The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 254: Fur Will Never Shine Again

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Mike Matney, Rick Matney, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: duck feet earrings; something in the cosmos that's making people find buffalo skulls; "muskrat moms"; making enough money trapping as a 16-year-old to buy a brand new four-wheel drive pickup truck; the unpredictability of fur prices; Mike's no grip trap; trapping as an excuse to run around in the woods; ‘skrats off minty toothpaste; why are trappers always tasked with explaining themselves?; how Thanksgiving turkeys are killed; feeling yucky and icky; wolverine; Seth's top lot mink; 40 pounds of beaver sausage; the fly fishing river crowds in MT like the Macy's Day Parade; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with Onyx. Alright, before we even get to our guests, we need to do two show and tell pieces. Corinne, do you want to do show and tell first? Sure. Okay, explain what you made. So, from a duck that was shot the other week, I just decided to make a pair of earrings. So it's very simple.

Very simple. Very simple. So just these bright orange feet off the mallard. Can you put one on real quick? Yeah, sure. So it's a bright orange mallard foot. It hasn't even dried out yet. You could sew it back onto a duck and he'd walk away.

And I just put some stainless steel wire around it to kind of hold the ankle. And made it like a little earring. Oh, dude, that makes a statement, man. I don't know what statement it makes. It's beautiful. Corinne was pointing out that people get upset. That they feel like it's better just to throw it in the garbage, apparently. Yeah, right.

It's better to throw it in the trash than to put it as an earring. Right, like it feels disrespectful that you're, you know, it's a detached foot. Whoever has that sentiment would have had a hell of a time with Plains Indians. Being their whole get up was made out of animals. Been extremely upsetting to them. So it's like if you're going to save the feet for stock and boil them in a pot you know eat you still do that times got hard right like in a pulse apocalyptic scenario everybody's starving death crin's like oh that's right i got earrings that's right she takes her earrings off makes a little bit of stock and everybody's fine it's beautiful so you are you going to go into this you do you think? Yeah, I mean, I love making stuff.

I love using my hands, and I paint a lot. I haven't done that in a while. I used to do a lot of ceramics. So, yeah, maybe we'll come up with a line of earrings and rings. And you can get around. You know, like you can't barter and trade for wild game meat. Mm-hmm. But you could even probably go on Etsy and sell your wares. Sure.

Or like, you know, for any future, I mean, either giveaways or fundraising, you know, there can be a pair of something, pair of earrings or something in that collection of gift items. Me and Seth are thinking about, Seth doesn't know about this, but me and him are thinking about raising a lot of money with beaver pelts. I got a path to raise a lot of money for our land access initiative through beaver pelts. Extremely high priced beaver pelts. I was thinking about that too. Extremely high priced beaver pelts. I was thinking about that too. Extremely high priced beaver pelts. They come with a little certificate.

Signed. And a pair of flip flops. And a pair of flip flops. Hell yeah. Comes with every beaver pelt. And then now Seth, do your show and tell. This past week, I was at deer camp in eastern Montana, and I stumbled upon a chunk of bone sticking out of a bank. It wasn't a cut bank.

It was just like a little rolling shoulder that fell down into a little dried-up creek bottom. I don't fully understand that when you say that. Well, you know, most people like, well, I shouldn't say most people. A lot of times people find bison skulls in cut banks, like sticking out of a cut bank. This was just like in the grass, you know. It was fully vegetated where I found this. And it was just. So no erosion. Nothing had like fell away.

No erosion at all. and it was just... So no erosion. Nothing had, like, fell away. No erosion at all. I just happened to see a chunk of bone sticking out of, like, the grass, and I just started digging and uncovered. Yeah. The first one I found was not in a cut bank. It wasn't in anything eroded. Yeah, which I think, I don't know, I think it's cool.

And you got two pieces. It wasn't obvious. It's a youngster. It's a youngster. It's a youngster. It's a calf. I was in a hurry when I was digging it out because my girlfriend Kelsey had just shot a mule deer, and I had to walk like two miles back to the vehicle to go get the vehicle to bring it.

There was like another road that ended up being way closer. So I went and got the vehicle and brought it around and made the pack out like instead of two miles like 500 yards so i was going to do that and what in in the process of doing that is when i found this skull and i was trying to be quick digging it out of the bank and ended up breaking some pieces off of it but it was very fragile um i don't know what's going on but something with the cosmos where a lot of you know right now in in siberia and in in arctic alaska there's all this stuff coming out of the permafrost right now because the yep exceedingly warm summers yep like mammoths and dogs and all manner of junk. I know, I want to go over there and poke around.

Field trip. There's a lot of, I feel like there's something in the cosmos that's not climate related but there's just a lot of buffalo skulls right now because I had found one in I don't know man, late 90s and then didn't find

one for forever. And last year, found two. One was full of crayfish, had been colonized by crayfish. Yep. Then found a chunk like this chunk right here. And then my brother found a couple. Oh, yeah. Cal found one. Everyone's finding them.

Everybody's been finding them. I know multiple dudes that found them this year. There's so many coming out right now, if something is in the cosmos. I got a friend over in Missoula that found one and didn't even pick it up. He sent me a photo. It was level with, it was in a gravel

bar. It looked like it was on display in a gravel bar. Hmm. Like, it was level with it was in a gravel bar let it look like it was on display in a gravel bar like it was like level like you could have walked across it in a gravel bar but just like there in the gravel bar oh we found another one earlier it was later in the summer that someone we were floating a river and someone had picked it up and said it

like made a little care that's what I said it like made a little cairn. That's what I'm thinking of. Made a little cairn and set it on top of that. Not a cairn. Whatever. Cairn. Cairn. Cairn.

Cairn. It's hard to say that word. C-A-I-R-N. Made a cairn and set it on top. I don't know if they knew what it was or didn't know what it was. Yeah. I mean, they did like a symbolic thing. I don't know if they knew what it was or didn't know what it was. Well, if they, yeah, I mean, they did like a symbolic thing. I don't know. I just, I just pictured a bunch of kids playing down by the river and they found this thing.

And you didn't, you didn't, uh, I remember you thought that you felt that it had been corrupted and spoiled. Yes. By the touch of man. Yeah. It wasn't cool. It was cool, but it wasn't, it wasn't like this one where I found it, dug it out of the earth. That one had already been touched.

Okay, now to our guests, Rick Matinee. Matinee? Matinee. Spelled like matinee? No, not like matinee, not like a movie. A lot of people call you Rick Matinee. Matinee. Yeah, Matinee.

E-N-E-E. No. That's Matinee. No, I'm saying that's a-E-E. No. N-E-Y. No, I'm saying that's a... What's the one you go to a movie? That's a matinee. That's a matinee. A matinee, that's right.

It's a French word. It's a French word. But that's E-E. Probably. With like a hat on it. Just tell us how you spell your name. M-A-T-N-E-Y. M-A-T-N-E-Y.

Yeah. And his father, Mike. Yes. Same last Y. Yeah. And his father. Mike. Yes. Same last name. Yes. Um, Rick, you were asking about my special anchor you made me. Yeah. Yeah.

Can you describe real quick how you make anchors? Well, I take a four inch steel pipe and, uh, fill it full of lead and weld bolts around the outside, like a mauler anchor, except for the all steel ones clank real loud. If you fill them with lead, they're a lot quieter. Oh, for the setup. And so I built you one. Yeah.

And I asked you about it when we came in here. And I was. You said there's a story about that. Okay. So here's what happened. One, I love that anchor. It, I had a compartment on one of my boats

that it wouldn't fit into. So I took a bandsaw and shortened the bolts so that it would fit in a compartment down to little nubbins. Oh, well. Well, now I don't put it in that compartment anymore. I could have just left it as it was. So now you need another anchor.

No, it works great, but like I just messed – it was just one of those stupid things that happens. Yeah. I feel terrible about it. It's okay. I got like eight more in the garage right now. Oh, you do? Yeah, we're good. When you're melting all that lead, do you take precautions?

No, absolutely not. You just get a buzz and – Yeah, I just get the torch, grab a bush light and let it eat. Rick, tell people about the, the, the, all the ways you kind of make Ed's meat. Well, I have an outfitting business here in the state of Montana. I run a steelhead lodge out of Southeast Alaska. I guide for a private ranch down in Hawaii, as well as doing some bonefish guiding on Oahu in Hawaii. I do a little bit of cooking for you guys here

at Meat Eater. I also do some in-home wild game cooking classes as well on the side. I have rental properties in town. My job list is extreme. Yeah. Very outdoor focused. Irrigation company that I was a partner, a

partner in, and now I've actually got out of that finally, hopefully so that, uh, I can get a little bit more into the rest of the stuff. Can you, uh, so fish and bone fish in Hawaii, is it OIO? What's the word? OIOs. Yeah.

O-I-O. Um, while in our neck of the woods, you know, they're not really regarded as, when I say our neck of the woods, I mean like in our hemisphere or whatever. Yeah. Like when you go down to the Caribbean and stuff.

Ascension Bay. Yeah, they're not really regarded as, people eat them, but they're not by most people that fish for them, they're not like regarded as a food fish. No. But in Hawaii, it's like they have a completely different perception of them, right?

Yeah. There's, yeah. Pounded fish cakes, fish soup out of them. Yeah. That's, the locals really like eating them. You know, I think America or United States is the only place you can left, you can still kill a bonefish.

They're protected everywhere else, but Florida, Hawaii, you can still kill them there. Um, I don't advocate for that, you know, honestly, but. My brother caught one in Hawaii one time. I think he said it was in 95 feet of water. Oh yeah.

And caught a far bigger bonefish than he'd ever caught fishing bonefish on purpose. Yeah. Yeah. And they're weird. They're a deep water bonefish. They come up onto the flats to feed and there's so many pancake flats around, um around the islands of Hawaii that there's very little flat habitat for them. So most of them are deep water fish. I mean, you'll see videos of them schooling, you know, in 60, 80 feet of water and there's just schools of hundreds of them. And, you know, you go up on the flat and there's four.

But it's the same species. I think so. Yeah. I mean, there's guys that argue that the Hawaiian bonefish are in the Pacific, uh, ocean bonefish are a little bit different than the Atlantic cousins. You know, they're kind of a deep water bonefish. There are, uh, what's called a sharp jawed bonefish, which I think they're going to classify that one as a different species. And Hawaii has both the Pacific bonefish and

the sharp, uh, sharp jawed bonefish. And so I think they do classify that one as a different one, but you know, you can noticeably tell the difference when you catch one of those versus the regular ones. Who, um, what kind of people, like, who are your clients? Not Hawaiians.

No, no, for the most part, they aren't. There's a couple of local guys that I go out with quite a bit, but a lot of them are my clients that I roll over from either my Alaska operation or my Montana operation. And they're like, Hey, you know, what are you doing in January? And I was like, well, funny you ask.

I'm down in Hawaii guiding bonefish. And it's like, oh man, I'd really like to do that. They're really big and they're hard to catch. And it's like, yeah, well, here you go. And you guys go out and sight fish for them. Yep. It's all sight fishing for them on the flats. We do it out of the boat sometimes, depending

on the tides. When the tailing tides are right, we try to do it on foot as much as possible because that's the hunt. That's the fun one. That's more fun than doing it out of the boat. The problem with the boat is most clients and most guys can't spot them far enough out to make an effective cast before we spook them. So it's a hard.

So you're just stuck saying like 11 o'clock, 50 feet. Yeah, 11 o'clock, 50 feet. And if your guy can do it perfectly, yeah, you'll catch a few of them doing it that way for sure. But we have a lot better luck doing it on foot, you know, low and slow. The slower you move, if you move your leg fast enough to where the water makes a tiny bit of a

ripple noise, fish will spook from a hundred feet away. Is that right, really? So you have to go so painfully slow. Are they scared of dudes or are they scared of sharks and stuff? They're scared of everything. Everything wants to kill them.

