Ep. 413: Split and Delivered

I need your help to help me find the best turkey storytellers that you know. Okay, I'm gonna be down there every day of the convention February. We're gonna be in Dorsey of Ryman's studio. There's gonna be signage there directing you how to get there, so you can take your friend or your grandpa or maybe yourself there to me and record a turkey story with me. Remember, it

doesn't necessarily have to be about turkey hunting. It could be about the relationships that we get from turkey hunting, something that happened before our turkey hunt, wherever it might be. I just want to get it recorded. I think this is a great opportunity for us as hunters to record some of our oral history that is such a great part of hunting, and uh, get it recorded, so we have it forever years down the line will be able to look at and go, hey, remember what it was

like back in so Nashville, Tennessee, February eighth. We have room open for walkins. If you want to sign up ahead of time, go to the meat eater dot com forward slash Turkey story sign up and you can get a time slot there so you don't have to try to beat the rush when we're all down there hanging out at the Turkey Convention. Thanks in advance. Holy smokes, we got maybe we got a lot to pack in. Right now, we are joined by one want to repeat customer,

repeat guests, quite possibly the most repeated guests. No, I think half the finger wins that. No, No, I don't even think it's happening. Carmen. How many times have you been on? You've been on four times, twice in Seattle and twice here now. Yeah, she's old school. Man. When we said podcast in your garage, yeah, man, when we used to hang the shipping, those shipping do we have the shipping blankets hung up everywhere? I don't remember that.

I was more distracted by how immaculate your garage that ain't change, has not changed. So Carmen van Bianci is back, Um, and you got you gotta you have a proposal. You have a pitch. Yeah, I got a pitch today. Uh, just what I remember, Just so everyone remembers, Carmen is a recreational hunter, but a professional wildlife researcher. And her pitch to you all, you gotta dig deep. This is gonna be like the Jerry Lewis telethon that's dated. Do you know what I'm talking about? Want to say Jerry

Lewis telethon because we're Jerry's kids. There's a joke behind that. But yeah, you gotta keep that one in your pocket. Um also joined, So we we're gonna get to We're gonna get the Carmen's pitch and you guys got there. Everybody's got to dig deep in their wallets and help her out. And if you happen to own a snowmobile company, you'll want to pay particular attention because this wildlife research

project needs your assistance. Also joined by uh probably the pre eminent YouTube stars, the pre eminent YouTubers on YouTube, like these are the guys that that like that Mr Beest found his inspiration problem your beast and end. No. No, he was like, he was like, I'd like to be like that, but I'm not. I can't trap beavers like that,

So I'm gonna oddly exploitative stuff exactly. And I too oddly exploitative stuff where I act like I'm being magnanimous, but I'm kind of a little bit being exploited under the guys of charity, I guess, you know, uh um, you know, you know, I talking about how a lot of like how people that like to hunt are always disappointed in Disney movies, you know, because they'd be like a hunter in there and he's where he's from the South,

you know, he's like ignorant. Yeah, uh um. And I was saying that that I like to watch Adventure Time with my kids because an Adventure Time their house is full of taxidermy and they sleep under animal skins. Um. It's just it's very like it's it's got all the They even have like skinned out ducks and stuff that they sleep under, but they sleep under animal hides. And I like that show. They kind of did a goof

on Um. They did a little bit of a goof on that genre of YouTube video where they they have a large pile of treasure and they take some of their treasure and they go to these uh goji berries house and use their money to get these goji berries to do They go exploit them with their money, and the goji berries have a hard time saying no, oh,

they're personified animated goji berry. I can explain. I'm talking of course about Chris and Ken Carlson from both they have a duel like uh dual channels both things that are very interesting to me. In the woodyard, which chronicles their wood chopping exploits and out of the woodyard where they're not in the woodyard. You're easily entertained, aren't you, everybody? I showed you? Okay, So we have a we have a we have a person at uh you know people

have seen her just been on the show. We have an employee, Tracy Um who I'm I want to say she could give her rat's ass about wood chopping and beaver trapping. Um, but she did go and get realed into rock picking and picked all the rocks, like would go to a ranchers go to a ranch assuming they didn't want rocks right impeding with the growth of their grass. Sounds like my wife, and she did. She picks. She personally picked enough rocks for a giant chimney and giant

patio and stuff. So that might so I can't say that she wouldn't give a rat's ass about it, but I was introduced. I was like, you have to watch these guys, okay, and she said it was She said the same thing Crincesett where it's like, what's the thing where you listen to people playing with beads and ship? Yea auto sensory motor stimulation? Is that right? Something you could? You could watch these guys for dates. It's unbelievable, Like I never thought, like hours of my life and go

no watching people. Plouse was the I was like, you have to watch and so I was like, you just check it out, just watch for a second. So she starts watching it around the phone and person realized we've been on the phone together not saying any of the pretends to me. It's like the world, Oh, I need to correct myself. A SMRs is autonomous sensory meridian response. What did you say it was auto sensory motor response. Is there where you get that tingly feeling in your head? Ye,

you can get it that way. You can get it by with Karin's um pheasant foot, Yeah, pheasant foot head tickler. You can. It's like slow TV that we've we've talked a little bit about on this show. But it's I think that's it's kind of the same thing. Sounds A lot of people like listening to this. The dueling chainsaws go over well, you know, stuff like that, the sound of the spud hitting the ice splitter, you know, when this when the wood cracks, you know, it's a cool sound.

My daughter, who wants nothing to do with it, helped film one day for me and she said, that's really interesting, just listening to the sound of the wood split. And she said, I can listen to that all day. Get a lot of that from a lot of people. It's weird. So we're gonna we're gonna dig in. We're gonna do Carmen's big, big push where everyody's gonna dig deep in their pockets and there's there's something in it for you. I'm talking to the listener adjest to carry it up first.

We gotta we gotta get into a couple of things, um, some feedback issues. Someone had an interesting point. I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this guy. I feel like they're being a little nitpicky. Jesse Griffiths on episode four or five of the podcast, Jesse Griffiths was bitching and moaned about the term dry brin um on the grounds that it was an inaccurate fad term for a process that already had multiple names, including dry rub

and pre seasoning. His words, but also that's like kind of an oxymoron, right, It's like like Brian is liquid. So he's like, when you're dry brining, why are you not putting a dry rub on it? Why are you not preseasoning it? And someone rolled in to say, if you're really going to be I'm putting words in this individual's mouth owen. He says, if you're really gonna be like getting down to the NAT's ass on all this stuff. He said that Jesse should consider this pre is generally

a totally unnecessary prefix. Well, you preheat oven, you're just heating it. If you submit a pre proposal for a grant. It's a proposal. Preseasoning would fall into the same category. You're just seasoning it. That's all good point, unless, of course, there's more seasoning that happens later. I could shoot a thousand holes in what this guy is saying. I don't even agree with this. Then it's like your seasoning, your seasoning again, and then you're seasoning again. I don't agree

with them. I don't agree with them at all. We had this conversation today about refried beans, like they're fried beans m And I was like, no, because you keep reheating them, and that's like reframing, Like that's not what they mean. No, they're just fried beans. So I think that preheating is that you're it's like you're heating it. Pre cook pre seasoning would be most people, Like most of my life, you'd have cooked a steak then put

seasoning on it. But now days you put it on there and let's sit there for an hour to integrate. So you're like, you know, I get I get, I get where he's coming from, but I just want to share that another good bit of feedback. Uh, this guy was just pointing out a thing that's pretty interesting. I recently heard Steve recount a story about a twenty dollar squirrel dog by recently. He means he was listening to an old episode, but I remember what he's talking about.

A squirrel dog sold for twenty dollars, and we thought that was worth mentioning. Um. He says. It reminded me of an FBI sting operation called Operation Get This Big Coon Dog. You google it and it checks out Operation Big Coon Dog. He says, I used to live in a small coal town called Grundy, Virginia. Grundy is basically two extremely tight valleys with rivers running through it. It would be them due to topography. Grundy floods regularly, and

sometimes it's biblical. One of these epic flood events happened about twenty years ago. FEMA came in and declared the area disaster, and the FEDS provided millions of dollars for cleanup. Somehow, the local politicians got FEMA to allow elected fish officials to divvy up the money to local contractors for the clean up. The problem is that the politicians took bribes

for the contracts. No, the first time that ever happened. Hey, that that's a I was, you know, what's funny about this is that the thing right now, um Zelenski in Ukraine just dismissed a lot of senior officials for playing a similar game with all the aid flooding into Ukraine. I don't know if they're doing it for coon dogs. But so here's how the FBI caught wind of it. A guy that didn't normally win coon hunting tournaments starts winning a lot of coon hunting tournaments. And he's a politician.

He's a politician, and he just comes out of the blue, all of a sudden, he's got some sweet coon dogs and starts cleaning up on raccoons. Okay, they reported that it was suspicious the timing of him getting these high test coon dogs, and it wound up that this individual took as a bribe a forty thousand bucks and coon dogs. They wound up, the FBI wound up busting him in

several other individuals for this graft. Then he goes on to say Grundy has flooded several times since and FEMA has denied them relief based on the local government's antics during Operation Big Coon. That doesn't seem fair to the people. Some people did prison time for this. Yeah, well I

don't believe. I don't know that I believe that part. Like, I don't think that they would be like you'd have a guy commit fraud or you know, take accept the bribe so bad that he goes to jail and your town floods again, and Feme was like, not this time, fool me once, Shame on you. Like I just I don't know, I believe everything else, he says. Wikipedia page

says sixteen people we're convicted of criminal charges. But what's messed up is that some of those people that it said, well, he says in his letter that after they went to prison, they were reelected the most global community at him that that feels American. The bribes feel American, just not distinctly American. It feels human fem of being like next time you're on your own, buddy. I don't know. I don't know. Um,

this one's interesting. I'm not gonna get into it. Well, I'm not gonna get into his landowners will cover this more because we circle background of this landowners winning a

suit about trespassing deer dogs. You see where this is going, Like guys go hunt with their deer dogs and like a strategy, and this, this is always, This is always if I was a high if I was a dear dog hunter, I would be self policing because this winds up being the number one grievance against people who hunt deer with dogs where it's legal, is that you're basically

the a lot. I'm not saying everybody, it's a common practice to be well, I know that I can't run into that guy's property and chase the deer out, but I'll wait on the edge and send my dogs in, which is like, you know, that's like the number one point of contention about it. They do. My friend dog talks about it. Yeah, they're like, well I can't go on, I can't go over there, but I mean we'll not just we'll stand on the edge and you can well

oh sorry, it happens. Yeah, unlegally you're allowed to go retrieve your dogs once they've gone on to that problem. Yeah, that's one of them gray areas kind of kind of abused things. So as we're covering a later episode with a lot of detail, um, this these landowners one of things saying like yeah, man, you can't you can't use your dogs to spook to send them in and spook the game off our property. It's kind of like you being there. But we'll cover that later. Carmen, you ready, Okay,

tell people what's going on? Uh? Do you want me to back up a little bit and just talk about the project all the way up? All? Right? Well? Uh? So? Soll what you do for a living, I'm a wildlife biologist.

I've been UM working in the field for I guess or twenty years almost now, UM and about a year a little over a year ago, a couple of colleagues of my and I started our own wildlife research nonprofit and one of our our bigger projects that we're really diving into now is looking at links and wildfire in the North Cascades of Washington. So in the North Cascades of Washington, we've got what's an endangered population of links. Listen is threatened elsewhere in the lower forty eight, but

in Washington they're listed as endangered. And that's in large part because of UM, this just blow up of wildfires that we've had in the past fifteen to twenty years. So during that time, because of about a hundred hundred fifty years of fire suppression UM in all over in the West, but you know, we're focusing on the North Cascades.

