists. They spend you know, so many years in college, right they want to work with wildlife, and they find that they're in the office all the time, right, so they

have a hard time giving up their field work. So then they try to do uh, you know, the trapping and stuff themselves. But that's why I have so much respect for the way our zone is doing it, because they hired too, you know, two confident trappers to go out and do the catching, you know, and let them do the science stuff. So uh So, so when they when they put that all together a couple of years ago, she called me and said, well, hey, you know, what

do you do in this winter? And so that's I think we just had our third capture season right now. How many have you gotten collegs on? Uh So, I was lucky enough to be there to catch number one hundred for the State of Arizona. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, and then uh uh so one hundred deployments there's been I think somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty mortalities. Yeah, what what's where do you find is killing them besides people? Uh, you know, the biggest one, so I think the biggest category.

And and I uh so understand I'm not talking for Arizona game fish. I'm just repeating some of the things that I see in uh some of what I know. You know, um, so predation I think is probably the biggest one so far for mortalities. And of that, the lions are really killing the heck out of them things. Um, I don't know there's been maybe I don't know about a dozer, so, uh, don't quote me on that. There's there's in around dozeners so predation mortalities, um and a

lot of those are lions. I had two lines up on this one, this one ranch like collared, and three months later they were both dead. From what I would expect me the same lion. Yeah, two lions. Excuse me? Did I Are the lions killing them to eat them or a competition thing? Yeah, I think it's all the above. But I think lions just lions just wander around the country wanting to kill stuff. That's just how they are. Yeah,

we saw a little bit of that. The other day a friend of ours another uh a sound engineer that works here, had found a lion tracked me he's checking his Martin traps. So he called me and another friend of ours with hounds. We went up there and run the cat. And as we're we're working sorting out through the tracks, first we found some kills, a couple of carcasses of the lions which had on top off of it laying there fresh, not even rig a mortist yet.

It was a bobcat with no head. Is that right? Yeah? I mean that bobcat eating his kill. Yeah. And so we threw that in the truck, thinking like, oh sweet bonus bobcat, and a couple of hundred yards down the trail, we we like, see where this lion has been dragging something, to see the blood trail and cash underneath the trees, the whole kyote. Serious. See, that's something I didn't even know. Like three years ago, a buddy of mine told me, hey,

my brother just shot a lion. And he said he was driving down the road and seeing a lion looking at him over the bushes. He got out and shot it and went over there was eating a coyote, and I said to uh, I said, my buddy, what do you mean he should eating a coyote? And I had to call a couple of houndsman buddies of mine, like lion expert guys like lions eat coyotes. So yeah, they

chased the hell out them things eat him. We're on a track and saw where it got a red fox one time, and a front of my said he saw where gotta Floyd found where they've killed tortoises, really just killing everything they come. He said, they got They got it, he said when he sees it. He sees it on ocasi and they pull the I think it's Floyd. Sorry this they pull the bottom they pull the bottom shell right off. And it's similar to how they kill a porcupine.

If you've ever run across a porcupine was killed by a lion, it reminds me, gives me an image in my mind of like a cartoon about of like that lion with one single claw, you know, like a scalpel and zipping the belly. But that's what it looks like. They like, like from the belly side, they cut it open, I assume, with their claw and then spread it apart and just hollowed out. You know, their tongues have those little hooks on their tongues. They can just lick meat,

rath bone and everything. But that's three things happen, or I've seen three different things. When we investigate the little bit I've gotten to do, investigate the mortality locations. Um, a bobcat will either just bite a or excuse me a line or either just bite a bobcat's head and leave it they're dead um, or they'll crunch his head and then eat his guts out. But it's it's all very clinical, you know, when a coyote kills a bobcat. We I got to go on one of those. We

had a mortality one morning. We were trapping this year, and I hiked across this little valley and with the with the GPS location when it went into mortality, found the bobcat there. And it was what I read in the ground was that this bobcat had gotten caught a little bit in the open, had gotten chased towards a tree.