I've seen 50 pound GTs turn sideways on the flats and chase 10 pound bonefish trying to eat them. You know, there's tiger sharks in the bay, a hundred feet away. You know, it's, everything wants to eat them. You know, on top of that, they get fished to every single day.

When I first started guiding down there a little over 12 years ago, you never saw anyone bonefishing. And now every single day, there's someone on every flat for the most part. So it took off. It took off. And the amount of pressure they see is, and

they're old fish, you know, a big bone fish will be 20 years old. And so you're going to educate a fish like that that's been around the block. He's going to know the drill. So you need to be better than the next guy to get them. And they're extremely hard to catch.

They're, they're not that hard to get to eat as long as you can get to them without spooking. And they're neurotic. Sometimes they eat, you know, without knowing you're there. They don't even care. And other times you can't buy a bite no matter what you do. Um, have you ever hunted sandhill cranes? I have.

Yeah. We were hunting sandhill cranes a couple of years ago in the Texas panhandle. And they're like exceedingly decoy shy. Yeah. Down there. They just see spreads all day, every day. And this guy we're hunting with skins all of his sandhills and makes these zombie decoys where he makes a frame and actually puts an actual sandhill skin over it. And we were kind of like marveling at sort of like how wary they are.

But then we had one that was uh wearing a band it had been banded as an adult 17 years earlier you imagine the amount of spreads that things looked at yeah geez in 17 years what's the average lifespan those things those things get way older than i thought older mallards iards. I mean, you know, a lot of birds can live a long time, but I think it's common to have sandhills, you know, make it to be over a decade. 17?

And you imagine, yeah. So you talk about like a 20 year old bonefish, just like he's up on those flats every day eating after a while. He knows your name, you know his. And we see a lot of the same fish. He's like, yeah, nevermind that guy. Steer clear of that dude. There's one fish, he's like, yeah, nevermind that guy. Steer clear of that dude.

There, there's one fish, he called Bonezilla. Um, he's been caught three or four times now. Uh, she, I should say is probably last thing, I think it was 13.7 pounds the last time I got caught. I think LG caught him last time, but, uh, it's in the same spot. She lives in the same spot during the same

tide. You can go there like clockwork and find that fish. Really? Yeah. And it's, it's unbelievable how, how they pattern. I mean, they're, they might as well be a

whitetail deer. They do the same thing every day, you know, unless they go offshore to spawn. You just always think of, you don't often think of fish like that. Yeah. Hunting a fish. Especially in an open, like an open and like

an ocean environment, you don't think of a fish as being like, here's what his deal is. Yeah. Here's what he does. Or she, yeah. It's, it's, it's funny. And you know, you'll have new fish come onto the flats and do this and that, but I mean,

there's definitely a pattern and the older fish typically do the same thing. I mean, they, they have a thing they want to do and during the right tide and you know, the right conditions, they do that thing, you know, repeatedly. Yeah. You can see them do that month in, month out.

Yeah. All right, Mike, tell us what you do. You guys have an interesting groove. Well, I'm retired at this point, and I've spent my entire life trapping in my off season of working. And I had an excavation business for 25 years and freed up my wintertime. So my kids didn't see much of me during the summertime. You know, it was just our wintertimes were off. So our wintertimes was trapping. What age did you start trapping?

I started about 12 years old, and I think Rick was younger than that. So do the math for me real quick and explain what year you would have started. I want to put in relationship to to the big fur boom okay did you get started during the during the like crazy fur boom yeah 68 before the right before yeah 68 is when i probably started trapping where were you living then northeastern washington north of spokane about 80 about 80 miles. And what drew you into it, being a fur trapper? Well, just the outdoor experience, I guess. I just love the outdoors. And so my father had trapped a little bit, but very little.

And he helped me get me around. I mean, my mother also drove me from place to place when I was dropping. I remember when I was a little kid, we used to make our mom drive around and like sit in the car while you run down into some cattail marsh and then drive to the next spot. It's like being a soccer mom but being a muskrat mom. You could probably make that famous. What did you guys – Get a sticker. Like what did you start out for back then?

Mainly beaver. At that time, beaver was probably the more valuable pelt. And were you – lay out the economics of it back then in the 60s. Like was it good? It's a whole lot better than it is now. Actually, you could make a decent living during the winter months trapping at that time. The average worker, just like the sawmill workers there, were making $30 a day. And so beaver was worth an average of $30.

I remember probably about – probably 69, somewhere in there. I remember I caught 19 beaver on opening day, which was basically a month's wages of a working man. And here I'm 12 or 13 years old. No kidding, man. So I actually – when I turned 16, I bought a brand new – I ordered a four-wheel drive pickup. Of course, my father ordered it because I couldn't put it in my name at 16, but I had the money that I made from trapping to buy a brand new Ford four-wheel drive pickup. At that age? Yeah. Wow. Not like that anymore. That's great. That's great. So in comparison to now, I mean,

you couldn't trap enough beaver to buy a brand new Ford pickup. No. You can't trap enough to put gas in that Ford pickup. Correct. Maybe you could buy a bicycle. Well, the plan me and Seth are hatching. Well, I've explained this before, but I was going to talk about the rule. The law is going to make that only a law that says only me and Seth can trap beavers, but they're worth $1,000 a piece.

A federal law. Don't know if you're going to get that. It might be the first of its kind. You could probably do that with sea otter. Yeah, I think you probably could. There's a limited haul on those. So, oh yeah, I want to talk about, do you follow that, like the sea otter stuff a little bit? Quite a bit.

Because, I want to get to that later. Let me make a note of that. Um, that, so I know like native Alaskans can hunt sea otters. Correct. No one traps sea otters, do they? No. They hunt sea otters. They hunt.

They can sell them only under the condition that they make it into a handicraft. Has to be substantially altered, altered is the word. but sea otters as they come back so strong some argue more than ever had ever been are destroying the red urchin they're destroying everything because it's all tied together and so there's a push to make it to incentivize people to go after sea otters there's a push correct correct, to reduce the restrictions so that people could actually sell non-altered sea otters. Correct. That's what the Steadman, that's his last attempt that he actually failed at, but was to allow the natives to sell just sea otter hides. I was attempting to try to buy them in the round so I could personally skin

them and that too. But sea otters, their value is, you know, somewhere around $1,000 a piece for me to make product out of it. That's to make product. But you're not allowed. I can't physically touch it. So you would need, if the rules changed. If the rules changed and the natives, I think, would harvest a lot more, but I still don't think they would harvest enough to make a substantial difference. You got to remember the carrying capacity in southeast Alaska during the 73 when they did the Marine Mammal Act determined that 20,000 was carrying capacity. We currently have over 50,000. So over two times the carrying capacity. So they're basically eating themselves out of house and home.

The interesting thing is the people that are trying to protect the sea otters are actually the ones that are killing all of them as they start to basically destroy the habitat to where they'll completely die out. It's funny. This is such like a recurring theme. I just saw it's such a recurring theme around. This is a real rabbit hole. I want to get back to the sixties in a minute.

We're going to put all this whole, but I want to open up the rabbit hole real quick or like peer into the rabbit hole. Whenever we're dealing with an imperiled species, it enters a mind space with americans okay like wolves in the 70s it enters a mind space with americans where you're like this thing is imperiled there aren't many left and we get to a point where we're like we will forever envision it that way. You know, it's like you get in your head that the rarity of something and it doesn't, you know, we don't allow culturally, we don't have the elasticity in our brains to picture that someday we'll reverse the trend.

It always feels scarce. So when we were low on sea otters, we put protections in place to recover sea otters. It's like sea otters entered like a permanent status in our brains as being imperiled. Without opening up the idea that we would someday hit recovery. That's why when they hit these recovery thresholds, it's like it never happened. With wolves too, we hit the recovery threshold. With grizzly bears in certain areas, we hit the recovery thresholds. And people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we hit the recovery thresholds, but screw that. We don't want anyone to ever touch them ever again because there used to not be that many. Oddly, it didn't happen with elk or turkeys or deer.

We about ran out of elk. No one has a problem switching the mine frame. So I guess that's an exception to my own rule. But some things like sea otters, people are never going to get comfortable with the fact that there's a bunch of them. Well, the native tribes up in Alaska were not nomadic so much.

So some of the mittens, the dump sites, they have hundreds and hundreds of years. And my understanding is that when they've digged through these mittens, the dump sites, they have hundreds and hundreds of years. And my understanding is that when they dig through these mittens, that there's 100 years where they have clamshells and 100 years where they do not have clamshells. Oh, is that right? So meaning the natural cycle to the sea otters. Fluctuating sea otter numbers. Sea otter, you know, like every other animal, goes in cycles. You know, if they're left alone, they will populate up and then just eat themselves out of

house and home and then start all over again. And that's what we're seeing now. And what we're seeing now is we've exceeded the carrying capacity and they will die off. And, uh, then they will slowly go back the other direction, but it's appears to be a hundred year cycles. How big is one of those things?

Two, three times the size of a river otter. 60, 70 pounds. Yeah, 60, 70 pounds of our big ones. And when the Russians used to, you know, like the Russians used to come into Alaskan waters, like way back in the old days, they were after sea otters, buying sea otters. We knew that back then, like people didn't trap

sea otters. They always just hunted them, correct? Well, you got to remember a sea otter is born in the water and he never leaves the water. And because of that, they're prime year round because they're in. I didn't know that. Yeah. They're like most fur bears you consider only harvest in the winter months.

It doesn't make any difference to a sea otter because they're in the same environments. Very little difference between a summer sea otter and a winter sea otter. Got you. And the quality of the fur. Yeah. All right. We'll get back into all that stuff. I want to get back into the sixties.

My understanding of like the fur boom, like I started trapping right when the fur boom ended. Okay. So we set our first muskrat traps in 1984 it was so good but it wasn't as good can you explain what happened with fur prices and maybe you probably have a more detailed uh understanding of this can you explain what happened to wild fur prices in this this sort of like magic block and maybe my dates are wrong, but like from 1978 to 1982, people were quitting factory jobs in order to trap in the fall and winter.

I know that in the case of the coyotes, there were people that bought airplanes in the Highline up here in Montana and they made more money during the evenings killing coyotes than they did in their job. Well, like what was happening those years? Do you understand from a market perspective? Like why did like all wild fur all of a sudden get super valuable? I don't know that all wild fur did. I don't know if I'd agree with that.

It's long-haired fur became more popular. And beaver didn't greatly increase. It was the long furs and 73, four or five in that area there when the coyotes really took off. And that was just a fashion trend, I think more than anything else. But for perspective, I remember like around the time when I became exposed to it, it was very common for red Fox to sell like in the late seventies, early eighties, it was very common for Red Fox where I grew up to be worth $75. It was common for mink to be worth 50 bucks.

Beavers, you'd hear a beaver selling for in excess of a hundred dollars. Muskrat selling for eight. Is that not, am I remembering this wrong? I don't ever remember beaver averaging $100. Is that right? No, no, not at all. Beaver's never really changed a dramatic amount. It's a lot more difficult process to tan and take care of beaver. And I think that's held the price down a lot on beaver

when a lot of the other furs are a lot easier to process. And a lot of it's just fashion trends. When I first started, beaver were $30 and a coyote was $6. A bobcat was probably maybe $20. But it wasn't too much into the early 70s that we were looking at $200 and $300 bob, you know, 40 or $50 coyotes at that time. And then it wasn't too much later than we saw a hundred dollar coyotes. You know, when you hear over the last, it's not so much right now, but like even within the last few years, you'd hear rumors of people saying that they were selling a bobcat fur.