Has allowed a build up of fuels on the landscape basically and what what used to be regulated just by nature with uh frequent spotty, really pyro diverse, meaning burns that um that burned with a lot of textures. So they're they're skipping little places there, burning really hot in some places, they're reburning some other places. They're burning at a lower intensity in some places, meaning they're leaving behind

trees with live crown, but they're consuming understory. So these these more historic fires that would just sort of uh spot off every summer and break up the landscape, we're really important for a couple of reasons. One, they created this just incredible patchwork of really rich, diverse habitat out

there in the North Cascades. But they also created a sort of a um self feedback loop wherein the fires that were happening one year, we're sort of um dampening the effects of future subsequent fires because they're sort of by fire creating natural fire breaks on the lamps. So you had you had more of a mosaic, continuous mosaic of fire activity rather than like what exactly. Yes, that's the perfect noise to describe it. So so keep that in mind. That's the historic fire regime that we used

to have. That's also the historic landscape, this patchy mosaic that links in the North Cascades evolved in Okay. So fast forward in time. Now we've got a hundred fifty years of fire suppression, so putting out all those fires that would have naturally started from lightning and things every summer, and you know, doing it with good intention. We're trying

to save the forest. This sort of thing that allowed our forests to basically um even out into a mono crop of of trees, and and we lost that um not only diversity, um that mosaic of habitats, but we lost that self feedback loop. So all of a sudden,

it's a continuous swath of tinder ready to go. And so that landscape of um high fuels and continuous fuels then meets hotter, drier, longer summers, and in the early two thousands we start to have what we're calling mega fires, which are fires that burn over a hundred thousand acres um and we've had fires that are much bigger than that, and they're just ripping through those forests, um cooking it right down to the dirt, cooking it down to the

dirt with so trending towards um less pyrodiversity, so higher severity overall. And so they're leaving behind these giant burn scars of um highly high severity burn. So we're losing not only texture because we're not just getting these smaller spotty fires all over, but we're losing texture because these giant fires that are coming through are doing so and it just more evenly high severity. We're losing those little

fire skips. We're losing the sort of um just the richness of a of a patchwork that would be left behind. And so where links come into this is that in the in the early two thousand's when we were starting to learn about links habitat, which just as a little sidebar is in a nutshell, links eat snowshoe hairs primarily, that's most of their diet, snowshoe hairs. Uh live in

forests that have a high stem density. And what I mean by that is they're they're living in thick forests with stems branches that are low to the ground, offering them food and shelter from from predators. Yeah, fresh growth or or old growth where you've got that sort of multilayered forests and big branches that reach down to the ground.

So when we are learning about links habitat in the early two thousands, we're doing so against this backdrop of what's been a really fire excluded landscape for hud hundred fifty years. And so the palette of of links of habitat that links have to choose from is mostly unburned,

a couple of little burns here and there. Now fast forward, you know, fifteen years, and we've had these these mega fires torching hundreds of thousands of acres a year, and all of a sudden, most of our are are a lot of our links habitat, most of our prime link links habitat is mostly burned, very little unburned. And so we needed to know yesterday, in my opinion, how links are reacting to this completely different menu of of habitats

out there. Um In that's when they were uplisted to endangered in the state because of these fires, because sort of the rule of the um is that recent large burns aren't hair habitat, aren't links habitat um. And so with the uptick in these fires, naturally there's a lot of concern um. So our research is going to start uh picking apart and learning the ins and outs of how they're using this this new really burned landscape and

they are using that. And we know that because we're the field biologists and we've been out there for long enough to see a change in the landscape and regenerating burns, seeing the links go, seeing them come back, and starting to notice patterns of um okay within say this, you know,

fifteen year old burn scar. There are places that they're starting to be able to use, places meaning um uh well, different different types of regenerating burned habitat because it's regenerating uh with some texture that we would hope to see, like fire skips and places where whatever the growing conditions are allow thicker trees to be coming up. Um. And

that's really exciting to see. I was out there I guess six years ago now in the winter snowmobiling, just servying for for tracks with another local biologists, and we saw very few snowshoe hair tracks and no links tracks. Well last year, well, let's say a couple of years ago, I started to notice more links tracks in this burnt scar. Last year, we went out five times just to do some pilot work and we marked i think fifty seven sets of links tracks within that same burn that years

ago only had zero. So I'm not not that that's fifty seven links, but that's a that's a lot of activity, and including we saw tracks from you know, a female with kittens, females with kids, people came to eat exactly. Yeah, the grocery store is coming back, and so that's really exciting and it tells me that we have this opportunity, that really golden opportunity to learn what burned habitats Links

can use. And that is important for conservation because if we know the best of the burned habitats that they can use and the sort of the arrangement of those habitats, we can start getting in there to do forest treatments that will reinstate that historic patchwork, reinstate that negative feedback loop, and try to get wrangle in these these mega fires, which is a win win for Links because uh, we're if we know what the best of the burnt habitats

they're using are, we can craft these forest treatment plans to not only be UM reducing fuels, but also you know, leaving the right arrangements and amounts of burned habitat for links that are there today, and we're saving habitats so that moving forward, we're we're lessening the risk of these huge mega fires coming in. I imagine that links aren't

the only creators that benefit, that's right, That's yeah. That's one of the things that really interests me in this research is that this isn't links tell a really good story. They tell a story for a lot of the other um animals that live on that landscape, and they tell

the story of our local fier ecology. UM. But this is more than just you know, trying to save our our links habitat and thus our links population, which that's important, but it's also just about reining in these these mega fires to the benefit of the landscape, to the benefit of you know, our community which has just been you know,

breathing piece soup for smoke in the summers. And so it's UM it's more than just trying to UM get a handle on links conservation, although that's that's very important, it's also just about restoring UM a more balanced fier

ecology to our area. Yeah, so that's research. Yeah. To do all that research takes a lot and and it takes a lot of dedicated field work and UM that means time every day during our winter field seasons and our summer field seasons out in the back country UM collecting data so that we can, you know, in a in a scientific framework, learn about their habitat selection. And so our two main data streams are one, we're ropping around on snowmobiles in the back country in the winter,

deep snow environments, UM looking for tracks. When we find tracks from links, we jump off our lets, put on our snowshoes, and we start following them. And we're documenting not only their behavior whether they're hunting um or making a kill a snowcial hair kill, but we're also documenting their habitats that they're selecting. Because you guys know cats from from hunting and trapping, they're making a really fine

scale selection. You might see them UM opt to go you know, between two trees rather than around them, you know, to they like those little covery spots, and so they're making these really fine scale habitats selection choices as they're moving around to optimize their chance of finding food, and so we can buy backtracking them, document that really fine scale habitat selection um and start learning like, Okay, they like a little fire skip and they like that fire skip,

especially if it's surrounded by you know, low intensity burn and along a you know, a stream court or do you guys always backtracking not forward track. We backtracked because exactly we don't want to be influencing their behavior because they don't Yeah, they don't move all that far during the day. Estimates range from like you know, one to maybe eight kilometers a day, So it's it's if you're on a fresh track, you could easily you know, be

bumping them. So we always where he wants to be. Yeah, when you find one where they've killed a snowsh your hair is just a little bit of blood on snow. It's typically maybe a little bit of blood a piece of the hide from their back and you can often see like, um, the hemorrhaging around the puncture wounds there, um, and then maybe a foot and some guts. Oh no, I mean, have you ever seen like a house cat And they'll bring in um guts in the head of

a mouse or whatever. They'll eat the head though. They'll eat the head, yeah, nobody wants that. Like chewed up twigs, Yeah, I got you. Stomach content, stomach contents yeah yeah, yeah, anything left on and uh, you used to feed the dogs beaver. The only thing they don't eat is the contents of the guts. They'll even eat the gut if they get really hugger, but just say a ball or chewed up sawdas, they don't want to. Yeah, but they'll

eat everything else. Yeah. Cats are pretty particular about that. If you go to a cougar kill or a bobcat kill, one of the first things they'll often do is pluck that, um, you know, the room and contents the room and out and sort of set that aside. They don't they don't want that, do They go after internal organs right away.

That's one of the first things. Yeah, yeah, liver, the heart, all of that, and that's that's a really nutritious And so you can actually sort of age, um, well, if you're doing like a kill site investigation, you can tell what I don't I don't think there's any official name for it, but I call it an early carcass scat, And so it's the ship basically from their first feeding and when they're eating just pure organs and just a little and muscle um, they're scat is like black and

tari and um. Anyway, so you can tell that was an early carcass s cat. So if I'm going to a kill site for work and I see an early carcass cat, I start to get excited because it means there might be a kill there and then a late carcass I'm guessing would be a lot more former hair,

a lot more just bone fragments. Yeah, exactly. And with wolves it's pretty cool because the breeder male and female, they'll get pick of the carcass, and so they're the ones eating those organs, and so you can somewhat tell if it's an early carcass scat. You you've got a pretty good idea that if the whole pack was there, that that was probably one of the breeders. A little tracking info, that's great. So heavy with the second day to stream, Okay, the second day to stream is catching him,

that's right, yep. So um, so the backtrack king is really great. Um, fine scale habitat selection. You're learning cool things about your animal and their behavior. I think it's just a great way for biologists to stay grounded and what's happening out there in the field. You're learning your animal, you're seeing patterns. Um. I just yeah, I believe in it from from that stance as well as it just

being great data. But it's super labor intensive data, um, and so you're you're only gathering so much of it. So a wonderful way to complement that is with GPS caller data. That's that's going to give us, you know, provided we can catch cats, that's going to give us tons of data and be sort of the meat and potatoes um of a lot of our analysis to tell what they're doing in the summertime exactly. Yeah. And you're

just getting thousands of data points. And the way we've got our our callers programmed is that they'll be taking uh location every thirty minutes, so it it's set in itself is pretty fine scale data as well. We're we're gonna be able to learn a lot um And so getting callers out of course means trapping cats and so um. That's that's one of my favorite things to do, is is trapping UM. So I'm pretty excited to start doing that. Which we'll be opening traps in a couple of days. Here,

we're just waiting for our callers to arrive. But you guys need your nonprofit. You guys need snowmobiles, you need traps. We've got traps. We you explain it, Okay. So all this work that I'm talking about, the backtracking and the trapping, takes place in winter. And so for us to get out there, we're Lynx Country is where we are. It's high in elevation, it's pretty rugged. In fact, there's areas of Lynx Country where we are that's pass or it's

it's wilderness. We can't we get there in the winter, and so it's it's tough to access. It's just tough to be out there. And so really the crux and the weakest link of our research and getting it done is our snowmobiles. We have no way of collecting any of this data without snowmobiles. We got old as machines. We are writing some old as machines, and I am so grateful for these machines. We've had four machines donated to us, and that is awesome, and that's made it possible.

Um three of those machines are about twenty five years old, and so with us writing those every single day, and um, you know, probably have more people on the sled than the sled would like we're towing trailers this sort of thing. Um, they have a rough life on top of the twenty five years they've already lived. And so um we got people at age that work here and they're useless. I think he did. It's not even actually true. Funny jokes. I trying to buy that one back. He's remember that

thing about the young people like joking. I'm joking machines you hit the limit. Yeah, yeah, they're not gonna last us. And even one of them breaking down just puts a huge, you know crank in our day. We can't get people out there, and so we are trying to hustle really hard to raise some money to be able to buy one or two. Um used, we used, but hopefully not

twenty five year old machines. We're hoping we can find something in the tender fifteen year old range where you break down in the middle of nowhere, someone could literally save your life by getting you slide. I like that, man, Yes, save our lives. Donate Never hear her again on the podcast. No, I my the crew that we've got this year is UM an incredible group. They have got a lot of skill.