Why I didn't go up the juniper tree, I do not know, but I was picturing it just kind of backing up against the tree, like if you chased it with hounds and you just kind of you know, shelved up there and um, but he like decided that's where he's going to make his stand, is what I suspected. And there's a pile of fur right there where the

coyotes got him. And then there's you know, a thirty yard trail where the coyotes are pulling on him and pulled, ripping for off and just left his carcass ly in there. But when a bob when a lion eats the bobcat, most of the time there was just this skin, uh laying there with bone fragments from the head um and like like clinically, like it reminds me of that Hannibal electro movie or something like how did that lion eat everything but the skin in fur? You know, like how

are you so good at eating stuff? And there's just there's just a collar laying there and it's all it's all in a little three or four ft circle. And sometimes it's right underneath of a tree. And if you examine the tree close enough, you can see who the lion got up in there and ripped the bobcat out, because you know, uh, that bobcat there got killed here a couple of weeks ago. He was at the base of a tree. You know, why don't you just go up the tree and just hang out there until the

caylots gook on? You know, I don't know, same same same question I have with the bobcat. I went and picked up off the railroad tracks, got cut clean too. I run over by a train, one of the with a color and how like, how do you not get out of the way of that train? You know, I don't know there's a bobcat. Yeah, trains not swerving. I have no idea. The railroad people were working found and laying there dead on the tracks, and I went out there to pick it up and it was just cut

square in two. I'm surprised to hear that a bob can't can't I guess at least just mono imano take on a coyote. It might have been more than one that I would say, it was definitely probably more than one. Yeah, who would win in a one on one tussle a big tom or or a coyote? Yani's big old pounder and a kyote. Well, if the if the bobcat had one foot in a trap, you'd have a you'd have

a dead bobcat. Yeah. Um, I'm sure they You have to imagine they run into single single shots from time to time, and probably that's that's the one thing, you know, the big Tom's if you look at the little bit of tracking data that I get to look at, you know, the Tom's the tom has definitely spent way more time in the open country. You know, they'll move there. There's

still a structure related animal. They always want to be by structure, but they'll move from one piece of structure across some opening, whereas the females and the younger cats are just just almost always stands structure. They always be safe, you know. And that's how so later in this season, Um, you know those big tom show up like use you're trapping foothills and stuff like that a lot of times. Well then you start catching them big Tom's in January February.

It's because they were they were down running with the coyotes. Uh. And then they'll come up into the trees to find find a woman. You know. But you were talking about

like how fast they discover that their neighbors gone. Uh, that's that's like my most recent thing that's keeping me engaged in interested in trying to learn about bobcats more and more, as is how they figure that out, how they established those territories, Like what are all the different ways that they're leaving sent down that creates such you know, like defined barriers between one cat and another, you know, and uh, and some of those odors that are present

in you know, they come from their glands. You know, they're just a big giant gland. They got gland of forehead behind their ears and their arms and there, you know, their anal glands. They're feet pads. You know, they just they can make smell like bobcats smell out of all their whole body. But uh, you know, when they're making them scratches, they'll scratch their back feet to their front feet. They're they're putting odor down. When they're peeing, they're putting

oer down. When they're scratching a post, they're putting oer down. And some of those odors I'm starting to learn last a pretty short amount of time, you know, undetectable to us as humans. But you know bobcats, you know, uh, bobcats. If you know old old old trappers, you know, uh, a lot. You know, there was a rap on bobcats. They got a cold nose. They call them a cold nose. You know, they don't compared to a kyo, you know.

But the longer I do this, the more I respect and admire the the ability of a bobcat to smell, especially watch them on trail camera when they come to your cage trap. They literally put their nose on every single thing. Yeah, and and they can smell so much better than I. You know, ever ever really thought if you hadn't got interested in bobcasts, what do you think you would have done your life? Golly, I don't know. You think you'd have got all obsessed with something different?