You'd hear rumors that like $800, $1,000. That's still the case right now, but they've got a lot more specific with what they're looking for. But those real wide black and white bellies, which they use for making vests and things like that, is where those real wide black and white spots. And what they're after is the spots. It's basically the only spotted fur that's available now it's surprising me that they don't just um that they care about that it's that there's a concern about that it's actual because doesn't it seem like you could just like replicate it

you ever felt fake fur yeah feels like fake fur You can't replicate that. Yeah. Yeah. Nature does it better. So on those, like, like who's buying, um, who's buying bobcats right now? Like what country do they go to? Italy, I think is where a lot of them go. Yeah.

Uh, Italy, they're, they're lining the pockets of jeans on, they're putting little top ends on girls' jeans and lining it with bobcat fur inside the pockets too. You're kidding. Yeah, you'll see little white, you know, bobcat belly fur just on the top of like a set of Levi's on the top edge of the pocket leading into it. And I know that's pretty popular right now. And again, it's Europe.

It's not much in the United States. France, Italy, those are two of the bigger ones. I remember reading a thing one time, I was talking about the, sort of the weirdness and unpredictability of fur prices. This analyst was talking about at times that Northern raccoons, so like generally Northern furs are heavier, like better furred, heavier

leather, correct? Is that a fair? Mm-hmm. Southern furs, a thinner leather, thinner leather, thinner fur, just because of climate. One thing I'd like to bring up right now is the fact that you got to remember wild fur is just a reaction. It's basically the tail on the dog. Ranch fur makes up 95% of the fur market. Only 5% is actually wild fur. So the fur price is – it only follows the ranch market. So like right now, they've got a huge surplus of ranch-raised mink, which in turn drives down the price of muskrat and wild mink.

And it's just – wild fur market just follows wherever the ranch market goes is where the wild fur market goes. Yeah. I read a piece recently, a big auction house that used to deal in wild fur had just stopped wild fur altogether and now only deals in ranch fur. I don't know about that.

Yeah. Like some furrier. North American fur. No, not, no, no. It's like some furrier had abandoned its wild fur practice because of the, because of the predictability of, uh, the predictability and consistency of ranch fur.

It's more consistent in the quality of the fur. You know, one fur is nearly exactly the same as the other. So it's real, a lot easier on a sewing aspect than wild fur is because wild fur varies real widely on the quality, texture, and color. Gotcha. So this thing I was reading about, just talking about the sort of idiosyncrasies of the fur market, was explaining that I guess there's been times when southern raccoons have been more valuable than Northern raccoons. And it was pointing to the weight of a finished product, meaning it's very hard. And it was saying outside

of Italy, it's very hard to sell a fur coat that weighs more than nine pounds. Generally in Asia, if you have a fur coat that weighs more than seven pounds, people in Asia, if you have a fur coat that weighs more than seven pounds, people will think it's too heavy and won't want to buy it. But an Italian will wear a heavier fur coat than anybody else.

And it was talking about, so if you had a situation where Italy was buying a lot of furs, that could affect fur markets because they're more tolerant of heavier, longer coats. Whereas when furs are popular in some other country, like if China's buying a lot of fur, it could tend to be that that would be maybe driving up muskrat prices more because it's a lower bottom end price to buy the thing. And it was, I think that when you're looking at in the U S you're trying to

understand like where fur goes and what drives fur prices, you tend to look around you and it doesn't really make sense. Cause you just don't see the habits of what's going on in Italy, China, Russia, these other places and all this stuff gets exported. Yeah. What's, what are the impacts of COVID on fur? Pretty poor right now. You know, what I've done is I started my own little fur shop and cut out about three

middlemen. And so I make all my own stuff and sell it in my, I live in Wrangell, Alaska, and we have a little fur store there. And so I, everything I catch, I cut out the auction yard houses. I cut out the, you know the shipping at more than one time. I basically ship my fur to the tannery and it ships back. It isn't shipping to the auction yard and then shipping from the auction yard to the tannery and then from the tannery back to the furrier. It just cuts out a whole bunch of middlemen and then I make fur products and sell them to the tourists there.

What's your shop called? It's called the Trading Post in Wrangell. We have a website too now. It's fursalaska.com. And so being as COVID come around, we finally decided we better start selling stuff online. So when you, if you, if you've achieved a place or like achieved a position where you're now able to be a fur trapper and fur hunter and make a market for and sell all your own stuff, has all this chit chat about fur prices become irrelevant to you? Completely. Yeah, I, you know, I, I view trapping as an excuse to run around in the woods and be in a place that I love to be. And so it really wouldn't make any difference if the prices were zero. I'd still be there. And I think I feel like I'm doing a steward of the land of maintaining the animals somewhere close to carrying capacity in a healthy population. So they don't get to that point where they become overpopulated and it stresses the animals.

And then the diseases come in. All animals have controlling diseases. So, you know, if they're completely left alone, they will reach that point. What all species do you go after now? I trap basically in southeast Alaska, probably Pine Martin is most desirable. But I trap Pine Martin and otter, wolves, man, wolverine, beaver. Do you do muskrats anymore? There's no muskrats up there where I'm at.

But you don't trap muskrats anywhere else? I have before come down to the state of Washington and trap some areas that I used to trap when I was younger, but I haven't. Price right now is about $3 for muskrats. When they're 10, I can make pretty good money at it. Make $1,000 a day when they're $10, but making $300 a day doesn't excite me much. Yeah. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated.

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get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onx maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all explain this contraption you made though this This is your invention? Peter Van Doren Yeah. I developed – well, you got to remember in the state of Washington in the year 2000, they banned trapping as we knew it. They decided that it would be best if they didn't have any traps that were body-gripping

devices. So they banned all body-gripping devices. They banned the conibear trap which undoubtedly is probably the most humane trap ever developed. But in the interest of humanity, they decided to ban the most humane trap made. And so they said we could no longer use any body-gripping devices. So that kind of forced me into a situation where I said, well, I still want to trap. So how can I trap muskrats without gripping them in any way? So I developed a floating colony trap that the animal goes into

and it never grips the animal. He drives down through two opposing fingers and drowns. And then the trap resets itself when that muskrat goes in. And that was more palatable to the voters of Washington. Yeah. It, it, you know, it was more palatable to do that. So, so it forced me into a situation where instead of averaging 60 muskrats a day, I've now averaged 120 muskrats a day, uh, in the same, same amount of time. These are that effective?

Oh yeah. What I'm looking at is a, it's kind of hard to explain, man. It's what, like 20, was it 24 inches long? Yeah. some same amount of time. These are just that effective? Oh yeah. What I'm looking at is a, it's kind of hard to explain, man. It's what, like 20, was it 24 inches long? Yeah, they're 24 inches long and that'd be six, 12, 12 inches wide. It looks like a small cage, a small cage with one inch or three quarter inch square wire, 24

inches long, maybe 12 inches deep, six inches of brass, six inches across, with floats up toward the top. So that cage sits underwater and it floats. Then there's a little trap door, kind of like a door reminiscent of a, like a have a heart trap door that's just on a swing. So you can just push your way in there, crawl your way in there.

Right. And when they go in, what happens is they bump this bump bar. The door lays down. These right here are adjustable, so you can get it to where it's almost balanced. But once the muskrat goes in, as you see, he now can't get out. And this is the inverted door model, which allows the smalls and the kits to escape, which is something trappers have never had before.

So if you can imagine, now we leave all the smalls and kits, which are not very valuable in relation to the adults. This one only catches adult-sized muskrats. All the others escape unharmed. And by spring the next year, then they're mature rats. And then you can catch them when they're worth two or three times more than what that kit was. But that's not, that's for fur trappers. That's not like a guy that wants all the muskrats dead because they're destroying

his landscaping. Okay, that's this one down here. This is a different mesh. This has got, basically, it's a treadle. It's a teeter-totter. As the muskrat goes in, the teeter-totter closes the door behind it. And once the muskrat's in there, he can't physically get out. It's just one direction in, and eventually he decides he can't get out the way he came in, so then he dives down. The bottom compartment holds about eight muskrats, although I've had a lot of customers. I sell them all over the United States, mostly to the animal damage control people. What do you call this thing? It's a floating colony trap.

You don't have a fancier name than that? The Lisa Watney 2000. Lisa Watney, I got to explain that. Lisa Watney was the person that drove the ban on trapping in the state of Washington. Oh, I got you. So I named it, one time I called it the Lisa Watney 2000. Because she, in her attempts to make us not catch the animals, we doubled our production

in trapping the animals. What do you sell one of those things for? Do you still make them? Yeah, I still make them. Do you just hand make them all? Yeah, I make them all. I come down about two weeks every year and make a couple hundred of them. No shit, really?

Yeah. So it takes me a couple weeks to make a couple hundred of them. So in your year, when I was talking about you boys having an interesting lifestyle, within your year, you account for spending a couple weeks making muskrat colony traps. Yeah. And you'll sell all those throughout the year? Yeah, pretty much. spending a couple of weeks making muskrat colony traps. Yeah. So. And you'll sell all those throughout the year? Yeah, pretty much.

Can you tell us what you get for one? Yeah, $185 plus shipping. Wow. But, you know. How do you bait it? Okay, you bait the back part with carrots, and I usually put a couple appetizers up here in front.

The muskrat will come by and grab the carrot, and he'll take it off. And he really likes carrots. It's like candy to a muskrat. And so he comes back and looks for more. But there seems to be some, I don't know whether they're bringing other muskrats back with them, because once they start hitting it, it'll just fill it up with muskrats. What's the most you've ever caught in one? I've only caught eight is the most I've caught several times.

But I have a lot of customers that lay claim to 10. I had one guy that he, it was kind of funny, he had ordered a couple traps from me. He's an animal damage control guy. And he had a golf course pond. He said, he called up and he said, I'm not catching anything in my traps. And I said, okay, well, try seeding the bank with, you know, I had him describe it.

To introduce them to carrot eating. Yeah, introduce them to seed the banks with carrots and see what happens. Well, he called me back about three days later and he said, yeah, he couldn't have got another one in it without Vaseline. He had 10 of them in it. He had to educate the muskrats on carrots. Yeah, they just didn't have, they were, he said that that particular pond was grass all the way down to it and the muskrats were just eating grass

is all they were eating. And so they, they had no idea what a carrot was, but once they figured it out, it was phenomenal for him. Do you use any commercial, uh, lure? I, yeah, I'd use, uh, just a cherry oil and, and, uh, petroleum jelly is what I use in it. You can use fancy lures in that.

It wouldn't make any difference. When I was a kid, we used to use mint toothpaste. Oh. Yeah. So, Hallman, what's your mix? Just petroleum jelly and cherry oil. Vaseline and cherry oil. Cherry oil.

Like an extract. Just mix them together. Mint extract. When a person gets the trap, they get a DVD with it and a little bottle of cherry oil, which also just. What's the DVD called? It's just not a name to it. It's just the instructional video for it that comes with it. So they can, because most, you know, this is entirely different than any trap that you ever see.

But do you anchor it? You just tie it off to where it doesn't float away. Can I borrow that thing? I got six of them here, Steve. Yeah, we have lots of them. See, I don't know, man, because it takes all the romance out of muskrat trapping. Well, you know, the neat thing about it- Because you don't need to know how to read sign.

No, correct. No, it's the best. That's what they- You don't have to- No, because I like- Throw one in a pond and walk away. Yeah, but when I take my kids, we set muskrat traps last night because it was opening day yesterday. When I take my kids out to set muskrat traps.

You're looking for the runs. We're like learning all about this. This is a push-up, a lodge, bank den. Here's where they've been doing this. Let's just go throw that son of a bitch in off the edge of the pond and start stacking them up yeah but i bet the manager of that property would be very happy if we use that no i don't want him to even know i hope he doesn't listen to this i don't know if he listens to this show or not but it's going to change his whole life he thinks i have some kind of magic he thinks i got some kind of magic

capabilities maybe i don't know if i set this i am going capabilities maybe. I don't know. If I set this, I am going to set it. I'm going to hide it. I don't know how to use that thing. I'm going to hide it. I'm going to tuck it into the cattail so he doesn't know about it. Yeah. I went into a pond here that a guy had had a trapper pay to come in and kill muskrats, and he killed seven muskrats.