They know what to do if they break out or if they break down out there, which is either well, okay, we've got in reaches so they can contact needs to seem very desperate. Here's what it can mean. Uh, if you're in reach isn't working, it can mean that you're you know, thirty miles out in the back country in freezing snowy part you're eating your work partners and eventually issues. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even want to think about that. So anyway, the point is is that this is I've got great people,

We've got great opportunity for for gathering this data. But it all comes back to the snowmobiles. So lay out how people can be of help. This is where things get interesting. Yeah. So here's what we've schemed up UM. So, like I said, we're trying to raise money to get snowmobiles so we can do this work. And our plan is UM a campaign we're calling trap Cat and if folks donate hundred bucks, they're basically sponsoring a trap set.

So we have UM We've got thirty traps that we've built, and we've got another twelve that we're borrowing from another project. So we've got forty two traps. And the thing you've got to keep in mind is that these traps UM will be continuously resetting, UM rearranging, and every time you do that, it's a different set. And so if if UM folks donate hundred bucks, you get one of those sets basically in your name. And how long is it set?

How long you'll leave a set out? It depend ends if it's a good set that we like, could be out there all season, which are seasons running now through March, or you could have a month long set. You can have a months long set, or you make a set and then also in some skier or something's dicking with it and you gotta move it, and then that sets over. Yeah, or a skunk is stra orient every day, or a gray j or whatever, or we just decide we don't like it for whatever reason, then we'll move it and

so then it becomes a new set. It's just like trapping, same thing. Yeah, I mean that's yeah, you got a dead when you move it, Yeah, exactly, exact Start catching possums you move it. Yep. So, um, so we could have countless numbers of sets this season. Yeah, okay, So if you donate, first of all, we'll be sending out season updates and just pictures and footage of what we're doing out there, so you'll get access to that. And then if you're set catches the links, then you win.

You're a winner. You win. That's a winning moment for you. And so do they get the name the cat? We thought about that. Um, well, this podcast has talked about naming animalst quite a bit, and we decided to just avoid that. I yeah, so we're gonna give us some number. Well, I mean it'll get an ear tag and so official it'll have a sort of its official ear tag number. Uh. You know, often internally will have names for cats just

because who's going to remember the number. And so if you've got the one anyway, it just makes it simpler to have a name. But the winner is not getting naming privileges. The winner is going to get fame and glory. Um, so we'll we'll announced you as a winner, and Steve has also offered to announce the winner on social media. Well, an now the winner on my social media and how many winners might there be how cats trying to get well, we've got so in our I don't know how many

cats we've got in our study area. But here's the thing about research trapping, and especially for an endangered species, there's not that many out there, and it makes the trapping really, really tough. Um. It's one thing to be, you know, trapping links in the core of their range and at a population peak where you've got multiple cats passing your traps and doing so very often. That gives

you a lot of opportunities. We might have an opportunity once a week, once every two weeks, just because there's the density of cats is so low. There's not that many there, So fill but fill in this for me. Yeah, I Carmen van Bianchi, would be disappointed if I got collars on less than unless this year. If we got less than one, I would be disappointed. I'll be happy

if we catch one. I'll be ecstatic if we catch four. Okay, that was the second thing I was gonna have you like, and that would be surprised if we got more than four. Working your asses off with the goal of getting the collar on maybe one to four. Yea one if one, you'd be you'd count yourself like good to get one. Four would be great, four would be great. We've got um multiple years of this project and as as the first year, it's always more, you know, just your figuring

out logistics. You're you know, you always learn a lot in your in your first year. Um. But just to give me an idea, I've I have links trapped in the North Cascades before it took us two seasons to catch five cats, five unique length. Whereas I've trapped in in Maine and we caught I think eleven new captures in two months. So so much of that just depends on your on your density. So this is roughing it

a slog and you're going to use the money. Sorry, sorry ahead, Well, I just gotta float it out there. There's trapping. There's another way to catch cats. Yeah, once you have once you have Yanni hound dog, Yeah that um could be well, a couple of things we know how to trap. Um. I don't know of any local hound hunters. Give you a lot of reasons why you

don't want to do this. There's also links are because you're gonna have one if the dogs mix it up with the links the links that they don't they're not as my understanding, and I've never chase links with a dog, but I've heard from people they don't want to go into the tree. Well we're in a burned area, remember, so there's not a whole lot of trees that link mingus all of a sudden becomes the you know, he makes like the FBI's most wanted lists for having killed

some links. Yeah, it's just we've got a very high bar for for what we're willing to put this endangered species through we need. Yeah, and it's been floated, it's you know, but it's just um, well just looking at you know, versus putting out forty two traps. If you cut a track and you put dogs on that one track and thing. No, but you're right, I mean it would be more efficient. Yeah, keep in mind keeping come out, nobody raising money to send Yanni out there. There we go.

But you're you're going to use the money from the program. You're gonna use the sponsorship money to take care of the snow bill problem. So someone could either just take care of the snow and bill problem and then you can use the money for something else. But but so do that But the other thing is you gotta do the sponsorship. Now, let me tell what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna sponsor a set for each of my three children. All right, Okay, that's a

good way. That's a good thing to do for people to have children on a sponsor a set for each of my three children. But how will they know when their set has been made? And how will they know what happened? Yeah, good questions. So we'll send a picture

of the set. We'll send you a picture of your set, and then we'll also because we'll have your email, um, and then like I said, we'll be sending updates like if you're getting by catch that sort of thing, um, and just you know, videos and just footage of us out there being trappers. And you have the capacity to do all this additional reporting and work barely. But I mean, it's all everything that we're doing. We are running ragging.

We're just Yeah, you got volunteers. So we've got let's see, so there's three of us uh staff for Home Range Wildlife Research. That's our our nonprofit. I've hired two field bios and then we have some really great local trackers that are volunteering to help us with the backtracking portion. Yeah, are you looking for more volunteers? Is that filled up? We're filled up. It also takes quite a bit of training, so we did a big training all at once a couple of weeks ago. Um, so for this season, Yeah,

where we need people to just be ready to go. So, so how do people go sponsor the trap? Is this going on right? Like, you're ready to roll right now? So we're opening traps on Friday, that's the day our callers are supposed to get there. So right now there's a couple of folks out in the field getting traps out there. Um. My strategy was, let's get traps out there and in place. No bait, no I catch. Um. In fact, I'm sort of hoping they're not going to be noticed until we open them. I don't want to

lose much of the element of surprise. We're gonna open the doors, We're gonna bait them, We're gonna put out feathers and the snow your hair. No, we're just using road killed deer. Yeah, and then some loures, some beaver caster and things like that. But how do people go do it? Website. Yeah, we've got a landing pay age. Yea. So it's home range dot org home range dot org yep, slash trap a cat and you're ready to take business. We're ready as Yeah, when this drops, we will be alright.

I'll do three of them. Awesome. Thanks, But listeners need to jump in and it just send him some just send him some snowbills man. Yeah, is there a way too that Let's just say you don't you're not even interested in setting a set that you can just can you just go to the landing page and just send a hunter box? Yeah, that's an option there. Yeah. I mean we've got donate but no, you're a trapper. I'm a trapper, not a giver. I want my set um.

But this is all the solved snow bill problem. Yep, exactly. I feel like some I feel like there's such a good chance it's some snowbill outfit. It's gonna it's gonna help you out. I mean, that would be an incredible machine, the dream machine, be honest, and I were just talking about is it cut that out? Philm machine? You can leave in us talking about make it the dream machine? Is any machine leave us talking about how we cut it,

but beep out what she said because she is. It's like, don't do that, man, I'm not going to turn down an arctic cut. All that be all at out beat the words out. Beggars can't be choosers. Exactly. You need snow meals. If someone gives Carmen the snowmobiles, I will the same way. I'm going to announce the winners. If someone gives Carmen it's not because someone gives Home Range snow meals, then I'll do the We'll do the social

media post thanking them for the snowbal There we go. Yeah, okay, beverage. Good. Tell the website again. Home range dot org, slash trap a cat and dashes trap dash dash cat home Range, home Range like an animal's home range dot org ye slash trap dash a dash cat not links. Nope, doesn't have the same I don't know, probably not. Now listen, let's not complicate things necessary, all right. I hope people dig in and help. Yeah, I will be announcing the winners. Yep. Yeah,

Oh you know what we'll do? Can I kind of sweeten the pot? We'll send um, We'll send a I'm trying to think what we'll do. We'll send a great first light kit to the winners. Oh I don't, I'm gonna need to. So if my set traps the links, we'll send a great We'll send a great cold weather accessory, will send like cold weather, like heavy duty down right, because it's wintertime. We'll send a cold weather kit like

Bibbs jacket, super hat, Mitts. That's better than a lottery, So I'll announce it and then we'll send a cold weather kit to winters. That's amazing. You're gonna make me get my wallet on. Yeah, thank you, And to anybody that does donate, thank you. Well we'll stay on it. Man, We're gonna get it. I think. I hope we'll get to take care of Thank you. That would be great. Um. And then I got one last question for you. The collars.

How long do they work for? Well, that's the thing with callers is it's always you're trying to balance the battery life, the weight of the caller, and your data collection. So the more intensive the data collection, the fact of the battery in it out. So we've we've rigged it up so that every other month they're collecting this thirty minute data. Every three days, and by doing that, we've made it so that our colors will last around the

calendar year from when the call was placed. So you get a year and does that thing fall off in the end, So there's a couple of different mechanisms you can use, but yes it does. We wanted to fall off because we don't want to saddle and links with you know, a caller for the rest of it. Can you find it? Yeah, it's got a little death signal or whatever. Yep, it's got a death signal. We cause it a mortality signal. But yeah, so if the cat dies,

we'll know we can go out there and investigate what happens. Man, that would be that would be a great giveaway item. If you want to dig real into this, let's picture this the uh you get a you get a mortality signal that someone can come along with you to go find out what happened to the thing or just get the collar. Yeah, those are always fascinating field. I would be so excited if I woke up one day and we're going to check out a mortality signal on the lynks,

I'd be very excited. What kind of price are we talking on a collar? It's gotta be not free. No no, um, when it's all done well, So the so the let me just explain how they fall off because that affects the price. But basically, you can get a a cotton spacer that will eventually just sort of rot off, um and that anyway, there's so that's one option. Uh. And then you could also get a collar with a blowoff device. And so that's a programmable little piece of equipment that

exactly a tiny explosion kills the cat. We no, yeah, it just makes the bolts separate and so the collar falls off. So that's that's nice because you know when it's gonna happen, you can plan for it. You know it's not going to happen too early before your data collection has done. That's that's the expensive option. That's the expensive option. Yeah. So if you're getting a drop off, um about I want to say, like six hundred people could buy those for you. Two couldn't they? Yeah? Oh man,

the more calls. So we only have four callers right now. So that's why i'd be really happy forgot for kids like seven cats. You're gonna go now what oh man, if some miracle happened and you know in three weeks, We've almost you know, caught two or three or something. I'm going to be pretty disappointed we don't have more but miracle days on the line last year. That's what I'm hoping for. That's what I'm hoping for. And I also just need to point out that we're really grateful

to our grand tours, the Paul g Allen Family Foundation. Well, thanks for coming out and explaining it. Thanks for having me. This is um. Yeah, I told come on any time you want talk about what, talk about your needs and wants. It's great that all right, you guys ready to dig in out of the woodyard. In the woodyard. Happened in the woodyard was the start? Yeah, I got a pre pre question here, take it away. Did you get that?