That's a toughie. I mean, I mean I imagine by nature I would have, but like you were destined to get obsessed with something. That's what I always wondering about people, you know. I mean, like if if you spend your whole energy on one thing and that thing was an absence, would you have been to some like slack jaw TV watcher or would you been all obsessed with some the next like playing b Yeah. I don't know, I always I always, uh, I know, as a construction worker, all

those years. You know. It's it's one of those if if you don't pick your future, your future picks you kind of thing, you know. And uh, you know, I started making good money in high school and and being in construction you know, lended itself to the talents already had, you know. Um, and I wasn't you know. I always always wish that I was good at school. I always wanted to go to college and to like that, but just never, I'm just just I just couldn't stay. I

couldn't do it. Uh So, how far did you get in college? Oh? Gosh, I did? I didn't. I I just took you know, community college courses and stuff. The only ones I ever did any good and were the ones that I stuff I cared about, like geology and stuff, you know, or electrical classes and stuff. Um. But yeah, I always remember, you know, my stepdad was a was a cop. He was chief police stuff, and he he would always come home in a suit and uh and nice shoes and stuff, and he would put his work

boots on when he got home. Well, he'd put his work boots on to do work. And I always thought, all those years doing construction, always that like I'm the exact opposite. You know, I wouldn't mind going to work in nice clothes, you know, and and the work clothes are for when you get home, you like. I don't know what I would have done if I wasn't into this. I don't know how long you've been married, nineteen years? Yeah, well, I mean there was one brief a couple of years

marriage when I was younger. Um, I remember leaving that gal. No, no, no, no, I remember leaving that gal on the the apartment couch on Christmas Eve to go out bobcat handing at night with my buddy. Uh. I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with that woman. I don't know. Want you to understand we're only married a couple of years and no kids luckily, and that might have something to do with it. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, she didn't, she had nothing, She wasn't against it, but you know,

I just wasn't. The way it end up working out for me, and getting older, getting married older in life, having kids, older in life, it was to me so much better than my younger friends. They got married early and they had kids because they were still they were constantly fighting, you know, every day, wanting to have their own personal life, you know, fun life, you know, being tied down with these kids and being married. And when I got married older in life, I think it was

in early forties, I was just I was ready. I was ready for that to be the thing I was gonna do, have kids and be married. I was pretty much sick of having fun by the time I had kids. Yeah, I don't seems like you have quite a bit of fun. No, No, I don't mean that kind of fun. I mean like having whatever like that. Yeah, I was, well, I was never a party here. I mean, not that kind of fun. The nighttime fun. I was never a party of Heck, me and Jay would ditch school and uh we go

out in the desert shooting stuff. You know, we go out on weekend. We'd go on the desert night hut, you know, camping out the desert. Yeah, just going out doing stuff. That's yeah, that's what we wanted to do. Even though you can't hunt it and trap it. Is that Mohave desert stuff still cool to hang out in.

Is it pretty wild? Uh? Now? So much of it uh has been closed to wilderness, you know, close all the roads anywhere that the topography out there in that desert changed from flat to two hills that they years ago, they turned it into wilderness, like drew a line around it, closed all the roads. Hiking it much. I'm I've never

been a big hiker. Um. Then a big portion of a three million acres got turned into the Majabi National Preserve, and uh, their goal was to turn it to its pre colonial days, right, so if it wasn't here when you know, colonization, they they didn't want it. So they, you know, started working with private groups to buy out all the cattle ranchers and chase them out there. And then all those you know, the only reason that desert was worth anything was because a cattleman and and miners

and stuff. You know, that's the only that's how the desert got developed, you know, because there's there's no water. So them guys were out there developing springs, natural springs, you know, and stretching cattle waters out across the desert and providing water for wildlife, you know. And so you know, over a period of quite a few years, they pretty much got rid of all the cattleman. There's only one

left out there. Most all them cattle waters died. If you do hike into one of those old cattle waters or springs that the cattle rancher used to make tane, it's just overgrown. Now there's no water above surface, and um, it's just a it's just death valley. And it used to be teeming with wildlife, you know. But they did all that, you know, in the interests of they, you know, say,

retaining it for future generations type. So um, yeah, they actually did that Mobbi preserve with supportive hunters, like they were told it was going to be a pretty pretty neat deal. Um to turn into preserve, you'd get federal money and all that sort of stuff. And and then over the period of time, different directors with the with

the that be the Park Service. You know, they even attempt to do stuff like band nighttime coyote hunting out there for the sake of the dark skies, like people that want to go out and look at stars, like they don't want varma hunters out there at night, run a spotlight. You know, it's just a constant. It's California, man, So do you leave California every year then to chase Bobcat somewhere else? Yeah, Arizona's my playground these days, and I'm only two hours from there, but I just almost,

I almost you know, satisfy that itch between. So for the last several years, you know, I was working for us d A doing you know, trapping, doing kyote worksheet protection, and then they we had contracts with you know, game fish stuff like that. We go into units and do fawn protection. You know, when the spring kill you remove

coyotes to try to help the fonds um. But you know, I left that and then I found out about these different contracts with different states and stuff like that, and I was like, huh, you know, what's that all about. Why is the USDA getting to do all that? So then I started working my way into some of that stuff.