And the landowner was still seeing muskrats everywhere. So he got a hold of me and said, well, the trapper before you got seven, do you think you can beat that? And I threw my six colony traps out and I had 53 muskrats the next, the next day. Seriously? Yeah. So I came back, I set them that night.

I came back the next day and I had between, or I said it was two checks that I had 53, but I ended up getting 53 and two checks, um, with just six traps and every one of them was just completely loaded. And then I literally couldn't catch another muskrat out of that pond. It's just all of a sudden there was no muskrats in them.

Let me tell you where this thing. There weren't any left. Let me tell you this thing's vulnerability. And you probably already realize this. In Michigan, we, I used, you know, I didn't travel out, but like, I think like a good year when I was like probably the most I ever caught, I caught 250 muskrats one year when I was not a kid, but like community college age.

Um, and you could trap for weeks before freeze up, but hereabouts, like in the Northern Rockies, uh, at higher elevation, by the time the season opens, you're in freeze up. So have you made a, have you made a under ice rig? No, this is strictly for open water. Why have you not done any inventing for an under, a thing that you chop a hole, send that son of a bitch down and they find it when they're cruising around under the ice? Because it's Martin trapping season. Come on, you're under the next thing.

This hasn't bothered you? No, not. As an inventor? It hasn't bothered me a bit. You know, I'm liking to do all kinds of things and muskrat season is muskrat season. Yeah, but your clientele might appreciate an under ice solution.

If I sent you out right now to trap a muskrat through the ice, what would be your, what's your go-to set? You just look for the runs? One tank conibear and a run. You just look for the runs. One tank conibear in a run. You just look for the runs, the bubbles. Probably. But his clientele mostly is nuisance trappers, right?

Yeah, they're trying to eradicate that. Which they can trap whenever. They're trapping your run. Yeah. Up and, yeah, they're not going to be trapping during the ice up. Yeah. I don't want to infringe on your business, but

here's the thing. Me and Seth here, you might not have heard of us, but we're small-scale free nuisance trappers. Meaning? Volunteer. We're volunteer nuisance trappers. But we're volunteer nuisance trappers, but our customers all work on our schedule. Like, I'll have people who within a couple hours drive here, if they have beaver problems or muskrat problems, they'll say, like, oh, my God, we got a blank beaver problem.

And I'll say, well, we'll come out in the middle of the winter when it suits our likings. So not doing any kind of damage stuff, but it's a free service. But it's hard to really, at that time of year, it's hard to give them what they're after, which is eradication. I don't know, through the ice, I don't know that you can really totally clean them out. Probably not. Unless you just keep going and going and going and going and going. Yeah. You know, the people that are doing the animal

damage control are charging 50 bucks a muskrat or, you know, $150 a beaver to remove it or, you know, whatever their prices might be. Are they getting that amount of money? You know, it depends on where they're at. I know. I was just saying, man, we're doing it wrong. This volunteer shit's not working.

We need to make a website. Yeah. You know, these guys are making a living doing it. You're not going to make a living trapping beaver for their fur. What would a website be called? Free nuisance trapping? I don't know. I'd have to think about it.

Work on that. since trapping? I don't know. I'd have to think about it. Work on that. I feel like a lot of, or a fair amount of our audience as hunters may also have qualms about trapping. You find that to be the case? They all do.

Yeah, right? They all do. So I'm just kind of curious to hear from everyone, not like it's necessary to make an indefensive, but to just kind of go into a little bit of your kind of thinking, your thought process about it, you know, and why hunters would think that trapping is different. Yeah.

I'll go first. Yeah. Are you asking me? Yeah. I'm asking all of you. I could ask this question a fair bit. And, uh, I think that as a harvester of, of anything, um, like it doesn't matter if you fish or hunt or trap, you are beholden to a regulatory structure. Okay. There are rules that, there are rules of engagement. Um, and the rules that you live by when you hunt and fish and trap are generally meant to ensure that they're generally meant to limit efficacy, um, so that people don't have

the tools at their disposal to like annihilate species. So they're meant to make it that the means of harvest aren't so effective that everybody is putting themselves out of business. They also are very informed by historical use and common practice. Meaning if we devise some new thing and we realize that all of our fishing harvest goals could be met with these very precise, specific poisons, say, regulators or people that set wildlife laws wouldn't necessarily just jump to that because that's not a historic use. It's not a common use pattern to use poisons. So we kind of prefer ways things have always been done in terms of like cultural longevity and how we go about our practices. Due to the regulatory thing and because beavers have commercial value, say, or

fur bears have commercial value, oftentimes fur bears are the only allowable harvest is by trapping. Take Michigan, for instance, where I grew up. You could not the only legal method of take for muskrat, mink, beaver, otter, thebs and flows, those things are of commercial value and support a commercial industry. And it was protecting those fur bearers from wanton slaughter by people with firearms year round. So they said, like, these things have value. We're going to protect the people that participate in this, protect the industry, and make it that they are, fur bears are meant for fur harvesters.

Point being is you're operating usually within a pre-existing regulatory structure. So with beavers, for instance, here, you can't hunt them. Right. You trap them. If you think it's okay to use a renewable resource, beavers as a renewable resource, and you accept that people who are in agriculture, irrigation, people who are trying to protect timber, trying to check landscaping, fruit trees, streamside vegetation, aspen groves, what have you, that these people at times have a legitimate reason to want to get rid of some beavers. That's how it's done. So you're not making a decision like, do I want to hunt beavers or trap beavers? That's how beavers are caught, is through trapping.

So I don't view it as it would be. I don't, I wouldn't get into a situation where I'm like, because I can't shoot it with my gun. Therefore, I think that they should not be harvested. Do you feel like that's the argument you get? Or, or there's a,

there's some kind of conceptual. Yeah. Traps are mean, but shooting stuff's okay. Running an arrow through it then you get into this weird weird shit with people who think that like

hunting with a bow is more ethical than hunting with a rifle even though lethality is like way less which is absurd it might be like it's harder

it's definitely harder to be consistent with a bow. It takes a greater skill set. But for the animal, you think you're doing the animal a favor by killing it one way and not another? Like, I don't agree. Or enjoying it. You either are at a position where you think that it's okay to harvest renewable resources or not. Right. That's probably the question.

If you get to where it's not, okay, cool, it's not. Yeah. But if it is, then that's how we do it. It's the most effective, most humane way to get it done. And historically, that's how people have gone about it. So I just don't like, you know, every time I have a conversation,

like, I don't feel like I need to predicate every conversation about harvesting beavers or muskrats or whatever with a big thing explaining why I think it's okay. The same way, every time you go through the drive-thru and order chicken nuggets, is there someone waiting there to like question your ethics? why do trappers have to face it all the time you know why like i'm not i'm not like why so why is it that you have to justify it every time you

turn around but people that eat chicken never have to so for our listeners i think we uh we take out this bit of the podcast and play it on repeat. So Steve never has to repeat it again. But you know what I'm saying? I want to make a sign at McDonald's and protest chicken nuggets. Yeah. It's like, well, how do you feel about how they kill those chickens? You know the answer you'd get?

I have no idea how they kill those chickens. Yeah. Nor do they care. I one time did some work at a place called, it was called, it was like Bill Maher, but not like Bill Maher, but like Bill Maher, like a turkey processing plant. Turkeys would show up. We were there working on some equipment. They'd bring in all these turkeys in trucks. the turkeys are all these little boxes in a truck so they were raised somewhere i mean if you've ever gone i'm not even hacking on it i'm just

saying that's how it goes like they're raising these like warehouses thousands of turkeys packed into a warehouse then they pull up a truck and you take all the turkeys and load them into a little box on the truck and drive that down the highway. I'm not a turkey, but being loaded on a, after spending my life in a warehouse, never seeing the sun, to be loaded on a semi in a little box and hauled down an interstate system for X number of hours, I don't know what that experience is like. And then it gets to the parking lot and it waits there in the parking lot. And eventually it's that truck's turn and they go and pull it in and a guy grabs the turkey out and hooks its feet into a little hook and suspends it upside down. And then it goes down the conveyor and its head gets dragged across an electrified plate, which gives it a good zap.

And then it gets caught in this little V thing and it passes through that and a little spinning blade cuts his throat. But trapping, that's mean as shit. Savage. It's like I just, you know what I'm saying? Like, why is it me? All those Thanksgiving turkeys, folks. But like, you find a muskrat den instead of body grip and trap in there.

The muskrat goes in the den, whap, body grip and trap, grips it around the back of the neck or over the lungs. He's underwater, can't move. He's dead in seconds. And that is so upsetting. I'd like to address that because I have my little first. No, take your turn. I'm done now.

Okay. Well, I have this little fur shop here, and I get a lot of people coming into the shop, you know, and a lot of them are opposed to trapping and that. You know, and you ask, talk to them a little bit, and, you know, what do you dislike about trapping? They can consider it inhumane. And I said, well, you know, we probably got some things we could agree on here. You know, we can probably all agree that all animals, wild animals die. And, you know, you usually get an agreement out of that. And so, you know, next question is, well, do you agree that, you know,

out of all wild animals, almost none of them die of old age? And sometimes you'll get some squawk of that. So you pull out your smartphone, you Google what percentage of wild animals die of old age. And most all research is none or a non-negligible amount. Okay, so we're talking about the humane treatment of an animal. And trapping is inhumane. Well, now we've decided that the animal basically has four ways that that animal can die. He can die from a conibear that relatively kills him instantly.

He can die of starvation. He can die of a disease, or he can die from consumed by another predator. Out of those four deaths, which one do you consider the most humane? And when, in fact, trapping is the most humane death that that animal could possibly receive. over a three-week or a month period or die from being consumed by a bear or die from— Darrell Bock Starving to death. Peter Robinson Yeah, or starve to death. Darrell Bock Over a long period of time. Peter Robinson Or starving to death. So of the four possibilities that that animal is going to die, the actual most humane death

is being trapped. Darrell Bock We had a wolf researcher on one time. We asked her what kills wolves and she said wolves. Yeah, 100%. Smart. All the study subjects. And the other thing is, you know, most people, they figure trappers are out there to catch everything they can.

And when in fact, that's the direct opposite. The trapper wants to be able to maintain a healthy population to be able to go out next year. What would be the benefit of, for example, a cattle farmer that has a pasture that supports 100 cattle? You know, he's going to want 100 cattle out there producing for him so he can harvest the surplus every year. So trappers are no different. We want to go out next year. We want to trap as many as we can. We want a healthy population.

As stewards of the land, we want to maintain that healthy animal. So, you know, in the case where the people that don't want any animals killed, the animals make natural cycles where they'll populate up over years, disease out, and they just go from peak and crash, peak and crash. As stewards of the land as a trapper, I'm able to maintain healthy populations right straight through. Anytime you have, for example, coyotes getting overpopulated and getting mange or distemper, then you have the potential of that spreading into the dogs of the public. Domesticated canine populations.