You didn't even giggle at me? Or pre question? How did you find out about in the woodyard a beaver trapper? So you have an emerging threat to your whole inner propetition. Listen, I'm gonna tell you the dude's name. Tell his last name. He's even pitched to me. He's even pitched to me. Guy named Jared. I can tell his last name is in your state. No, he's not or is he. It's confusing because he works in one lives in the other.

Either way, his name is Jared. He turned me on you guys a long time ago, a year ago, um, and he was recently pitching me on how he is going up to work here area a chance. Oh. I thought it was just like in the YouTube realm competition. I told Chris, I said, you know, you just showed the guardrail, you showed the sign. I said, everybody knows this spot, you know, like, come on, I gotta be a little more where you point that camera. Got I got people I know that live within a mile of

me that they know half of the spots that we go. There. You were here, and you were there and you made that set. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, he's not like I think it's fair to it's I think it's safe to say. And I haven't really explored this fully with him. I think it's safe to say that he was kind of throwing it to me, like coincidentally, it's where the guys that he turned me on to go. But that's how I found out about you guys. That's what you

wanted to ask a pre question. So he turned me on and I will and I wasn't even aware of I was wondering, why the hell is called out of the woodyards. I didn't know about in the woodyard. Yeah, I just basically separated them because whenever I would do wildlife things on my woodyard channel, YouTube didn't know what to do with it because it's not firewood is not chainsaws, it's not the same thing, is not the same audience. Well,

not that. What happens is I would have a video, say it gets thirty thousand views in the first twenty four hours on a wood something fire would related whatever it is. The next day I would have a hunting or trapping or fishing, and my views go right down to twelve fifteen, seventeen thousand because YouTube doesn't know who to show it to. So you your base seventeen thousand. Whatever you're getting is your true believers, the coolie drinkers,

that's what I call them. Yeah, they'll watch anything you do and bye bye. Basically separating it, my numbers stay more consistent, and YouTube knows my audience and knows what to do with it. And there's a bigger audience for wood shopping. No, what's the audience I've developed? So they know that audience. So yeah, there's there's way more people

that do firewood and trap. And then especially when you narrow it down to beaver trapping, which is even a smaller group, niching down your content is is the way to success on YouTube or most social media. I think, hmm, if you really want to do really well and if you generalize, you know there's gonna be things that a lot of people won't be interested in. So why aren't

we through the give me the background the wood shopping? Well, I gotta I was in the wood shopping business for a while, kind of sort of how do you guys get into it? We've always we grew up hitting with wood. We've been cutting seven years old, since we could swing the mall. I think we couldn't even swing the mall. And our dad was a railroad worker. He was an

engineer spike. He could spike railroad spikes. I mean actually the first mall we had, he had a railroad I don't know, like that big and it's a big long head for driving railroad spikes. And it's only that big, and it's that's a hard thing to master. I don't freak got it free from work, So spikes with a long, skinny mall no, yes, no, yes, well rail road spikes or whatever kind of wedge he could find that they're still in one piece, because you've got to realize you're

driving that spike in the next to that track. You don't want to hit the track because oh that's why that's got to be just a little bit tiny bigger than And if you can hit with that, you can hit. If you can hit, yeah, if you can, yeah, you can master that. You can wait. It's probably a ten pound head. Yeah, it was. It was. We were seven years old in which is satan would because it doesn't split. It's like spliting cable. Yeah, we grew up on the

worst of the worst. Man. It was all the all the is dying from dutching back in them day's back in at early seven, you know, so we're eight, nine, eleven, twelve years or whatever you pick a year, but pretty much free wood because it was free because you're cutting

it down, because that tree's dying, we're cutting it. It's the worst, twisted, nasty there's nothing that we have that even comes close to being that miserable dude, would you agree that the finest splitting wood ever made by ever made by God is beach splits good, which just makes you feel like it makes you feel like such a pro dude. I'll tell you it looks like planks a lump if you want to well, same thing goals for like, if you want to split some really gravy, it's like

vaneer red oak. In the wintertime, that's gray splitting. Oh god, yeah, it's it's water dense, so in the wintertime you get below zero and if it's clear, it just pot disclodes. Hold on, you guys are saying a lot of terms I'm not familiar with, so I'm sure most of the listeners are heard clear described as clear as not free. Clear is no not no, it's not free not freaking Yeah you k n O t ye not. And then

you also said Vaneer grade Vaneer grade lumber. Do you know what they make vaneer on of I don't know what you've got any ven near here? No no flaws, perfect, when the best best Yeah, yeah, it's usually your butt cut on a tree, because like, and what they do is that you're signed to do you know what vaneer is? Yeah? Okay, when you when they make vaneer. They're taking a log and basically you're taking not even it's like a guy gave me a business card. Guy gave you a business

card one time, So picture a business card. It felt like a normal business card. Thickness that was like three vaneer. That was like a laminated piece of three walnut, like it was laminated of the vneer veneer, but it's thicker. Plywood is vaneer, three walnut vneer laminated together. Was like a business card. And they take that thing and they just you Basically you're cutting like a like you're flaying at something much around and and they cook it. They

cook it. It's it's steam cooked, so it's soft and they peel it like you would apple. But it comes off like in sheets of paper. And then they laminated into your put it on tops of crappy because so the grain of that tree, that wood's got to be like perfect. And you could have when I learned this when me and Phelps were working on our the line, one calls because another thing they do on the walnut. You boys might be familiar at this steaming it to

get the color to spread around. But then people can look and tell it's been steamed, but a good veneer walnut log. These these dudes are telling us, like, you might have one walnut tree that's worth a couple hundred bucks. The walnut tree next to it could be a tree. Right. There's there's a lot of different grades of aner I mean like no big long trunk, no limb, narrow. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean that's that's always the best

splitting wood on a tree. Yeah yeah, I mean, not that you're gonna purposely cut that up, but a lot of times I'll get cut off from a sawmill like it was a veneer log, okay, and the buyer comes in and says, well, let's say it's a number one sal log. I mean, so now I'm talking maybe in terms you guys don't know, I don't know, but high quality, high quality log. It's a number one okay, that's top dollar. And it's what it's a twelve foot log. All there's

one knot on that end. If we cut two ft off that log, and then what's a ten footer the valley that log just doubled because now it's aner grade, not at number one grade. So there's and there's many different grades of a near it's not just veneer. There's there's over my I can't even tell you all that there's different grades. But that's way removed from firewood. But I guess when I said vaneer, that just really threw another bench. And we're getting educated. I'll tell you the

things I didn't know. I didn't know you drove a railroad spike with a real thin malls because it can't be dinging the ship out of the rail. Well, nobody does that by hand anymore. To realize, nobody describe some pneumatic driver. So another thing that I'm getting I'm catching on. You're old man, became so precise with this mall, and we did to. We didn't eat. When you're looking at a log and you're like, man, if you could hit that log right there, that suckered split and you're an

inch off, you're driving a wedge. You guys use a wedge still a small two inches or whatever. I mean, Like we got these newer hand mall axes out of what you call the X back in the day. Not anymore so much, but I mean you can hit the same crack every time, every type, and if you do a lot, you can develop its practice. Everythinks its strength to it's it's technique just like anything else. Like the guys that are the big power lifters, there's a lot

of technique in that. It's not all strength. I mean strength is a big part of it, but technique is huge. Well, yea tougher than I am, but I could beat him in logs splitten. Yeah, big guys try to split logs. And remember one, they don't know how to read the wood. When you look at it. You have to see where the cracks are, where the knots are, what sections you want to take off when, and how to work. You got to read the world. Can't just do all brute strength.

And then your technique and your swing and how you can accelerate your swing and bending the knees and using your upper body to come down. And it's a lot of technique. Yeah. And you know you always you always cut the fresh cut, not the dry cut. And you always want you always want to cut it right away. Yeah, Okay, I've seen guys that cut up when they leave it in the back yard for a two years ago. I'm

gonna go split that though, Well, that happens. That would drive some tight into a molecular We're like, now, what's dry? It's like why, why waste your time? But also it doesn't get more brittle when you like put the ax in and then well, cray wood will still split. But if you got any knots in it, it's just well, the but the end will dry on you. And also as it gets real dry, the whole thing is going to shrink and tighten. So moisture is actually a good thing.

And that's why we're talking about the oak in the middle of winter, because if it's below zero, the moisture in that round or that log is going to be then it just wants to pop. It's already got pressure. Split heard trees. I'm thinking, right, he's got some naughty as spruce. Maybe spruce. You know, you know a good splitting log, You guys aren't probably familiar with it, But

yellow cedar, that's a hell of splitting log. That makes first champ because you know, a picture making cedar shakes out of it right right, you feel like you're like the greatest man on the planet. Clear cedar splits nice. Yes, Uh, so you grew up splitting wood, grew up for home use, and then you guys became you guys became market wood choppers. Dad actually would hire assault to the neighbors to split their wood for them. Yeah, I love it much and not tell you what. There was a lot of wood

split for a very little money. But you know his thing was like, this will make you so tough. You should will fight to get down the toilet, right. He would say, this will make it so tough. Blah blah blah. He would go to a neighbor who had a pile of unsplit wood and he'd say, my boys will come split it. Yep. Yeah, and then we got rouped in. After that, then it was bail and hay from the neighbors. Yeah. After we grew up. You if you want to if you want to eat, you gotta work, John Smith, Yeah,

I got you. That was that's how we grew up. And at some point you started splitting it. You started cutting and splitting the cell. Well, he's always done a little bit. But then I had a buddy that had ninety acres of woods and he had oak wealth, which is goes off the red oaks, the black oaks, and he wanted it. Catton. I had always burnedood in my fireplace. Maybe four or five face chords or two fold chords a year or so and he he pause for seven. We need a breakdown of that. There's a lot of

terminog You guys don't know terminology. I know some terminology you guys won't know. Why do you guys? Why are you guys talking about No one talks about face cords like you got Okay, but I wanted to ask this. You guys know the term of rick, yeah, v yeah, but why does no one know a thing? Okay, where's the region? Because in Michigan we have bubblers, water fountains, the water phone. Yeah, and you have rix and we have face cords there you go face court right, prior