And so between you know, building the cage traps and uh, in the springtime I'll do I'll do kyote work for about two and a half months somewhere and another you know, different different contracts, and then the wintertime, I'm got to do this radio collar stuff. For the last three years and so yeah, I'm hoping to get back home, get caught up on cage traps and everything, and get at least get to you know, recreationally in February. You know,

for myself, it kind of like your business. The way it's evolved over time kind of reminds me of a little bit like being a writer, where um, the medium's change all the time, right, Like I was, I was in to talk about a certain set of ideas and at a time it was like, oh, it was in magazine articles, and then it was in books, then it's in podcasts, then it's an audio original ship and it's in TV, right, it's in YouTube, whatever it is. It feels like you've been doing the same thing, but like

everything's changed around it for sure. Like for to get yeah, that you've just been like wherever Bobcats take me? No, absolutely, because for for quite a few years I just was into selling their pelts, you know, That's what I was about. And then the case trapping thing started. So now I've got like, you know, a little side gig going on

with the case traps plus I'm trapping. And then and when as we lost everything in California, that was almost hand in hand the same time where I started doing seasonal work for U S d A and then working for you know, Arizona Game of Fish stuff. Yeah, it's just like like, yeah, every few years to figure out a new way to make money off of bobcats and and the research stuff is proving to be really fulfilling,

very very fun. Uh. Sometimes people are right in and ask how to get a job, like an outdoor job, her job in the outdoors. It's kindly take your pick. I don't know every way in no way, you know, yeah, no, two people have the same story. I was saying, like, you've carved this whole crazy existence like that man, and you wouldn't be like, well, here's how you do it. Yeah,

and every made any sense. It's not. I would love to tell you how to plan and figured it all out ahead of time, but it's like every year brings something new that's just not replicable. No. Uh, well, you know the USDA Wildlife Services route is not too bad. You know a lot of guys get there, get started doing that. You know, you can spend an entire career working for USDA Wildlife Services, you know, as a wildlife specialists.

We've had some of those guys on the show. They get kind of a bad Everybody likes to make fun of the government trapper. You know, I didn't know that yeah. Yeah, they all like to cheese that, you know, he's not any good or whatever. But then yeah, but then at the same time you have trappers telling you, oh yeah, you know, the government trapper in my town taught me

how to trap. So like the old government trappers, they get credit for being great and and you know USDA guys nowadays they get knocked on a lot, you know, like oh yeah, we had that, we had the government guy out. He couldn't kill the guyote, you know, so you know, like meet a bunch of boys from the bar went and killed it. You know, well, man, I appreciate you coming out and hanging out. Oh shoot, man, I got the in fight. There's no doubt that was

coming up. Tell people how to find your tell people how to find your your business. Oh yeah, camp trip Cages on Facebook is where I'm most active, believe it or not. Facebook. Um, but your website says you're gonna make a website. Yeah, the website, the certificates and everything ran out like a year ago. Uh, and so we just kind of put like a placeholder side, you know, on their caging Bobcats dot com. Um, and it's been a year now. I've been promising that website guy that

i'd i'd work on it for him, and I haven't done. Yeah, I'm sposed sending a bunch of pictures though, but heck, I'm so darn busy right now. Just word of mouth that you know, and it's it's kind of cool because when people look you up word of mouth, like they're they're looking for you because they want your product. Like you get that phone call, you're making a sale. When when I almost dread putting social media posts out because you get you know, you make one social Yeah, you

get one social media posts. You get all kind of guys want free advice and asking a million questions and don't don't even read your post. They ask you questions about the post you just made. Yeah, all right, man, I appreciate it. Yeah, shoot, I appreciate it. So find you there, um and if you're not out there, you're out in the desert somewhere learning about Bob Kints. Yeah, for sure, I appreciate you coming up, man, Thank you, thanks buddy, good me. Now you guys,