Yeah, getting into the population of domestic animals where if you maintain a healthy population of coyotes, you don't have that problem. I found that people are comfortable with the cycles. Like it doesn't upset them because people have this idea that like, oh, that's natural. People are comfortable with the cycles. Like, it doesn't upset them because people have this idea, like, oh, that's natural. So, like, wolves getting killed by wolves, they're like, oh, yeah, that's fine because that's natural. Disease is fine because that's natural. And acrimony that trapping brings about is because people, this is a phenomenon, I guess, of the last 100, 200 years. People have gotten to the point where nothing we do, they like our species to sit entirely outside of nature. Are you being a steward of the land by doing that well no but it's comfortable for people to imagine that we're we're tainted um we do all the things

we do but we're tainted and like any role we play in nature is very upsetting to them like they want everyone to live divorced from nature so that all the ways a muskrat dies, all the uses that a muskrat goes toward to feed things, like the minute it enters into the human sphere, something's wrong. Something has occurred that was bad, you know, that like of all the predation that drives things, that a human predator would get it feels like naughty to them. I think that's kind of a hang-up that's hard to address

that's really interesting it's like i guess we're not animals i guess we're not part of the natural world you know we've brought technology to the place where it is so we can just be like robots that sit in the sidelines and like we live in apartment buildings we don't live in the woods i guess so we're yeah people a lot of people I think regard themselves as kind of icky. They think they're like icky and evil in that context. But I don't like, I don't feel that way. Like I don't like to be a agent out in nature, like a person who does things and consumes things and supports things and, you know, a well-intentioned predator, like, that doesn't make me feel nasty and icky. It's interesting.

Think about that. But it's a sentiment that people have. Yeah. My wife struggles with trapping. What's her? She struggles with electric reels. Because you know what it is when I inquire about it? Because you're not there.

Oh, I see. So you're not bearing witness to it. It's like a mechanical thing. She thinks it's cheating because you're not there. That you're not actually, it's not active. Yep. It's because you set it. You set a trap.

Yeah. And you don't need to be there. And electric reels, because your hand doesn't need to be there and electric reels because your hand doesn't need to like go in circles. Yeah. So she feels like it's, it's cheap. I think most of the, most of the time the

definition of trapping is hunting with mechanical devices. Most places, most states, I think that's how they define trapping. Is that right? Is hunting with mechanical devices. Maybe that's upsetting to people. But what's a firearm?

Mechanical device. It's far more sophisticated. That's why hunting and trapping a lot of times follow the same regulatory guidelines too, as well. You'll find a lot of hunting and trapping laws that coincide with each other. Yeah.

But I can see that. It's like you're But I can see that. It's like you're, I can see where she's coming from. I don't, I mean, I don't know how I feel either way, but like you're in the moment confronting an animal and your action in that moment, that engagement with that creature in that moment is like an active choice that you're making yeah right and if you're setting something out that's going to do its job in your by itself in your absence i can i can see where she is like sitting and waiting sitting and waiting out a deer waiting out a deer in her mind is like that's great yeah waiting it out but you go out in the warm part of the day instead of beaver trap then you go back to bed and some point during the night your ass isn't even sitting there freezing and wow you got him it just strikes

her as you're cheating she might have an arguable point there i can't say i completely disagree it's also just more variables that you have less control over right for sure you know She might have an arguable point there. I can't say I completely disagree. It's also just more variables that you have less control over, right? For sure. You know? Yeah. I think that's. In my defense of what I always, when I'm having this argument with her, I tell her, like the electrical reel for, the electric reel for instance, when she thinks is like, she was offended by electric reels, deep dropping. Mm-hmm.

Because you don't see the fish and all this stuff. I said to her, and I said the same thing to her about beaver trapping. As I said, I could lay a gun out for someone and say, I want you to kill a deer. Okay, so let's say in one pile, I put a gun and I say, I want you to kill a deer. In one pile, I put all the shit that it requires to deep drop a black cod in a pile. Or I put all the shit that it's required to trap a beaver in a pile. Which pile are you going to grab?

Figure it out. Yeah, and I said, okay, Corinne, here's the choice. You can take this and shoot it, catch a deer. You can take all this shit and catch a black cod. Or you can take all this shit and catch a beaver. What are you going to go for? What's going to strike you as the easiest thing?

The old levered action 30-30. Dude, of course, because it takes the skill set required. I'll probably trap myself in option two. Yeah, the bits of information, the bits of information required to catch a beaver are greater than the bits of information required to catch a beaver are greater than the bits

of information required to shoot a deer. Okay. Yeah. They just are. It takes more know-how to, like, it just takes more know-how to get up and running. Yep. Got it. Like trying to set that thing up.

One of my limbs might be in there. No, not just that that but to read the sign to understand even where to begin right right it's like not an easy thing and so that whole like how that whole like challenge aspect which is different than ethics it's still substantive there is a huge challenge aspect but people don't see it because they don't experience and they don't go out and see what it requires. They have this idea of how easy it is. Like how easy it is to criticize people that run mountain lions with dogs until you go and see what goes into it.

How hard could it be shooting a lion out of a tree? I don't know any houndsmen that think that's hard. Maybe the concept is like setting out traps is like setting out like a mouse trap. Well, it's like this muskrat thing we're looking at. That looks a lot more complicated than a mouse trap. In the case of a coyote trap where you've got a two-inch circle that out of a square mile, you're trying to get a coyote to step on a two-inch circle. I don't know how many two-inch circles there are in a square mile, but you know, that's

kind of amazing in itself. Yeah. That's something I've, I've heard that expressed and it's a, it's a very valid point that you are, not only that, you're trying to get them to step on a two inch man-made circle. Yeah. It smells bad.

It's incredible. Yeah. How effective people are at figuring that stuff out. What else you got, Corinne? No, that's it. I just wanted to touch on that because I think that comes up a lot here. I don't know either way. This is all new to me, so kind of just appreciate the the information and

the perspective i think that but in all fairness to the subject i think that um when trappers are defending trapping they often want to go to they often jump to coni bears which are body gripping traps because it's sort of like a very they're like demonstrably effective like they kill things very quickly very few trappers go to defend trapping and jump to footholds that restrain an animal for a day or two alive oh that so now i now and then you show up and. And finish it. Yeah.

Like when we used to like trap and fox, red fox, you would dispatch, like you'd catch the fox. You'd check every morning. It just made more sense to check in the morning, but you didn't have to. Some states have check laws, 24 hours, 48 hours, whatever. You go, there it is. He's in the trap. He's been there all night. And you go up and take a trowel and smack him across the bridge of the nose

and stun him and then take your heel and crush his ribcage with your heel. That's how trappers dispatch red foxes. That's upsetting to people. But trappers always want to talk about conibears. I do too. It's a bad habit of mine. Then it gets like, then it's different. It's a bad habit of mine. Then it gets a little, then it gets like,

then it's different. It's a different conversation. Maybe. Are there? If I was arguing with a trapper, that's what I would talk about. I'd be like, no, no, no, I don't want to talk about coni bears.

Well, Rick and I use a lot of snares with the development of the Stenacre kill spring and that. Well, I don't know how many coyotes we have that the cables stretch out where you got a skiff of snow and you can see exactly what took place. You can see where the coyote goes into the snare. He takes a lunge and he's laying dead at the end of it.

And his foot has made maybe a couple swipes of his foot where it's killed him extremely quickly. Just instantly. And so I don't really use traps all that much anymore because of the efficiency of the snares that are available to us now. It cuts off that carotid artery. And, I mean, they're dead at the end of the cable. I've got a number of wolves that the cable is stretched out and the wolf is laying dead at the end of it. Zero disruption to the – you can reset your set. The grass didn't even get beat down or anything.

Like literally it goes to the end of the rope. They drop. That's it. You know, sometimes their grass didn't even get beat down or anything like literally it goes to the end of the rope they drop that's it you know sometimes their leg doesn't even move there's i mean it's you couldn't stone an animal that yeah you couldn't shoot an animal you couldn't shoot one in the forehead and have it die as quickly as they do with the when they cut off that blood to the brain they basically just die instantly so when you do you not like do you know guys that don't use let me let me let me back up for a minute and just explain something to listeners uh you'll often hear like dry dry land dry ground sets being differentiated from water sets because water sets there's a hundred ways not a hundred ways there's a handful of ways with water sets

to kill stuff real quick. Yeah. Drowner wires and all kinds of things. Like you get stuff underwater and drown it, or it's just killed by the trap. So dry land sets, dry land leg hold or foot hold sets oftentimes are just restraining the

animal till you get there. I'll point out that wolf researchers often catch the wolves they're doing for collaring projects. They catch the wolves using the exact same technology that people are talking about being cruel and inhumane. Wolf researchers use, I know there's a lot of wolf researchers that use an MB750. Which is what? A foothold trap. wolf researchers use, I know there's a lot of wolf researchers that use an MB750. Which is what? A foothold trap. So when they want to put a collar on a wolf or do damage work,

they're using the thing that everyone agrees is so nasty. Oh, huh. So it's important to keep that in mind. Can we picture it as like, you know, your foot, you know, is grabbed hold of by something. Yeah. And you're just, maybe you're, you know, trying to struggle and get away, but there it is. It's like. It's the thing that pinches your foot.

Okay. With predator, with canines, it usually gets them around the pad. It's usually like held in around the pad with a couple toes. Okay. Same stuff researchers use. You do not want a trap that breaks the bone on a – Right. You want a trap that is just restraining the animal. Right.

Okay. That's the goal because anything more than that, you have more of a chance of losing that animal. Right. Sure. So the whole idea of a foothold trap is to just restrain the animal with doing as minimum amount of damage as you can. Okay, okay. One of the points, when I wanted to set that up for you, one of the points I wanted to get at was there are perfect scenarios in setting traps

and, like, best practices and humane practices, but things happen all the time that cause the systems to go awry. And I think the people that have a hard time with trapping are probably deeply informed by the situations where something goes awry. Yeah. The extreme. Yeah.

For whatever reason, a coyote pulls out, pulls a stake out, breaks a chain. I don't know. And then you have a trap on it. Then it's running around a neighborhood with a trap on its leg. Or I have, even in like beaver sets, where the drowner cable I use, something gets kinked up. Some stuff drifts down. Doesn't slide.

It gets, the cable gets a curlicue in it. A drift log comes down and messes it up. Something messes it up. And you do, like, just like, I'll just admit it flat out. You'll come down and have a beaver's front foot in a trap. It can happen. Oh yeah. They twist out the,

your equipment fails. And there you have, you've like tore the foot off a beaver. So somehow trappers like need to account for that more than other people who might have something go wrong now and then well what about how many deer get killed by combines harvesting wheat sure or how many how many deer and elk um are wounded and survive from bullet and arrow strikes. For sure. But I think that trappers are held more to the mistakes. Yeah.

Than hunters and farmers and everyone else is held to. They're held more to the mistakes. I think it's a smaller community. It's easier to target them. I mean, you're not going to go fight all the farmers in the United States of America for killing rabbits.

You know, the trappers, they're so small and rare now that it makes a very easy target to hone in on one group. You know, if you look at the total number of maimed animals by any user group out there, you're going to have a hard time convincing me anyways that trappers maim more animals than any other user group, you know, or injure them, you know, to the point where they aren't dispatched.

So I think it's because of the population and this, I mean, how many trappers do you know? You know, ask that to someone on the street. Seth. Yeah. It's not going to be a big number, you know. I know Seth and Steve. It's a small number.

And I don't think it's's I think trappers get an unfair targeting because of that because of their eliteness isn't the word but because of their fraternity and how tight they are with each other and how small of a group it is they do get picked on more it's a minority you know it's a minority

It's kind of in the playbook of people who are opposed to animal harvest it's in the playbook to go after in the death by thousand cuts routine the smaller user groups are always who you're going to go after yeah early houndsmen trappers whatever it's just like an easier victory. Yeah. It seems very other to people. Yeah, for sure.

It's more acceptable to go after them because not a lot is known about them, you know. They're a group that most people don't have any firsthand contact with. I'd say a lot of hunters probably have never talked to a trapper. I used to point out that fishermen, fishermen fish and they might not do anything else. Correct.