I knew rick. But are you have any idea where like what the etymology of the word rick is and how it's spelled. We don't know. R I c K is the way I know. See, we always we spell R I c Oh. Yes, I've seen it spelled that way. I have seen it. And it's a it's it's a sixteen inch it's a stack of sixteen inch logs. Well, okay, eight ft that's not a log, it's a piece or a log? Is the full sixteen inch pieces. So let's start from the beginning. Yes, that's a face, same thing

as a rising. So I can tell you what that thing weighs. Well, it depends on species, It depends on if it's dry. Actually, can't remember remember someone weighing one and telling me though, Well, they tell me what a cord of oakways? Was it like five full full court of green oakways? Five grand? Yes? Wow? Remember so I had I took a three quarter ton truck and added enough lee springs to it. Well, I built a box,

is like that was the right volume. I took a three quarter ton truck and added enough lee springs to it. It's funny because it like three quarter ton. You used to me like it's capacity. But I could put a cord of green oak in that truck. Yeah, we didn't like it. When you turn the wheel, it was light. Yeah, the worked really good. So to go back to the cord things, So you start with your tree. You cut your trees down. We cut in our era we kind of which is eight foot four inches standard because of

the paper mills. That's what they want from that goes back to logging days were I in our area, they would float the wood down the river. Okay, that's how they got it out in the spring. And so you need a trim on the end of that log. If it was going to be lumber, you didn't cut it eight foot. It wasn't eight foot. You left four inches. You've got a couple inches of trim on each end. Damage for trim. So meaning that when it was getting floated,

it would get dinged up. Rocks, Yeah, they get dinged up. They would get getting dinged up on you end. You don't. Actually they never floated. I don't think hardwood. Hardwood doesn't. They were floating basically pine that was back in the true They didn't float hardwood. It doesn't doesn't. It's really you're not going very far. It's on the bottom, very heavy. They always had to be. That always had to be like wagoned out in the big lumber boom days. We

weren't work that. No, that was in the winter with horses. They would they would s get it out with horses. I never thought about I assumed all that ship went down the rivers. No, No, not hard wine. Maybe some

spruce and balsom. But in our area with the big white pine was a big opener care area where I live, so eight foot logs, so yeah, a foot logs and then they're loaded onto log trucks and they go to the paper mills and that's kind of a standard operating size and then they get shipped and turned into paper. In our area, that's the big thing. And then there's

amber mills. Um. So in other areas of the country you're gonna be on, like the West coast, they do whole trees, all the whole tree out at one time, not the whole the log from the butt that's the bottom of the tree, the butt where the rid flares, the butt cut all the way to the top where it gets too small where it's not worth anything anymore. They all the whole tree out, um. But in our area because they want to be able to handle it. It's states is set up for for eight foot wood,

which is hunter wood. Is you know at least they do fold trees or sixteen footers, twenty photers. I mean, there's whatever the mills were set up to handle that would um. We had a mill that I sent would to not that many years ago they closed it down though. Uh. They used aspen was their big thing, and they had um. The way they produced their pulp they had pocket grinders and they would manually lift the wood into the pocket grinder.

It was on a big stone and there was steam pressure in there and the wood would go into the spinning stone at an angle like this, and that's how they got their finest pulp. It was a real fine pulp from fine paper. And so they would take the eight foot logs and cut him in half. Of course, these are all peeled, there's no bark. Was always off the bark with the tumbling. Yeah, everything everything's way work mechanized. But when I started with a company i retired from,

they were still using pocket grinders. It was one of the last ones left in the country. You already retired. I'm from from that thing. I'm back doing we do stuff. You're never retired, man, don't you know Guys calling me, come on, you can work for me, Come on, work for me. I like, well, you know, the snow is getting deep. I don't do firewood right now. So I'm like, okay, I'll come back for a while. We'll see where it goes.

M hm. So, so we'll go back to the logs, your eight foot logs, and if you stack them so there are four ft wide, four ft high. That's what's considered a pulp chord. That's like full full colog Yeah, I wouldn't say it again. It's a full eight ft logs four ft high, four ft wide world by four pile is a chord. That's a cord cubic feet. And however, how we buy it off the truck. But now everything is getting converted to tons. Now they're buying tons of

the paper industry for the paper industry. Yes, but from our purpose is what happens then is so you get your full log cord. That's the way I refer to it. I don't know if everybody else does. When you process that would into your sixteen inch pieces, cutting it, splitting it, stacking it, you end up with about two and a half two point five face cords, or not quite a full chord because you're reducing the size any any space in there, the roundness of the logs. You're gonna have

voids in the pile of your logs back up. I'm getting it. I'm getting it, but I'm confused. I would expect that it would. Yeah, I was expecting, because you're never gonna put a log back together. You're also your curve is the eighth of an inch and you're cutting. That's you, And I get what you're saying. You don't have all those you don't have all those spaces between the logs reduces in volume. Yeah, you get two point

five on really big wood. If you're cutting likes and stuff like I cut you, you will get yea and young Frankenstein, young and young Frankenstein. Gene Wilder, that's young Frankenstein. Gene Wilder sends his lackey. What's his name? Igor? He sends Egor. He needs a brain, So he sends Igor down to to get a brain off off a dead person, a new dead person, and he puts the brain in his monster, and the monster goes berserk, and he says, what was the name on whose brain did you get?

He says, I think that her name was Abby? And then he says what was her last name? And it was I think it was Abby normal normal, and you had gotten an abnormal. Yeah, that's so that's the wood I cut, is the abbey wood, because I could always get it for cheap or free. Nobody wants to work that freaking hard. We get that, we get that lot to make big pieces of wood small. So but I've been working hard in my whole life. It's just normal

for me. We get a lot of people that will watch Kenny and I cut some of his big stuff. We cult the abbey wood, and they're like, you should be turning that into slabs. You should be turned in into lumber. That's ridiculous. You're gonna burn it. That's a waste. You mean to tell me that. You put a video out and someone has a better idea every day. You can't do nothing. The reason I'm bringing this up as the thing is that would was rejected from the lumber

mill because we did gotten flaws crooked. We did what three loads, well, I did three loads of that, semi loads, se truckloads, truck loads, semi loads. So this would so big. I bought it from my the last job I had they had, I worked for a sawmill, so I mean to deal with them. I bought all their reject would like a year and a half ago. So all their stuff they had they went through the metal detector, had nails and spikes and saw blades and whatever in it.

All that it was actually oversized wood. They could not run through their saw mill. It was too big for their mill and then people say, well, why did they buy it? They buy sales. They might say, okay, they bought, you know, a hundred acres sail. We're logging this off and the tree is marked by the forester or the tree has got to be cut and on the bottom cut that's a fifty in butt cut. They can't run it, but they're paying their crew to cut it. That crew is going to get paid to cut it because they

got to bring it out. That trees mark. You don't leave it late is you're probably deal with. You bought the sail. So they end up with all these You know, they might only get one or two of those on a job, but over a couple of years, now all there's truckloads of laying out in the back. We don't know what to do with them. So utilizing a resource, um, I know, how dummy, he'll buy them. So well, and I've been doing this for years, they said, but you got to take it all. So I bought like twelve

or fifteen truckloads last year of this stuff. Well it wasn't all. There was three loads of just abby wood. Yes, well on one truckload he got how many how many logs did you have on one truckload. Normally you'll have hundreds five. No, there was that was like one. That's that's what is. There's a video, you can watch the videos. That's they're out there. But what are you paying? Um? What are you willing to pay? Let me start off when I sold firewood. Um, I was selling firewood from

like ninety to nine six. You would get you could sell if you wanted to sell, if you were hurting for cash, you could sell green split hardwood for about sixty or seventy bucks accord green. No, dude, I'm telling what it was. Back then, I would I would stack mine up and then sell it. This is in those years, I would sell mape. It was maple oak beach split dried delivered ninety dollars a cord for a full court. Listen, I don't yeah. Was it a pick up load or

like your full measured cubic feet of split dried delivered hardwood. Maybe, depending on like the severity of the winner and ship and how long you were willing to hold it, you could maybe get a hundred. But that was the most advertarge. But I knew guys that would that would build. They would take a mobile home trailers, those big huge and they beef them out and they would drive wood Detroit and they would sell it for three Oh yeah yeah. Where he sells here's woe, and where I sells what is?

And but what is the give me the economics on it, not like what are you willing to pay for an un split cord? I would pay from zero to five dollars. But I was never like big time about I'll just do like something to make money. I'd pay from zero to five for the stuff, and I'd sell it for what I just said I'd sell it for. I got a lot of tree service would for free, which trees that are being taken down to neighborhoods that are dead, dying,

dangerous right now? You got the UH killing all the ash and Wisconsin now, so then we're all getting to probably got three truck loads semiloads of that this year, which is each truckle is going to have folk cords on it, getting it free, not only free, they bring it to me delivered delivered. And what do you sell? What's would selling for right now? Like just general average around the country for split hardwood. I'll mention that first. Yeah, I want to go back I'll go back to mention um.

The wood that I do buy, the better would quality. Way you talked about those veneers, like if you buy bolts, which is a very good straight log I will pay anywhere from four hundred to six d first semi load. So I'm paying about a hundred and ten hundred twenty dollars per full cord of logs. What beautiful sts by

it costs. And I have a firewood processor now and it likes that kind of would and I can produce, I can, I can process that whole load one day, God speed everything, time is everything, and then sell that for two three plus. It's easy to handle. Yeah, but you gotta get it, they wanted. Most people want to dry so and a machine does most of the work. But the machine was donated to me by one of my people that kool aid drinkers, No No No runs a business. It's East Eastern made. Andrews a smart man.

It's Eastern made wood processors and splitters. So he wanted people to see his ship in action. I asked. I asked him, I said, so what do you do for advertising? He says, um, yere at So he said, just make videos. So you're hauling, asked you so much? Would sold a lot of stuff for this guy by having his YouTube traveling there over a year behind on selling their machines from the time people order to the time they can produce it, and they just keep growing. So we've done

a lot of advertising forms. So anybody gives me stuff, They're gonna sell a lot of stuff. It's the way it works. You hear that people because I got the eyeballs, that's what they want. Oh, you should talk about how you need to cup snowbills. I don't need to just come on now, I don't need man somebody else, Well, you could get it and donated. So that that's in the woodyard. That's in the wood And I started and when did you start in the woodyard about two years ago.

And it's because my son, uh is the I T guy, and he says, you know, Dad, what you're doing is interesting to some people. And because I'm a by trade, I'm i'm I've been self employed for forty years. I'm a full time professional photographers what I do. So I had the skills there, had a skill set I brought to the table there. He helped me set it all up. I know editing. I know how to do all everything needs to be done for it. I'm not afraid of people.

I'm not afraid to talk. And I mean there's a lot of people that freeze up in front of the camera. As you know, it's hard to get him to and be themselves. I have no problem with it. I give you can, I give you can. I give you my take on that subject. There's three kinds of people. Not

not really, but there's three things that happened. Um. I found that you can have someone that, like you got a friend or whatever, and they have a great personality, okay, and you point a camera at him, it just stops, it shuts down. You could know someone that has no personality.

You put a camera on him and they make one up and people see through that though, Or you'd have a person I'm talking to you, Kevin Murphy, who Kevin Murphy dug during Okay, they're the way they are and you love them and you put a camera on them. Nothing changes, nothing changes. That's gold. That's what you want. That's gold. That's Kenny. I'm there's no filter. Actually I'm the test dummy. Man. Just keep going the way they were going. He makes me do a lot of editing.

I've been to test dummy my whole life. What do you get? What are you getting out of this whole thing? He's here last year and invite from one of my viewers to go to uh New Mexico. Al Kin, I get to go along here, I am to go along. It's great, and I give him free stuff. He gets a lot of free labor from meeks. I go help him out waiting. I was promised that he was going to bring a processor up two years ago and process my wood for me. It hasn't showed you what you guys,

but you guys have your wood businesses are different. Yeah, totally. Why not combine your wood businesses miles away from me? Yeah? It's He's a northern Wisconsin and sounds all the people are they want to buy expensive wood to burn in their backyard. I supply people that heat their homes, So people eating your homes want to save money, right, and I saw my wood way cheap, way cheap. My people are literally literally burning money. They're sitting by the fireplace,

drinking bear watching sports. I was at a fundraiser one time in New York and a guy told me that he had he was in He was in finance, so he was in Wall Street finance, but had found a side gig that he was really passionate about. He described as being in the designer firewood business where they were taking orchard like when you would redo apple orchards, big money cuts a very uniform peace, and he would kill dry the firewood because people wanted to have a stack

of firewood in their house as an ornament. But they want that ship to be that you could bang it and no sawdust comes off. So he said it is like you don't even need to dust this ship once you stack in your house. He said it was a designer fire would company. He didn't want to tell me what he gets for a stack of that kiln dried, all cut the same, and you design in your house next to your fireplace a little wood stack. He fills that stack with wood that. Oh you know what's funny.

I'll tell you something there at night. Uh, Phelps, you're about Phelps in the scorpion. He sent me a picture of a scorpion in a bed. So I think that we're burning like we're burning oak down in Sonora, and every piece of oak is hollow and it's just a huge dump of like oak warming up inside this house, next to this fireplace. And Phelps is right by the fireplace and right by the oak. And he was the guy every night like he's like throwing oak into this

big fireplace. One night he wakes me up. We're sleeping next to each other. He's in his sleeping bag, out in my sleep bag. And he wakes up just all worked up. And he got a scorpion got him on the inside of his left thigh, the inside of his right thigh. He put his hand on here, trying to figure out what was going on, and got it right in the thumb. The I believe he said it felt He thought he thought that he was getting in an electrical shock from a cactus thorn. That is what he

said it felt like. And then he was trying to figure out if he's gonna wake up dead or not, you know, if he goes back to sleep. But he was still he was hurting pretty good. Did you have any effects? Hurt him bad, but not his his his thumb went numb down to the wrist whoa, and his legs. If he'd whenever he'd walk, he'd get little just being a guy. If it's on either side of his grin. It didn't affect anything, not that I've heard of him.

I called him a smorning to check on him, because then he fell back to sleep and I woke him up and to see if he was doing all right. But yeah, he Uh, did you guys contact to doctor. No. But we detained the scorpion. That doesn't seem really helpful to Jason. I detained it live if you started, because I wanted to be it's still detained because if something

happens to him, we wanted to be like here it is. Yeah, So we had it and then we're trying to move how we had it detained and it almost got loose in the truck, but it's it's secure that it sits right now in a tile on all bottle. Is it a big one? The biggest scorpion ever? I'm not are the most? Yeah, that's all is it is? He okay? Now I tried to call morning. I haven't heard this scorpion. This scorpion is the size of your pinky finger, the

size of my pinky finger. Huge. Back to what was I saying, I don't know we're going Sidewayson pricing so um and Kenny's Air Job bringing that best great and Kenny's Air. You guys should do a podcast. I'll license it, front it. Okay, well we can do that. I'll license it, We'll put it on our network and I'll license it and we'll do a rev share. Is there any money involved? Do that? Because I ain't making squawk listen man, not if you go on your own. No, not if you

go on your own. But but but if you were to join a network, because there's like, I'm not gonna get into it right now because if you're doing me a disservice to explain it all, I know you're in the air, but if you were to join, if you were to do this, be in and Out of the Woodyard podcast? Can you do the podcast? I license it, we do a rev share. You're getting double money getting money from getting rev share. People would pay for this.

I'll be entertained right now that I would be this interesting. We have covered like zero point ship per cent yet I mean, well, I know we're never going to get you. Let's get but the beauty of it is people just go watch your stuff. This is a teaser, Yeah, but I do want I want to get to the current. I want I just on a personal curiosity. I just want to know where the wood market sits right now. Kenny's area work. Like he said, people are burning wood

to save money, and there's wood everywhere. Yeah, I live in a very wood rich area and there's no people and their brother has everybody. Every people that are there want to save money. They all got chainsaws, they all got a brother that's a logger. I mean, I worked with loggers and truckers. I've been in the wood business

my whole life. But they either aren't capable of producing more wood because they're getting older, or they run out of wood, or they underestimated their needs that kind of stuff. So he will sell wood to people that just don't. They like wood heat and they want their wood heat. I heat my house with wood, and if I don't have a fire going in the furnace, it's like my

house is cold. It's the thermostat says seventy, but it's not seventy, and every score inch at alls it's like it's seventy over there, but it's like shixty over here. It's like with wood heat, it's everywhere, it's most stared answer. So I'm trying to dig it back in his area. Uh, seventy to nine dollars per face cord or rick or third of a cord, whichever you prefer. In our area, it's a face card. Okay, it's a face card. Everybody

buys in face courts. Yes. So if I'm a normal person and I say I need five chords for the winner, you have to then go like face cards. I didn't say face court. He's going to ask you that. When you say that, I'm asking you, I would have said. I would have said with the customer, I'm not calling you, calling Kenny because I'm in I'm in there, I'm up there, and where you're at, I'd like to buy five chords for the winner. Okay, So are you talking full cards

or face cards? What did I say? You said five courts. I need to know what is your definition of a court because I'm gonna ask you that because I do have customers that have cabins. So I see a lot of people like cabins. They buy wood for me like every other year because they come up to their cabinet winner they want to go snowmobiling. Then people actually pay pretty good because they you know, they got their half man, they want to rick. They got their half million dollar

you know cabin. You know that they come snowbilling twice a year, two and they want they want to have nice dry wood there. So I do have some of those customers. So I gotta find out if they know what a chord is. They're not a court and then okay, coming from let's go back to the role play. Okay again, here we go sideways like five courts. No, we're gonna get there fast, straight, no commentary, straight role play. Hi, I would like to buy five chords of hardwood, split

and dried. And I'm gonna say once again, is it a face cord is four ft by eight four eight ft long? Sixteen inch? Is that what you call a courd? No, sir, I'm talking about a full cord. Three face cords. That's you want, fifteen face cards? That's five. That's how you need to think about it, sir. Yes, I'd like it to be split, dried, hardwood delivered. Okay, So where is your Where are you? How far are you from? Next door? Oh? Next door, that's easy. That's gonna be two bucks a load.

That's five loads. Do the math? Oh my god, god, the wood business got complicated. Well again five times? What did I say? Fifteen times? Whatever you're going Ray, let's approach you. I say to you, I'm coming to pick up a full chord of split and dry hardwood. How much is it Your definition is going to be to forty? Okay, that's all I want to know. Your definition it's increased by it's increased two points. Cheap wood my area, it's different. If you go to Chicago, it's way different. That's why

I'm gonna explain he's three sixty for that same load. Yeah, I'm at two forty. He's at three sixties, so it's three point six. I asked from when I was a kid, right, I have more people, fewer trees. I know a guy who has one of the biggest firewood businesses in the state of Wisconsin. It's called Frank's. He sends two to three semi loads every single day to Chicago eight d accord. Holy sh it, man, just employees. Well, well, then I gotta I mean, there's gas, but trucking and trucking is huge.

I can't. I can't sell him would for what I sell for him to come get it and sell it for what he does it's all lost in transportation. You can't move whatever. It's free. Okay, let's jump along with the field. Have been running five dollars a gallon up till recently and it's still over flour by us. Once you got out of the wood you're going and sorry, once you got in the woodyard going, which is such

a novel idea. Um are there other? Were there? Other people like producing regular content on YouTube that was about the wood business, yes, but not as niche as what I went with it, and not I could see him doing like some fancy pants with stuff. Yeah that that, and just a lot of lifestyle type reality show kind of things or bringing in their everyday activities along with all of it. Like, but I myself, I just went

with it the way I wanted to do it. I wanted to do it where it was focused on one top and what it took to do that, and beginning to end all the details because the magic is always a new details. People want to know the difference between a face cord and a full cord every day, it's

all the time. So um, I just I really wanted a niche because I did a lot of studying on YouTube by watching people that are experts in the industry of education in YouTube telling people how to do it right and niching down and getting more specific is better, Um, because the audience is going to come to you for that particular topic. And if you start talking about your trip to them all you're listening, You're not talking to m a you will Yeah, I'm talking to yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So it's it's uh, it's a big difference. Uh. And people people are there in that particular audience, and yeah, they may have some common interests. A lot of fire with people are hunters, they are fishermen, they are outdoors people, but not all of them, someone like of them. There's a lot of them. Yeah, some of my people that watch me, and I've got people from fifty five countries that watched that tell me. You know, I do firewood,

but I'm not a hunter. I'm a vegan and I appreciate you doing that and I'm okay with it because I like your content. So, but if I start showing hunting stuff on there, it's gonna turn them off right now. This is not what they came for exactly. Like if I had like a thing where I put lego shipped together, I wouldn't start splitting firewood on it. My son has that change. Yes, he's got he's got a YouTube Lego chanl. Yeah, it's called red Rick Studs. He just started it. How

old are you guys? I'm sixty and in two months? You guys married? Yeah, we're ten, ten months and two days apart. How long he has been married? Me? I'm in the second round? Twelve years? Second round? Here? How much you added up? Thirty seven? That's good. I get thirty eight in with one three kids, same as you, boy, girl, boy, it's great. I started out twenty five years first round and I'm on twelve or so. You hit silver there whatever. I pointed out that my father hit silver with two

different people. It's like a model of loyalty. Right, I got seven, We got seven kids, so but they're all growing and going, thank God. So tell me, after you got the in the woodyard, how did it occur to you to start doing out of the woodyard? Well, because that was my that was my introduction, right, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna back up just a little bit so you

get the context of it. So when I would drop these videos that weren't would related, I saw a big drop in viewers and you know, per video basis knowing that YouTube didn't know what to do with it because they didn't know what to do with the content, and being that we're outdoors people, I thought, yeah, I'll just separated out. My son told me too, was the I t guys said yeah, if you keep it more pure,

the algorithm will know what to do with it. And I wanted to do content just to put it somewhere else. So I started doing the the trapping and the noodling catfish noodling. And you want to go noodling? We know, I watched you. I want to go, mentioned me last night. Have done it yet? I want to try it. I like fishing catfish, but it's a rush. It's a rush. Um. Yeah. So we separated out, and I haven't done as much too it as I wanted to because I've been so busy.

And part of the reason why I haven't is in the last three months, I was basically evicted from where my woodyard was. I wasn't evicted, but I got noticed that it wasn't up to code and wasn't in covenants of what I could do. I'm in a commercial location, and I assumed I was okay, but I wasn't you knew you were kind of well. The developer was okay with it. He didn't have a problem. Nobody else said anything for ten years. But it got bigger and bigger,

and I got the big machinery. And then the neighbor said, um, I just put a parking lot and it cost me a hundred and eighty grand. He said, I know you're not under covenants because you have to hard surface which is either black topp or gravel underneyth any materials outside. So and he said, and fancying And he said, I don't like the way it looks. No. Yeah, man, luckily, Yeah, we know what you know. This guy you're talking about, he might love his family and be a great American.