Hunters, most hunters fish. Trappers hunting fish. You got it. There's a hierarchy there. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Walk through how you'd even, let's say you're explaining to someone. You run your trap line basically out of Wrangell. Yes. Wrangell, Alaska. I've got a, I have a cabin permit that's 42 miles from town. Same type of permit as the interior of Alaska where you're allowed to build a cabin on state ground.

Permit costs $100, and it's a 10-year permit. And you can put yourself up a cabin, and then at the end of the 10 years, it's either renewable or any time during that period you can tear it down. But it does have to be removed. You have to put up a bond that for removal. Explain to someone how they would, like, let's say you were trying to explain to someone, you got to go catch a wolverine. Here's what I would tell you if I had a couple of seconds, a couple minutes to explain to you that you need to go catch one.

Like, how do you even begin to think about, how would someone even begin to think about what would go into catching a wolverine? Okay. First of all, you're going to have to go to some place that wolverines live. Got it. So at that point, then, you know, try to find bottlenecks or funnels. For example, as I go up the rivers, where a river comes in against a high steep embankment or something like that, that's going to crowd the Wolverine into that spot.

So you're trapping when the rivers are clean? Yeah. Well, they're still open. Most of the time when I'm going up the rivers, they're still staying open up there. I think you need to elaborate how you get up the river. Oh, I have an airboat with a 0540 Lycoming on it that I get up the rivers with. That's what you trap out of? Yeah.

What do you like to bait them with? Beavers are a go-to bait for almost everything. I've found that duck works really well for pine martin and – Duck? Yeah, duck works. Carcasses work really well for pine martin, better than beaver meat. You mean it's like when you clean a duck, like whatever's left over.

Yeah, bone and carcass. Yeah. So it's bones basically, bones and feathers. Yeah. Well, you know, after, once the duck has been breasted, you can use it for bait at that point. In the case of geese, you also have to take the legs, but then whatever's left over after you've

breasted and taken the legs and you can use that for bait. Yeah. It's like how you can bait a crab trap with a salmon head, but you can't bait a crab trap with, I mean, most sport caught salmon. You can't stick the whole damn thing up. All the edible parts have been removed. Yeah. What time of year do you like to start?

The season starts December 1st and runs through February 15th. Well, it's short. Yeah. So you can still, in the middle of the winter in that country, have enough open water to run your whole – to run the season. Well, the thing about the airboat is because it's in that particular environment, it's not like the interior where everything's completely froze over. You can run snowmobiles up the river. I wouldn't think it would take very long and you'd break a snowmobile through someplace on these rivers because it's fluctuating between freezing and not freezing all the time.

And so with the airboat, which it'll go on snow, ice, water, it just basically goes over almost anything. Gravel bars. Gravel bars. Does not like mud. Mud is basically airboat epoxy. Oh, is that right?

Yeah. Yeah, you stick it in the mud and it's stuck. I got you. Just too much friction. Yeah. You stick it in the mud and it's stuck. I got you. Just too much friction. Yeah. A pretty major travel barrier for a lot of the rivers in Southeast is that the bays will ice up. There's enough fresh water in them that's not

moving very much that you'll end up with these ice barriers. We used to trap out a little john boats and you could only go so far up into them before you'd basically, the rivers would ice up. And once you get above the ice dams in the bottom, then the river is moving enough to where it opens back up again. So the logistics of trying to figure out how to get up one of these rivers very far was, was one that was fairly challenging. So, I mean, my dad took it upon himself to figure out one way to get up

above there. He knew the Wolverines were further up the river. They weren't coming all the way down as far. There's a lot of the natural funnels where the points come out where these, these Wolverines would have to travel were further up than we could get with a little aluminum boat. How many miles up river, uh, are you trapping? About eight miles up each one.

Up, so you go up multiple rivers. Yeah. All right. And Wolverines roam all around. Mm-hmm. And you try to find some place where they'll, their movements will be constricted, like down to a bottleneck of sorts. Correct. And that might be bank configurations.

River bank steepness so that, you know, if they're. Saddles. Yeah. Just any place that's a funnel. Same way as you trap anything. You go to where they're going to be traveling. Just like a human being. I mean, how many times have you went to hunting in a certain spot, you go back three years later, you find yourself walking in the exact same space, place that you walked three years earlier? Yeah.

How many do you take each year? I have not caught that many wolverine. I caught one here last year and that. And so this is something new for me. Oh, okay. I've never been able to trap wolverine before until, like Rick said, I spent about $30,000 to catch my first wolverine. So I could have bought a lot of Wolverine for 30,000. Because you're getting an airboat.

Built an airboat or built a cabin, got an airboat, lots of years of trial and error. I mean, how much, how many trials and errors did we do before finally figuring out how to get up a boat? No, I'm not a big Wolverine trapper. However, it's like I said, it's an excuse to run around in the woods. So the great white buffalo. How do you catch pine Martin? Well, pine Martin is generally in a box as well, too.

Although one thing that I did take from my trapping experience in Washington, when they banned all body gripping devices, we went to box trapping pine martin. And I found up in the- Like live trapping them. Yeah, live trapping them. Yeah. Okay. And then-

I mean, that type of trap. Yeah, that type of trap. Just a cage trap. And so I started doing that up there as well in the fact that I could turn loose the females and maintain a higher population for the closer to the carrying capacity and have more producing females. It's no different than a cattle rancher or something. Are sometimes female pine martin worth more than male pine martin?

No, male worth much more. Oh, so that's just, that's always that way. Yeah. I got you. Males are much bigger and they're, they're much more desirable price-wise than the females. Females are just smaller. So much of fur is, is based on square inches.

Yeah. I got you. Like if it's twice as big, it's probably twice as valuable. Twice as inches. Yeah, I got you. Like if it's twice as big, it's probably twice as valuable. Twice as much, yeah, exactly. I'm with you. So how do you catch them? Well, with either one of two ways, either a conibear trap, which is far more humane than a cage trap. But the cage trap does allow you the ability to be able to be more selective in your harvest where I'm just harvesting just males,

letting the females go and being able to maintain a higher number of productivity out of the area. Pine martin are extremely easy to over trap. Yeah, I hear that all the time. Why is that? Well, they're delayed implantation, meaning that they're basically pregnant when you catch them. And so when I turn a female loose, I'm probably turning loose two or three Martin in reality, because they normally only have one or two kit or pups, whatever you want to call them. So they don't have, like the mink have five or six in a litter, where pine Martin only has one

or two. Yeah. It's funny that mink, like mink have a reputation as being hard to catch, but Pine Martins have a reputation as being easy to catch. Extremely easy to catch. Yeah. Like what makes it that way? Mink are afraid of their own shadow.

I've done a lot of videotaping on my sets and stuff like that, trying to find out, you know, some difference. Pine Martin will just plow right into a trap, but a mink is really. But he's not smelling. He's not worried about the smell of steel, the smell of grease, the smell of humans.

Well, yeah, they just plow right into things. They don't really care. If it's food, they're after it. And the mink, they're pretty skittish. I wonder if it's that the mink just lives in a, he lives in a more food rich environment and can afford to be a little particular, but a pine Martin in the winter has just got to be

balls out all the time. Yeah. I think a Martin, most of his life is on the verge of starvation. Uh, I think they, they just, they work hard to make a living where a mink has got a pretty easy life. And then you make a little box like a cubby. Yeah. Put bait in the back, guard the front make a living. Where a mink has got a pretty easy life. And then you make a little box, like a cubby.

Yeah. Put bait in the back, guard the front with a trap. Con a bear. Yeah. What do you deal, how do you deal with all the snow? Like all the snow burying all your stuff all the time. Well, you can put it on the side of a tree. Just nail a box to the side of a tree.

Will a wolverine run up a tree though? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you can get that up out of the snow. Yeah. Actually, I've got a set I'm working with this year. That's what I, I've actually got this from another individual up

in, I believe it's Northwest Territories where he's at, but he uses a tip up, which is basically a long pole attached to your trap. So when the trap is sprung, it falls away and the tip up brings the animal up in the air and suspends him. He's already caught and killed in the trap is sprung, it falls away and the tip-up brings the animal up in the air and suspends him. He's already caught and killed in the trap. But one real big advantage of that is in the case of pine martin, he's suspended so the voles and shrews don't chew up the fur. Start eating them. Yeah. And so he's suspended up out of the way. And so I'm experimenting with that and making a set that's

designed to catch lynx, wolverine, fisher, pine martin. We have very few of all of those items. There's a fair number of wolverine, but mainly just pine martin is what I'm after. But it eliminates the problem. Last year, I had about six pine martin eaten by wolverine and had a wolf that i had caught that got eaten by a wolverine as well so the wolverine ate the wolf yeah so he found a wolf that i'd caught in a snare and he ate it so uh wolverines used to have like a real bad rip not used to in the north like i don't have any experience trapping like in the far north you know but wolverines you know they got the name like whatever like the devil and all this kind of stuff for how much trouble they gave the trappers they just kind of get your number huh yeah well

they basically figure out that wherever you're going there's food so i mean it's just like any other predator they eat and they sleep and they don't sleep very damn much so i mean they just go to what's available for them for food. And that's just a, turns out to be a food source for them. A friend of mine in Alaska who used to trap wolverines, I was asking him about how he found

the wolverines and how he'd look for them. And he just said, they just found me. They just follow my snowshoe trail. Yeah. Yeah. He would make his sets in his snowshoe tracks. He's like, as soon as they hit my snowshoe tracks, they're going to follow.

Well, it's an easy way to travel too. Once they hit that and they can run. Yeah. It's like gravy running. Oh yeah. And somehow there's always food. Oh yeah. It's like, I'll just follow this snowshoe trail

around. Ooh, look, pine Martin, delicious. Yeah. Exactly. Ooh, a lynx. Love lynx. What time of year do you trap beavers? I try to trap beaver up there. I'll start off by

trapping beaver in order to get some bait for my pine martin or wolverine and other sets. So I'll start with beaver right off the get-go. So I've got bait as much as anything. And then most of the beaver I'll catch for my store is going to be beaver in the springtime. The fur quality is a lot better in the spring. When does the fur get primed? Do the regulators who set the seasons, do they do a good job of matching the opening and closing dates with fur quality? Yeah, I think most states do. Yeah, I think they do a real good job of that.

But you like the beavers better in the spring? Yeah, better quality fur in the spring, particularly if you're plucking and shearing the beaver. Really? It's not good in the fall? Not as good. But, you know, what they call silkies are normally a fall beaver.

They're a lot, they're a little bit thinner furred, but they're a lot silkier, where if they've been all through the winter and they're dense and that. Oh, they get coarse and that, yeah. Yeah. They're thicker, you know, under fur is thicker than that, which makes better plucking and shearing.

Gotcha. How do you catch those? The beaver, I use a lot of floats, A-frame type floats. I don't follow. I can show you pictures on my phone right now. You might be new to this. What's that?

I said, he might be new to this. Yeah. I've never caught a beaver in a float. Now, we used to take, like, when I was growing up, that never worked that well. We used to take two pieces of firewood and make a cross piece and nail two pieces of firewood together. And then notch it out with a hatchet so you could set a couple.

Footholds in it. Set a couple stop loss on it and staple the stop loss trap chain down to the bottom of the float and then stick a couple dowel, drill some holes. So you had a couple dowels and put apples on top. Yeah, for muskrats. Never worked worth a shit. Yeah.

Not as good as feed beds and bank dens. Yeah, correct. But in the springtime though, that set will be a lot more effective than it will be in the fall. When they're hungry. Not when they're hungry. They're actually breeding and they set will be a lot more effective than it will be in the fall. When they're hungry? Not when they're hungry. They're actually breeding and they're just traveling a lot more. Okay.

And then they're just running helter-skelter and running all over the place. They just travel a lot more and that makes them a lot easier to catch. That's one of the things like the mink up there. You know, most mink trappers, you know, they consider a time frame for a mink to come by might be a week before they come back through in the lower 48. But up where I'm at in southeast Alaska, those mink only travel 100 yards from their den. I mean, the tide goes out and their breakfast or the supper table is set and they go down in 15, 20 minutes or half an hour. They get a full belly and go back up and go back to sleep. Yeah, I, uh, it's funny you mentioned that because growing up catching mink, I was like

very difficult to catch mink and you, people would always be surprised to hear that there's mink living around. At our shack in Southeast Alaska, we had a mink a few years ago, something got hold of it and tore its tail off, most of its tail off and gave it a big wound right at the base of its tail. And this wound was about the size of two of your fingers put together,

your middle finger and pointer finger. Like a wound like that up its back, on the back of its tail, at the base of its tail. And this wound festered. And for a while, this mink got lost all fear of people and it would run across your shoes and it just looked sickly. And a bunch of times I thought, man, I should shoot that poor mink. Um, just put it out of its misery or it was acting so weird. I was worried about it biting my kids that the next year, the mink is totally back to normal

except it has a large scar and discoloration where it had healed up. And we have since, and that mink is now, I now know, like lives there. We know a hole it lives in. And we've seen that mink now for four years hanging out in one little spot and you'll see it every day.

And meanwhile, where I grew up and we caught mink and people trapped mink and there's a lot of, we had mink long liners. You would go your, most people will go their entire lives and be unaware that they live there. But these like Southeast Alaska mink are like squirrels. Yeah.

Middle of the day, on the porch, in the house, just a way different mink. Yeah. Way different mink. I've, I've had a difficult. They got time to kill. Yeah. Yeah. I've had difficult time catching them because of that, I think.

And just, I, I'm used to that mink that makes week-long cycles and that. And it's been a learning curve for me. They say that if you move 100 miles, you've got to learn how to trap all over again. Oh, I'm with you. And that's truly the case. What's the main thing? Like you were saying, you catch a lot of pine martins. What's the main thing you use pine martins for?

Oh, I'm making hats out of them. I make different things. I don't think I've made any koozies with them. One of my big sellers is beer koozies, and I really enjoy making those, and I enjoy the Californians that come up to Alaska, and I explain to them that, you know, these are the perfect beer koozie for a Californian, for, you know, an environmentalist, if you want to call them an environmentalist. Because they're not made out of foam. Yeah.

It's biodegradable. It's organic. It's a renewable resource. It's everything a Californian should like. What do you get for a beer koozie? $25. $20, $25 for a bottle, $20 for a beer can. So Pine Martin beer koozies are a good seller.

Well, actually, I make most of them out of beaver and otter. Pine Martin headbands and hats probably are mostly the Pine Martin. Get made into ear warmers, headbands, hats. It's a, the thing about, well, basically a Pine Martin is the same thing as a sable. It's a type of sable. Yeah. It's a – the thing about – well, basically a pine marten is the same thing as a sable. It's a type of sable. Yeah. And when you think of pine marten, once it becomes into a fur product, it's a sable. Oh, is that how – I just thought they called them sable in Eurasia.

That's where, you know, the Russian sable is where that – But it's the same animal, right? It's the same animal. We just call it a pine marten. We call it a pine marten. When it's made into a coat, it's a sable coat. So if you caught a bunch of pine martens in America and made a coat, it's still a sable coat. It's a sable coat.

No shit. Did you know that, Seth? No, I didn't know that. Oh, did you know Seth one time had a top-lot mink? He used to put up fur for a living. Oh. Yeah, a top-lot mink. It went for $18.

Oh, nice. That's not bad. Yep. I've had lots of top lots. We call him Seth Top Lot Morris. Mike, you've brought up, I noticed you brought up the idea of plastics and things. That

furs, biodegradable, organic, renewable. Are you just being cynical? Are you anti-plastic? Not particularly. You're just rubbing it in their cynical? Like, are you anti-plastic? Not particularly. You're just rubbing it in their nose? Yeah, well, it's just that they're trying to make a point that fur is a bad thing, and when in reality, it's exactly what those people desire. Organic, renewable resources.

Yeah, that's what they want. I mean, why would they not want that? But yet, they're completely opposed to fur, you know? So I'm thinking, you know, this doesn't make sense. Do you understand why people aren't offended by leather? Like why once you peel the fur away from something is it so easy? Why is it not acceptable? It's acceptable, yeah. But you leave the fur on, it pisses people off.

All leather had hair on it. All leather had fur on it. All leather had fur on it. It should come with a reminder. It should. This used to be haired. We scraped it away. It speaks to the detachment that we as a society have from nature.

And I think that's the biggest problem. It's why people have problems and want to put humans in a separate category from animals. I think it also comes back to what you were talking about with Corinne's earrings, how you said no one would have an issue if it were a feather, but something about that foot, it's a more tangible reminder

of this living, this thing that once was living, like fur is to leather. Like leather doesn't really remind you just looking at it on a coat or whatever, but if you see something covered in fur, I don't know. It kind of just triggers that. Yeah. Like, oh, that was an animal.

You know that law I wanted to make that only me and Seth could catch beavers, but they had to be worth $1,000 a piece? Yep. I think there should be another law that one day out of the year, everything that's leather has to still have its fur on it. Yeah. That'd be a hell of a day. I mean, if you... People would be like, my God. My God.

The amount of fur running around. Is out of control. Those ostrich boots would look real weird for a day. Yeah, feathered boots would be like Liberace's boots. Let's just take a time to mention Liberace.

Do you know who you know who that is? I've heard it. You don't know who I've heard you mention it. I should probably get rid of that reference because I think it might be.

Vegas showman, right? Piano player? Type in Liberace. He's a musician. American pianist. Type him on. Go to images. Oh, flashy. Very flamboyant.

Very flashy. I'm going to stop using that reference, though, because he's got to be dead or dead. So have you quit using footholds because of the humane? Pretty much. Really? Because of personal feeling about humane use. Yeah, I think I'm being a better steward and better respect of the animal by killing them instead. I don't hardly use footholds at all. I can't think of any place I actually use footholds.

Occasionally on a mink set, but predominantly all conibears. Do you look down on people that use footholds? No, not at all. Just you personally? No, me personally. I prefer to use conimers myself. I feel I'm being a better, better steward to the, you know, and you'd look at the Canadians where they have the best management practices. You know, they require their conimers to kill an animal in a certain timeframe.

And if it doesn't meet that requirement, it's not a legal trap. Is that right? Yeah. Speaking of the word Canada, what's the parker company? Canada Goose. Yeah. So they had a hit parker. Everybody else unwanted one. I'm guessing they started out being cool with like sled doggers and then they just got cool

city people. New York. I mean, everyone in New York had one. Just go to Soho and it's like everyone's got the same coat, looks the same. And this company's in Canada or not in Canada? Yes, they're in Canada. Canada Goose? Yeah.

So Canada Goose is a park company and they were trimming all their parkas with coyote, right? My understanding is one of the board members is anti-fur. And he was the one that kind of spearheaded the elimination of the coyotes. But their coyote trim, historically, parkas were trimmed with wolverine and coyote. The super high-end parkas were wolverine because it doesn't freeze up and frost up. But they were buying, this Canada goose company, was buying enough coyotes to actually impact the coyote market. Yeah. Totally.

I'd like to thank them. Thank you, Canada goose. And then they came out and said, we're going to stop using fur. Do a book report on this, Seth. Sort of. Sort of. Sort of. So what happened?

New York Times article says Canada goose will stop buying fur, sort of. Canada goose announced that starting in 2022, the company will no longer buy new fur from trappers. In a couple of years. Yeah, by 2022. By then, Canada Goose will start using reclaimed fur. Oh, that's what it is? Fur that already exists in supply chain.

So just between now and then, they're going to buy up every old coyote coat they can find. Yeah. But it's not fake fur that they're replacing it with. And does it talk about why? Public pressure. No, no. It says the shift is an eco-friendly measure.

This is the CEO. This is his comment. The shift is an eco-friendly measure and not related to public pressure from activists. Bullshit. Sounds good. I would also like to point out that what fills their jacket

is not like some shaved fuzz off a bird. Yeah, they're filled with birds' feathers. And a quick note to people at home, you can shear a sheep and then turn that sheep back out and get another harvest of wool off it. You can do that a few times, in fact. When you fill a coat with a goose's feathers, that sumbitching goose is not alive anymore. Unless it's ethically harvested down, which you kill the goose as opposed to the practice of live plucking.

Yes. A lot of companies, I was reading this like Eddie Bauer, a bunch of other companies, they find live plucking to be so abhorrent that they're trying to remove live plucked down where you just grab the bird and rip its feathers out. They're trying to remove live plucked down from their supply chain or arguing

about whether they have live plucked down in their supply chain because it's better to kill the damn goose and get its feathers than to rip them off alive. I didn't even know that was a thing. But coyote fur, now that's mean. It's just... Evil. It's one of those things that just makes you sound like an old man complaining about it, so it's hard to complain about.

But come on, man. Yep. If people don't see it, they don't care about it. Yeah, that's right. So you'll buy a coat filled with down from I don't know how many damn geese. But then you trim it. If it's trimmed with coyote, that's bad. It's because people can't handle reality laid out in front of them.

It's learned later because my kid's best friend, his daddy raises turkeys. And they had an extra one for us to have for Thanksgiving turkey. So I took my kid over there yesterday, the 22, to get the turkey. They'd cut the feed off the day before, so it wasn't fed. So its crop was empty.

Its digestive tract was emptied out. Just gave it water. It's in a little barn. My kid walked out in there and shot that turkey. Didn't even occur to him to think that there was something wrong with it. He is very, very aware of the processes of life. But the fact that some people have to have all this shit shielded from them and any little visual reminder of it pisses them off. It's like it's just like people are just becoming too like weak brained.

Sure. easy, I think, not to think a little step further of, you know, how the meat's in front of them or if they have a nice plush pillow on their sofa. Yeah. How it got there. The coat is full of dead stuff. But the trim, know that.

That's the, that's what tops it off. Yep. I'm not like a book burner, but if I had one of those coats, I'd go burn that son of a bitching coat. I'm still really shocked about the live plucking. There you go. I didn't know that. I assumed that the animal would be dead. So if they line it with, or they put the collar on with fake fur, then that would be acceptable.

But yet it's a non-renewable resource. No, it's recycled fur. Yeah, they're using recycled fur. Just go buy old fur coats, I guess. Yeah, but I don't see where they're going to be able to find enough of that to even come close to their market. So they'll have to turn to fake fur at some point. Or back to real fur.

Or back to real fur is the only two directions because they're not going to find enough. And besides that, when you, as your leathers get older, they get less and less, you know, the leather itself does deteriorate because, you know, leather is biodegradable where fake fur is not really biodegradable. So. What they were into in New York prior to this

was, I remember when like North Face Puffy'sies, then they got them to Canada goose down. Oh yeah. Everyone had a North face puffy. A black North face puffy all gave way to coyote hide. So you got a month and you got to go up and start trapping in Alaska. Yep. What are you going to do the month before that? I'm going up to hunt coyotes for a month.

You're going to coyote hunting now. Yeah. I'm snaring too. How many, how many, uh, when you go out, like how many hours you putting in a day? Whatever, whatever I can, most I can. And then you'll use all these coyotes for your supplier. Yeah.

I'll be using them in the store. I'll, most of the coyotes I want to make blankets out of. Okay. Or quilts or throws. You ever sell them into the fur markets? In the past, I always have. It's predominantly where all the fur went, but here, just four years ago, I started cutting out

all the middlemen and just making products myself. Yeah. And then Rick, are you participating? Yeah, I'll be up there for a little bit. We used to do it yearly and snare a whole pile of coyotes. And I've been so busy with other projects too. We haven't been.