But that's the thing I don't get, man. You know, I don't understand. I would rather I like my ship tidy, neat and tidy. I would rather all of my neighbors had total ship holes. So you look good because if I like, they're gonna be less likely to care. If if my kids are messing around, I'm more likely to find something I might need. Mm hmm. Yeah, there's more likely there's gonna be a bunch of cotton tail rabbits

hanging out and all their junk. It's like there's nothing, but like, I would rather everyone around me had a junkyard and then my stuff was in the middle. Perfect. But I'm guessing that that's not the perspective that your neighbor has. No, he's jealous. It's an industrial part. I mean it's not. Yeah, I mean he didn't do it because he doesn't like the way your yard looks. Come on, well, no he did. Really, you don't think he did it because he was like, well, if I had to pay,

he does too. Maybe. No, I think it's kind of a combination. He's a it's an electrical engineering place, and they bring people in from all over the world for what they do, and they have government contracts. It's a big deal. And he just did his place must look next to your plans. What I always thought he'd be like, hey, you can how authentic it is. Welcome to Wisconsin. Yah. Yeah, everybody splits water around here, look at this guy. That's

what most people think. Most people say that. All the people watch my channel thought it was like ridiculous, But I got a better deal now improved. It's improved. Tremendously once again, one more reason. I don't have a processor in my place here. Yeah, so that's what slowed me down from doing more content on my out of the way. You don't back to your original question about out about your property. I had to move you how to move? You don't realize how much crap you accumulate. Had ten

years of firewood stuff to get out of. There's a lot. Yeah, it was a lot. So let's slow you down on your outdoor content three or four months. Yeah. I put me behind a production everything. Yeah. So yeah, and then Kenny and I started doing the trapping thing since we were kids, and I always thought it would we need to have it where we would show people what we do, because I mean I trapped when we were younger with Ken. Grandpa was a professional trap actually a great camp we're

fourth generation. He was professional beaver trapper, everything everything, trapper, mentals in the summer, Yeah, summer I was reading about that, the mental thing because he was a baitman. Yes, I did that too. I grew up doing it. We worked for him, that's we did. We sold live bait in the summer. We worked for him every summer in mentals and well he sold mentals. We just help them. What did do? Like the leeches, wigglers all out just like we pick crawlers. That was our division time at ring,

and we picked the crawlers. Man, I tell they had a broken back when I was so you'd go out like in the spring on a rainy night, crawlers until you couldn't move no more, until my mom would find us and say get them. You got school to school starts. We're out their home. Nine we're making we're making buck. You know, two cents a nightcrawler, man cents a dozen. Man, that's big money. Back then, you don't realize just out in the cornfield and the rains, Norman, all of everybody's yard,

everybody's front yards. You know what, everybody had a yard taking out their front yards the right. They come home at night, they crawl, They come out the nightcrawlers. Not at night. Oh man, you get like May May, early June, you can get a real goldie washer. Rains don't come at night, come off the breeze. And did it to have to twisted simultaneously or can you just any night better? One night it brings them out and they start making

love and twisted up. That's a double man. You can grab them and they don't get away as good when they're locked up like a couple of dogs. Get them both. It's a nightcrawler man. That's a great business. I mean. So he was a batman and he contracted with bait stores. Well he he, Well, he had a route up actually where I live. See, Okay, back in them days, people would go up north and they'd stay out a resort. Right, there's a lot of resorts on a lake or on

a river or whatever. Well, the resort owner would have cabins and people would come stay there and they're gonna go fishing. They'd have rentals, canoe rentals. Well, they don't want to have to go someplace and catch bait to go fishing, because back then it was all live bait, you know. People didn't have all these fancy things, you know, so they fished with minimals. He would sell to the resort owners. He would make a weekly run every Friday. He would drive up north hundred and fifty miles and

sell hundreds of dozens. Yeah yeah, yeah, gallons by the gallon of the Gwadays it's by the gallon whatever. But yeah, he had a he had a five hundred gallon tank on the back of the truck. And then was he just dealing in one? Was he doing like chubs, fat shiners all of that. Mud Mintos was the big thing because they lived long. Mud I don't know if you know what a mud mento was, but they live anywhere and they live like a polylog and a mud puddler. Tough.

You can't hardly kill them. And i'd probably know what if I was looking at it, I probably know it. An You know what we used to call those, We'd call them tiger minns. Yeah, well, them were in high demand and where he lived, he caught lots of them, and people really want them because they would last. You could buy one week and two weeks later still alive, So all your shiners, your suckers, your all your fat

heads and all that. He always called them soft bait because they had to be in a tank with an aerator. Where's a mud man when you can throw it? The pay live a week later, so off bait. You got about up half hour things dead. So he was a bait trapper and a fur trapper. Yes, he did meddles in the summer, trapped in the winter mostly and you were brought up around that. Ye. Yeah, So at eight years old and he was seven, we started trapping muskrats.

And you guys got heavy duty in the muskrats. Oh yeah, we did. We went out west da quotas we went north Dakota, South da Quota. Man, we slayed him. We we hit that, We hit it. I mean when we were out there was as I haven't, man, it was high water, so high water and high water high population populations boomed, and you could almost hop from a rat house the rat house. I mean it. I went out there one fall or no spring spring, went out there in the spring by myself and somebody's They were all

we were all trapping them together, but separately. You know. We're all stayed at the same place and trapped the same area. I went out there. Well, for perspective, we used to trap in school. We would take our big ocation, well not vacation, when trapping season open. Our parents would let us take off at school. Cool trapping because back in the seventies and them days, a muskrat was like

eight bucks. My dad, my dad was working in the paper mill making two dollars an hour at the same time, so we'd go out in a week and catch a hundred hundred fifty muskrats. We'd have our money for the whole year in that week. So I mean the plus we were catching coon for thirty bucks a piece. I mean the fur market was high in comparison. There were guys buying brand new pickups every year on their trapping money. Are weaker, okay, then, son, you've got a big crash

in the market for many years. So an hour fast forward to two thousand and ten, two thousand nine, I think it went. That's what the trappers Stu Miller calls his generations for Boom to separate it from the late seventies, early eight them. So we've got out out into the quota as we found out about these rats in this population. Boom and I went out there in two weeks and I caught two thousand muskrats. Find himself. I just about

killed me, just about killed me. Was it just all like were you just uh running like just wired up leg holds on feedbeds, well different different, different style. It springs. Everything was flooded. I mean there was I was catching muskrats. It had burrowed under the black top. The roads were given in. He was driving down roads for like a mile, you're driving through water for a mile. The roads are closed, but the town guys are like killing muskrats because they're

undermining the roads, like banks trap. And I set a trap for me to you off the road, and hundreds of them down right down the ditch for miles and miles in the population. I never saw nothing like it. It was like an infest. We talked to two kids when we were out there, and that went to a movie one night. They came out of the movie theater. This is in a little time when we're trapping by with golf clubs. The two of them killed a hundred muskrats on Main Street. Okay, so no here on top

of this market peaked right then. It was it, and we didn't know it because we sent our for auction the first time I was out when I had that first two thousand, and you put them all up. Yeah, well, I actually I end up selling some in the carcass because I could not keep up skinning. I never never come home with two hundred muskrats in a day in my life, you know, unbelievable. So so what I did bring home I put up. We sent them off to auction, and we thought we're going to get you know, maybe

five bucks, maybe six bucks. They went to ten. It was like and then after that they went I got four a piece. When you're catching hundreds of thousands fast, it is real money. That was fun. So then he found out he was I'm going with you, So we did. We went out that next fall time at it. Well, I'll tell you what. Before I went out the first time, I probably spent three thousand dollars scouting hotels, mileage driving, finding the spots, getting permission, permission, not gonna gets I mean,

there was a lot of research. I didn't just show up, you know, but because legally there you got to get permission and you have to have written permission. Because we got stopped by a couple of boardings and you have to have your paperwork, and we had our paperwork. But they were like, we don't kill them all. We did

all that for nothing, you know. But but we were all legal, big old And you know, we had a guy who stayed on his farm, you know, like yeah, camp out, staying the barners a heated quantity and this is how good it was. We stayed at a guy's place, he let us. Let us. Well, the first guy we stopped, he said, yeah, since we got Marsha's all around, are you contrapping? And stay right at my place? He said, we have duck hunters coming. Stay And you said you

could use my shed for working. And I said, well, how much land do you had? He goes, oh, seven, maybe eight? I said, what hundred acres? He said, no, sessions, that's a small. My neighbor down the road he's got twenty. He said, he'll let you trap two. And then my guys down the road the other way. This guy, this guy, everybody knew him. And if all we do is say his name, kill him. All you guys had a golden ticket.

We had a golden ticket. We had a population, and the price was there all at one time, and that never happens, but it did. So then we went back the next spring and for three weeks, and my son had just gotten out of school. They graduated in the December. So we went back out during April. And he's skinned for us. That's all he did with skin. No skinning the muskrat. You've probably skinned one before. What time do you think for the skin one? Just to give you

a reference. Not fast, I mean not three minutes, but not not like the people that are fast at it. Yeah, so we weren't fast either until we went out there, and you have to learn to survive. Cut down your movements. So I can skin one now in about twenty seconds, can't you can get it? Don't about his son anymore? Like twelve seconds? Really, are you guys doing that crazy over the knee ship. You're not doing it where you're hanging it by the tail. I do mind on the

lap chester. It's it's so fast, it's it's basically taking a sock off. It's fast. I mean I don't have that speed. You gotta get repetition. I can remember because your hands gets so narrowed up from setting traps all day. You couldn't you couldn't squeeze the water out of a wester. His son was, His son was. So I took twenty rats because we would have to skin in the morning to get ahead, because we knew we were going to come home with a couple hundred more every day. So

it's like we gotta finish up rest. You know. It took me every morning. My hands are limber up so I could actually make time. But generally, like at the end of the day, we sit down and we go there's a hundred left. We go, right, nothing, let's get them done. That's for three guys. That's like thirty minutes. It's done. But his sons skinned for us because we were catching three fifty three sixty three a day. And that was when I said I had skinned to pile them.

I've skinned a pyleum, but meaning I've skinned like a few days worth of you guys catch. Well, here's all that guys doing this. I mean we were there. We weren't the only ones, but I'll tell you what with that area we were in, they were all from Wisconsin. Yeah, Wisconsin trapper. For some reason, I knew how to compete, kind of like when we go to South Dakota no

deer hunting, we see Wisconsin plates everywhere. Yeah. I don't I don't know why people from Wisconsin have these certain weird stupid skills or I don't know if they're skills or desires or I don't training. I don't know that's why that is. But they're good rat trappers. Well we thought we were good until we want out there, but now we're good we're pretty good. No, I mean we

developed I mean really quick, really quick. The rules are a lot more lax there too, as far as what you can and can't, Like in Wisconsin, everything that works really good is illegal. Oh there it was legals like, oh my god, we're in heaven man, like a comedy traps like me. It's like wow, Like in Wisconsin, comedy trap you can set it somewhere where it's in a run, but it can't be touching another colony trap. They have

to be so many feet apart. It can only be in a certain area, whereas in the Dakotas and you can't move anywhere. We would fill the culverts with colony traps. Traps there has to come through and every morning you check you have twenty every day. And if you have to walk for like for me to you off the road, you just pull them out and you shop come out in a pile. It's just like well and in there so tight. Not another mush crack could get five six seven in each trap. You know how you set a

one ten connover we got one. No, No, it was it was a mind blowing It was just and the people up there just hated him. Hated them because they're everywhere. And this is all that time when like people's half through silo was underwater and she was like, yes, trapped some farms. We trapped a lot of farms are underwater, just abandoned. Yeah, it was it was something. It was. So what keeps you guys going now on trapping since

there is no for market trapping beaver? I live in a pretty good spot for beaver right, and we have heard that beaver now is coming back up because little bit is aig part of it. I had two fur buyers called me this week. Guys at that airport in Denver. Yesterday. When that fur buyer calls you, he says, I think we can make some talking. He says, we're gonna be talking. I said, you realize that, he says. He says, I know you guys caught over five hundred last spring. I said, yeah,

we did. Um, I said, didn't guarantee we're gonna do that it again, depending on whether and you know, flood stage and prezolts and there's ten things that can go wrong. I said, well, we're gonna try like hell to match that in past years we did. Okay, we're getting any we made the money on Caster in the past years, the casters where the money was per beaver. We were getting six to eight bucks per beaver for Caster the cast.