Making a living. Yeah, making a living instead of losing money trapping. So I've kind of had to back off a little bit on how much I used to trap. For a lot of years, we ran around and trapped almost all winter for several years. And we'd have quite the, quite the pile at the

end of the year. And that was when fur prices were a little bit better. And we did make a little money doing that. Dad was getting his muskrat trap kind of dialed in and we went and trapped for two weeks. And I think we ended up with what, 709 muskrats? We were just shy of a thousand, I think. Oh, that's right. And I think we ended up with, what, 709 muskrats? We were just shy of 1,000, I think.

Oh, that's right. But then in two weeks, I think we got 709 in two weeks. About $10,000 in two weeks when we sold the fur. It was actually lucrative then. And then since the fur prices have gone down, I've kind of backed off a little and switched gears into guiding down to Hawaii and doing some other stuff. With $10 muskrats, this trap will pay for itself in about four to five days.

Yeah. You know, $185. And then after that, it's all profit. Do you think – do you remember that movie The Mountain Men with Charlton Heston? It's my favorite movie. Yeah. All-time great. It's not nearly as good as Jeremiah Johnson.

It's better. No, it's got real problems. It's actually got a lot of real problems listen that movie what in the world like they they didn't bring in a trapper to give him any insight like what those guys are doing when they're supposedly trapping beaver makes zero sense absolutely correct he's standing out in the middle of a pond up to his chest and like pulls up an empty trap. And then it's like, they had no idea like how, and then the beaver they have looks like

a stuffed animal. Oh yeah. Horrible. Yeah. It's a romanticism of it though. No, it's really, it's a real slap in the face. Like they had zero, they had no idea what they were showing. They could have done a hell of a lot better and demonstrated something. There were parts of it that were good, it's really, it's a real slap in the face. Like they had zero, they had no idea what they were showing. They could have done

a hell of a lot better and demonstrated something. There were parts of it that were good, but it's bad. I got to tell you why. The Indians are all idiots. Like the traps,

it's just, I used to love that movie when I was a kid, but I can't watch it now. Well, here's why I love that movie. Go on. When I was growing up,

my dad had the winters off and we had a cabin in the Selkirk Mountains that we'd go on backcountry skiing. And we had a full trap line from where we'd unload the snowmobiles all the way up to the cabin and all around the cabin. And it ran off of 12 volt batteries that we had an alternator from a truck that powered the thing and charged the batteries. And then we had a Honda generator and we had a TV with a VCR. And the only movie we had at the cabin was The Mountain Men. And so I couldn't even estimate the number of times I've seen it. I could, I probably know every word in it, but it was a major part of my life growing up. I'd be trapping on the way up to the cabin.

The only movie I had to watch was The Mountain Men up there. And so, you know, from when I was, when we built the cabin, I must've been seven or eight years old. Yeah, I suppose something like that. Probably eight years old, maybe-ish. You know, I had my own trap line all the way to the cabin to watch The Mountain Men in the

middle of nowhere in Northeastern Washington. I've watched, I watched again a week or two ago. Oh yeah. That and Jeremiah Johnson, I've seen far more than any other movie. Yeah. So the historical.

But Jeremiah Johnson gets better and better. And I think Mountain Man, in my mind, gets worse, worse. And I'm offended by the lack of, I'm offended by the lack of detail. Yeah. I mean, the accuracy is definitely not there, but I mean, have you ever been lost before?

I'm fearsome, confused for a month or two, but never been lost. I mean, there's enough one-liners in it. That's what I was trying to get at. That are more classic than I think than Jeremiah Johnson that stick with you longer. I'm trying to get at one of those one-liners. Yeah. Fur is going to shine again. So here it was, the end of the rendezvous era, 1840s, the fur market, it completely collapses in the 1840s. $3?

Yeah. The fur market collapsed, and they are despondent. It's done forever. Okay? Here we are again. And as we know, it has been up and down a lot since then. Uh, during the roaring twenties prior to the great depression for prices shot up and were great.

Um, they got good 30, 40 years later, they got really good again. Um, they've had various spikes and things like some things that go up and down. Right now, it's just like fur prices, commercial fur prices. Never shine again. Yeah.

Will fur shine again? Like, is there a way in which all of a sudden someday kids will be starting out, going out, making a bunch of money trapping? I'm not seeing it. You don't think it'll happen? Are trapping, are the numbers of trappers going up now? I heard a great statistic in Michigan.

This is years ago. At a point in Michigan, I heard that the average age of a fur trapper went up exactly one year every year. Okay. Pointing to zero. Makes sense. New folk coming in. But that was during a period of very low fur prices.

I got into it and still dabble with the discipline today because of the influence of the fur boom of the late 70s and early 80s. That grabbed me that you could make more money, you could catch two muskrats and sell them for more money than you'd get from mowing a big ass lawn. And it created a mystique in my head that still sits there today. That's an early memory. Yeah, because people were selling $5, $6, $7

muskrats. Then, and it's still stuck in my head. I can't shake the idea. When I see it, when I see a muskrat, it still appears to me as a thing of value. And I'll lay out a scenario

that it could be again, is china's economy and fashion right things could switch korea china um and all of a sudden they don't care they're on to it and they want it well there's some studies right now about the fibers from the polyesters and different things are ending up in the ocean. And I can see at some point people are going to realize that fur is biodegradable and organic. And some of the things we're currently using are not as desirable. So potentially there could be, you know, at least some group of people that are going to see fur as a better alternative to what we're using now. That might be where it's at.

Like, you know, the farm to table, hunt to table. Fur to table. Yeah, fur to table. I think we'll be there sooner than we think. I mean, I don't think we're far away from that. Well, we're there right now because you know what? I'd say on one hand. You know what I'm saving up muskrats for?

Make yourself a fur blanket? I need, no, I need 60 for my wife wants a fur bomber jacket. Perfect. Now her friend wants a fur bomber jacket. And then me and Seth are getting two giant blankets. So you guys need to trap some muskrats. Well, we're doing our giant blankets out of our beavers.

Oh, okay. And we're going to raise a ton of money for our land access initiative through a plan that DeSeth doesn't know about yet. I like it. I like the sounds of it. And we made, how many pounds of beaver sausage

did you make last year? 40, I think. Yeah. Still have a couple. Best freaking sausage you ever made. I know we got to make more. So how do people go find your special traps? Nongriptraps.com.

What's it called? Nongriptraps. So you just sell them directly yourself? Yeah. 200 a year. Yeah, about that. Not quite that many, but. And how do people find your fur products?

You make beaver wallets. What do people. Fursalaska.com. And you make all manner of biodegradable renewable resources. Anything, yeah. I make all kinds of things. I make coasters out of the beaver tails and

there's all kinds of things. I pretty much use the entire beaver. I sell the beaver teeth. You sell the meat sled doggers? No, we don't have any sled doggers where I'm at. Oh. They make reasonably good bait. They make reasonably good bait. Yeah.

And then, Rick, how do people find all your, how do they go hunting and fishing with you? Oh, man, that's chromechasers.com. Say it again? Chromechasers.com. That's for steelhead. That's for steelhead. And then we actually just started a fall

foraging week-long trip to where we go and basically immerse ourselves in southeast Alaska. We do some fishing. We do clamming, shrimp, crab, catch some salmon. And then we go back and do almost preparation, preservation, cooking-type classes. And we pick a lot of wild mushrooms. And you basically go out and get everything you make for a meal that night. And then we go over some canning techniques, smoking techniques for fish, all of that. So that's something new we've just adapted last year.

And it's out of wrangle. And it's out of wrangle, yeah. And that'll be late summer, fall. So the foraging trips are late summer, fall. And then spring steelhead fishing is in the springtime. And what if they want to go catch a bonefish in Hawaii? If they want to go catch a bonefish in Hawaii, If they want to go catch a bonefish in Hawaii, it's Hawaii on the fly.

I work for a guy named Mike Hennessy. Captain Kenny Karras is the other guy down there. He can get you set up if I'm not there. And that's a bonefish down there. The ranch I work for is a private ranch, which is a whole private deal on Molokai. So unfortunately you can't go do that. That's an invite only.

Oh, I got you. But the Oahu Bonefish program is Hawaii on the fly. And then Rick Mantney Outdoors is my outfitting business here. And I've been doing it long enough now to where my clientele list is the same guys every year. And I don't even have a website. So you're not even looking for new clients.

Yeah. You have to know one of my clients before you get in kind of deal from Montana. Yeah. And for better or for worse, that's the position I am. I haven't put any energy into even a website or advertising.

I feel like it's almost a disservice to my current clients to do that. I don't want to grow and be huge in Montana and have, do a ton of trips. I don't think the resource in Montana and the fishing outfitting business is sustainable at the growth rate that it is now. So I'm not going to try to grow my business to

become part of it. You don't want to add to the pile. I don't want to add to the pile. I see that. To the utter insanity that has become guided fly fishing. Yeah. I see it being a problem.

So I'm going to just personally limit the number of days I do. I'm going to take the guys that I like, um, and just limit my impact. Yeah. You want to talk about loving it to death, man. Holy smokes.

Yeah, it's bad. Some of the rivers. That's a whole nother topic. Some of the summertime fly fishing rivers here, it's just unbelievable. It's changed. It's different. You know, but the fish.

It's like the Macy's Day Parade. Oh yeah. But the fish are fine. You know, the biologists. Oh, I'm not worried about the fish. They're not, the fish aren't even native for the most part. Yeah. A lot of them are. Yeah. And, fine. You know, the biologists. Oh, I'm not worried about the fish. They're not, the fish aren't even native for the most part. Yeah.

A lot of them are. Yeah. And, and so are we hurting the resource by doing it? Probably not. Are we hurting the quality of the experience? Probably yes. Yeah.

That'll catch up to itself over time. It will. And people will start to look for other things. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, so anyways, I don't have a website for my Montana outfitting business. Um, Rick Matney Outdoors is, is what I call my business. Um, so yeah, is what I call my business.

So yeah, other than that, you know, I kind of run around. I do the cooking stuff for you guys, obviously, here and there. And wildgamechef.com is my wild cooking business. And I'm starting to do in-home wild game cooking classes, as well as some cooking classes out at Ross Creek Cabins, which is locally here in town. And so I'm going to start working on some stuff there too as well. Man, and you got to have a fair bit of time in website management.

Yeah. I don't have any time into it. I don't know what a website is. I got guys that help me out. I help people. I'm a big fan of the barter system. It costs a lot of money to hire someone to do a website, but you know, some guys like to want to have a hunting experience in Montana. And it's like, okay, well, I'll, you come out to Montana,

you and I'll go tromp around the woods and you help me with a website. There's, there's a lot of trading to be done in the outdoor world. Yeah, for sure. Doesn't include monetary stuff. And especially since, you know, the way the government and taxes and everything else are going these days, I like to keep as much of that out of their, uh, their, uh, their side as possible. Reduce the amount of cash flowing around.

Yeah. Just big fan of the barter system. All right, guys. Well, thanks for coming on. Um, there's a couple of things I like is that method of not playing by the rules. I don't mean with hunting and fishing rules, but I mean like assembling lives out of just the stuff that interests you.

Yeah. And not being like beholden to the man, but just going out and like crafting a way to live. Yeah. Where you're like, like working with what's there and like building an outdoor life. Yeah. Sometimes you have to figure out how to make money on your way to making money. Yeah.

So, you know, if you got to go over here to do something, it's not a lot of work to stop and check a trap. If you're doing that same path every day, there's an extra 20 bucks. You know, if you catch a beaver, an extra a hundred dollars, you catch a coyote on the way. Yeah. No, it's good. Yeah.

I appreciate it, man. Like assembling, assembling livelihoods out of all these outdoor interests and being a live a life where you're out and doing your own thing and working for yourself. It's cool. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians.

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