That market went down a little bit, right, a little bit, a little bit, but all the first coming up, so it's probably going to be a wash. I think we don't know. We haven't been promised any numbers yet. But we got to kill them first. And the thing is is a lot of places to be trapped. I mean they're flooding roads, whether it's you know, public land, private land. We've had people come to us and say, hey, you know, I can't get can't get through my driveway because it's

flooded from beaver. And they're cool animal and everything, but it gets to a point where you got to send them a little and the market is low, which has been for quite a while, the population explodes. Yeah, that's been great for beavers, I mean the animals themselves. The lower market has been phenomenal. But all your problem beaver or general, really flooding out any kind of public role, they get killed, the government kills him. You're paying for it,

your federal tax dollars paying for it. They got trappers, ouctor, your ound killing them being we do it for free. What's your teacher? Say this one? I got this for Christmas. That's good. Never underestimate an old man with a chainsaw. I got them for Christmas. Nice. Yeah. I got a beaver whisper one too, but I couldn't decide what you want to wear. My wife got me the beaver Whisperer one. Are you guys sticking around for the trivia show? Yeah? Sure, dude,

I love you channel man. Thanks, Thanks, it's fun. It's been a real wild ride. When I first got into it, I thought, you know, I can make an extra five hundred thousand bucks a month. That was my goal. And I know people that were doing you're saying five thousand because you know, just for doing some videos or something I like to do. Yeah, I'm doing it anyway, but as well, So I started recording it and now it's turned into basically another job. But it's fun and I

like it, and it's just growing. Yeah, the trapping and fire, which is stuff we've done her whole life. It's not a big deal. I always say to everybody, whatever your passion is, whatever you're really good at, whatever your talented at, start a YouTube channel. But put everything you got into it. You always say that to everybody, you know. There was a girl on the plane. On the plane, she looked me up. She's just as incredible. She's a big baker.

She's here, she's here, she lives here, she lives here. Yeah, I told her, I said, started channel. I said, you do she does bread stuff like that? Started channel. I do have a loaf of bread in my Duffel bag. My wife sent for you. She's been making the seller. Oh no, ship, I got red flags because I don't know why, but she's been doing the seller does stuff that's great. Man. So they called an organic mass when they pulled you over, Well, it came through the scanner.

What do you got interested? It's bread? Yeah, because I got I one time I had him say that there's an organic mass in your bag? Right? What was it? Was an elk tongue. Yeah, they can just tell when I zapp it that they can tell that. Well, I said, number the raisins and the races. I'm not kidding. You can see the raisins on the screen there. I told my wife, I said, I got pulled over by the t s A because that loafur freaking bread. You're gonna give it to me. Yeah, she made it for you.

We got something else for you too. I got something else here too. Let's dig in. She said that's no way. I said, yeah, I said, t s A got me at the airport over your bread. You know I'm getting um tonight. I'm taking possession of of a sable hat that I had made for my wife. Nice because who sold it is Yanni's friend, Um, Yanni's friends Sueme, I justice, So is that how it said? So we've got two of them, whichever one fits you better. And I know you got one, but oh yeah, sorry, I know you

got bread. That's your bread. You can give it to whoever. We got two different sizes. That's the Wisconsin beer. Well that's not that Janckie Montana stuff. That's a different style than Steve. Yeah, you can only wear it if it's ptable old because you will be sweating. That's they're so warm. What do you guys call that? That is so different? That that's so different Trooper feel the fur on that

compared out here? Well, I don't. Well, you'll know when we've got some of the best beaver in the world where we live, where I live that's nice stuff. Incredible, man, that's nice boy. That black like that, that's not even black, that's just that's just dark. We get them black, We do get blacks. Yeah, well that's beautiful man. Yeah, you don't even for snowmobiling. Yeah, that's what I've been using. Mind for it. The world's greatest snowbill hat, ice fish

and hat everybody should have. It's like all you ever watched the fur hat? Yes, I have. I saw a couple of dude that is like, put that on, and that is a warm There's nothing. There's nothing warmer than that. Nothing we'll have. Carmen tried it on because she needs one for a snowbile. This one might be the one for you. That's a big one. That's Carmen. Try that one. We allowed it is Carmen allowed to take one first one. No, no, no, I don't deserve that. That's that's yours. That's it looks good,

that's yours. I gotta get with the flaps down, you know, but you know what your GoGG will stand yours. No, no, no, no, you gotta take that one. Take that one. You gotta do it. Yeah, Well it's good and means speaking of not hearing though when I put my goggles on. You know, snowobile is not good for your years, so kind of you know, for my kids always riding on the back talking about something. I'm like, do you understand I have a fur hat on and then I have my snow

goggles strap over my ears. I don't know, and this machine is noisy. I don't know what you're talking. Aware that someone's talking. I need to take a picture of that. Yeah, we got to get all. This is a group phote on. When you start ripping around and then brand new snowmobiles

that are coming your way already you go vision and style. No, I gotta tell you that when we do catch links because I'm going to be positive, we're going to h Yeah, I need a coat so no, you're standing there in the freezing cold for a long time, you start getting really cold, So this will be perfect. Do the little deally upfront pane? Well, the guy that makes them for me, that's the style he makes. I mean they make different,

but these two are different, aren't they different? Same? Different size? That's three and that's the four. You know what I'm getting made right now is I'm getting ah I sent in some muskrats right now to Don Clifford, and he's doing me a muskrat one of these with a leather bill, because you know the sons just killing you can get those two. I mean, these are just the ones that I've always gotten. Everybody in my family's got him. All my kids got him, all my kids brings. But you

put plucked and cheered on the inside. Well, there aren't plucked and sheered the that's just on the mittens. You put like a plucked and sheered It's just it's just a felt was that just felt? You guys all got all your fingers? Yeah, that's good. How many times we've been caught in a trap all of them? Ever lost a finger on your wood splitter or something? Yet I've seen guys that have. Yeah, I know a couple of people lost tips. Yeah that he looks so good. Yeah,

Carmen looked great. But you'd wear it, wear it right in your snowbill though. Oh this is gonna be why I wear it for the rest of my life. This is incredible. The only bad thing about a fur hat is it's unfortunate it came from an animal. I mean, it would be nice, but there's nothing like a real fur there just isn't. The good thing is they make them every day. There's more beaver being made right now. I gotta tell you a a quick story. I actually wrote

about this one time. But I had my first muskrat hat I had made. I was still grown, and so it's just like every year got tighter and tighter and tighter. You would like give me headaches, man. And at one point in time, at one point time, I lose because I'm always taking it off because it's not comfortable, I lose my fur hat. I can show you the exact spot I lost my fur hat, right where I caught my first otter, not the same day I'm going. I lose my fur hat and it's just gone. I have

no idea what happened to it. One day, I'm going down the road with my friend ed Barefoot. We're driving along in his station wagon, going out to a place called Cisco Bayou, and I see melting out of the snow bank a road kill muskrat. I'm not shipping you. I see a road kill muskrat melting out of the snow bank, and I tell him to stop it. Your hat, my hat because it was a spot right jump out because there was a creek crossing right there and I just thought a muskrat got hit by car, but hey, stop,

go overre pulled out of the bank. It's my damn hat. Yeah, and I don't know where it's at any right, So to put a bowl on the trapping thing? Um right now, it's the beaver is going up in price because of yellow Stone the show, and because some singers Beyonce just did a bunch of videos I guess wearing the stets and hats, and stets and hats are made with the under fur, the felt apart from the beaver. That's it's

so madly man like. You can wear a leather and everybody's cool with it, right because the fur is gone. And then now you can wear a beaver. Like if you have a stets and hat, take a look on the inside of that something bit and you'll say, up like ten x or whatever that is made from a beaver's fur. You're supporting trapping, thank you. That's great. As long as we're making some money off of it, I don't care. You know, we don't get paid very much

for trapping beaver. It's a pretty low income deal these it's it's like getting going hunting and getting paid when you get hoomers. You know what a cost of going hunting trip. Yeah, well, at the end of our trip we made money out. We didn't make a lot, but we made some and we had a hell of a time doing it. Dude, the quality of this compared to the ones we have around here, which are blond and blond and skanky, the quality of this is unbelievable. I

only I can't stop touching. Everybody likes the pet beaver, right, this is great man. So yeah, I only keep the very best for the hats sell arrest. I mean I don't not all of them. I mean I only do like twenty a year. I don't do a lot. So no, my wife, so my wife as a machine though we're trying to figure it out. I'm hoping she can learn

how home. Right now, we're having them made, but the slow part is getting them to the tannery and getting the fur back from a tannery sometimes to sixty eight months, and then send them the hat maker. There might be another sixt eight months, so it's not like they're all and then doesn't fit you. You know, we gotta carry three, four, five sizes I might have it. We're gonna get into that. We're gonna get into the fur hat mitten bis man, here you go, because it's so great. It is. It's awesome.

So yeah, I figure you might like it as nice design. Man, good in this thing. You look like you're like going down like a like a fashion runway. I've never seen that hat on anybody that doesn't look good, and I'm not kidding you. The thing that's cool about it is I've had three or four different ones that I've sold because people I gotta have it. What do you gotta have? I know, like guys getting out. Okay, here's what they cost you. I'm just reading your lipstick. Got my hat on?

Gave I had? Anyway? I need another hat? Guess who he calls? Yeah, yeah, I'll get that splitter up to you. Yeah, where's that processor? Nothing? Alright, guys, we're gonna wrap it up. We do run time. Yeah, we can hopefully wolf down some lunch. Appreciate you coming on. Man, you guys are staying for the trivia show. Yeah, you know what, I don't think that you're gonna win. I can probably not because here's the deal. He's gonna throw you one bone. If he knows does he know the here he's gonna

throw you one bone. I think I'm gonna beat you probably. I played along on one of them. I watched and I got five. Right, So you played along on one? Did five? You know what? You'll beat the ship out of Christ? Definitely got the I got the one we had the red Snapper. I got that because he asked me that and I knew it. And the one that was what the author what was his name anyway? Henyway the sun was awarding or something? Got that goes a good guess. Yeah, I think I got fired about that one,

just so I know, I just want to works. I had a guy that plays at home, the blue collar scholar. He reached out to me about a problem he's having where he's like he had to admit because he plays at home and sends me these great scores okay of his home score sheet. We fly him into play and he bombs he well, he told me, goes well, this one thing he was texting me is one thing I

didn't mention. As I pause, he hits to think because it's a high stress environment because you're being heckled, right, You're like trying to make sure no one gives a hint, and it's high stress, and he can hit pause and just contemplate, and I have to deal with a lot of stress. Oh and he could come back two hours later. He could think about the question for two hours if

he wanted to know. After a recent game, we had a real problem with how a question was worded, I did, and and the winner that day Randall had a problem how a question was worded, and so he and I later texted back and forth about how we felt the question should have been worded, and we sent the rewording to the host, Spencer new Heart, and then Randall made a joke that he says, I like to reword the questions until I get to a point where I feel

as though I would have guessed it. And that's what he had done, is just reworded until he felt like he would have gotten it. So even that, like the syntax, the wording can impact the performance. Very stressful, Steve, I gotta say, Brodie's surpassing you and who can be the biggest grump complainer in the room so hot if you want to reclaim your crown? Brody is grumpy? Do I mean like I get grumpy playing tribute, but Brody is grumpy. Yeah,

that's the victories and that Krinn isn't Krinn. That's Hayden. Hayden. Samcau with three You had to Steel Crins lit Area. Oh yeah, thanks for joining. Everybody good concluder